_{Chapter 1}

Origins

            Like many surnames in use today, the origins of "Denty" are obscure and very  much open to debate.[1]  Some experts believe it's synonymous with the surname "Dainty"; others disagree.  And the meaning of "Dainty" itself as a surname is disputed.  Does it stem from  "Daintree", a derivative for the town of Daventry in Northamptonshire, England – in short, a derivative of a derivative of a placename?[2]  Or do both Denty and Dainty come from the Old French "daintie", "deintie", or occasionally "dentith", a descriptive word meaning "fine", "handsome", or "worthy"? Three of the early individuals actually identified by that name offer little to settle the dispute.  Henry Deintie was mentioned in the Assize Rolls in Buckinghamshire in 1127; Osbert Deintie was named in the Pipe Rolls in 1199 in Northamptonshire; and William Deinte appeared in the Select Documents of the Abbey of Bec in Oxfordshire in 1248.  Their proximity to Northamptonshire must be noted, but so must their appearance in a period when Norman French was the language of the ruling elite.  What does all this mean to modern bearers of the surname?  Not much.  The use of surnames was so rare and inconsistent, that it's uncertain whether any of the above people were actually ancestral to later Dentys.  Perhaps; perhaps not. 

            It wasn't until the sixteenth century that surnames began to be used with any frequency, and by that century there were already individuals and families using both Dainty and Denty thinly dispersed throughout England, and perhaps into Ireland and Scotland as well.[3]  Of course, the spelling was entirely arbitrary: Denty, Dentey, Dainty, Daynty, Dayntey, Deinty, Deintye, Dynty, Dyntye, Dinty, Dintey, and even Denttee.  Do such diverse spellings simply reflect various regional accents and/or personal preferences and eccentricities?  Or did those using them already think of Denty and Dainty, at least, as different?  Whatever they represent, there were increasing mentions of both Denty and Dainty throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with most occurring in the Midlands and West Country.  Thanks to parish registers, it's possible to follow particular families who resided for generations in the same town or village, places such as Swineshead, Haselbury Plucket,  and Peterborough.  Unfortunately no researcher, to my knowledge, has attempted to bring all these families together in any sort of overview of the Dentys in England.  Thus we can't yet ascertain just where our forefather John Wybert Denty was born.  But in England, then as now, many gravitated to London.  And perhaps significantly, it's in the poorer sections of East London in the early years of the eighteenth century that Wyberts and Daintys can be found in the same parish registers, i.e. St. Dunstan and St. Mary Whitechapel in Stepney.