Origins of the name Steventon
The first record of our village comes in a Saxon charter from the year 964 where it is referred to in the phrase:
...to stifingehæma ge mære
Magaret Gelling, one of the foremost authorities on Saxon place names, suggests this translates as ‘the estate associated with Stifa’ where Stifa is a personal name. By Domesday Book (1086), this had become Stivetune, a typical place name of late Saxon England.
Tune frequently appears in place names and in our locality we have Drayton, Sutton (Courtenay), Milton, Ardington and Charlton. Historians think that tun or tune names were originally used in a descriptive manner and were given to settlements that served a more important, perhaps royal, centre in some way. Thus, Sutton is a geographical description meaning south and Milton middle. These descriptive names seem to have appeared in the 8th century.
Later on, from the 9th and 10th century, as the ownership of land became legally codified, and estates were granted to particular people by the Saxon kings, it became fashionable to add tune or tun to a personal name. It is from this time that most of the many hundreds of ton place names in England originate; they can be interpreted as meaning the settlement or estate of whoever is then named.
So, we can confidently say that one of the first Saxon lords of our village had the name Stifa or perhaps Styfa and that the village name retains that connection. To this day, we remain Stifa’s people.
