The surname of ANTROBUS was a locational name 'of Antrobus' - meaning among or amid the woods - a township in the parish of Great Budworth in County Cheshire. Local surnames, by far the largest group, derived from a place name where the man held land or from the place from which he had come, or where he actually lived. These local surnames were originally preceded by a preposition such as "de", "atte", "by" or "in". The names may derive from a manor held, from working in a religious dwelling or from literally living by a wood or marsh or by a stream. Early records of the name mention Edward Antrobus who was recorded in County Yorkshire in 1185, and Edward Antrobus appears in Lancashire in 1273. Thomas Antrobus of Yorkshire was listed in the Yorkshire Poll Tax of 1379. Thomas Antrobus of the County of Cumberland was registered at Oxford University in 1600-1. William Antrobus of Over Peover in 1596 was listed in the Wills at Chester. Henry Antrobus of Knutsford in 1620, ibid. Joan Antrobus 'imbarqued in the Planter', for New England in 1635. Over the centuries, most people in Europe have accepted their surname as a fact of life, as irrevocable as an act of God, however much the individual may have liked or disliked the surname, they were stuck with it, and people rarely changed them by personal choice. A more common form of variation was in fact involuntary, when an official change was made, in other words, a clerical error. Among the humbler classes of European society, and especially among illiterate people, individuals were willing to accept the mistakes of officials, clerks and priests as officially bestowing a new version of their surname, just as they had meekly accepted the surname they had been born with. In North America, the linguistic problems confronting immigration officials at Ellis Island in the 19th century were legendary as a prolific source of Anglicization.