The information apearing here was sent to me by Pat Cruse. If you or anyone you know has additional information you can email her with it at pat.cruse@virgin.net or email me at and I will pass it on.
The name Tavendale can be traced back to Scotland though it certainly doesn't sound Scottish!
It has no coat of arms and no clan affiliations. Until the 1800s the name appears almost exclusively in the North East of Scotland. Specifically, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Kincardineshire and Fife. The largest concentrations of the surname are in Angus and Kincardineshire.
Surprisingly it was very common, relatively speaking, in the North East of Scotland. It can be found it in the novels of Lewis Grassic Gibbon who wrote about this area. (Grey Granite, Sunset Song etc.) Several of his classmates, in the small country school he attended, were Tavendales. There are well over 1000 Tavendales recorded.
The earliest records we have access to, mainly the OPR, starts around 1550 but the time varies from parish to parish and, of course, many records are incomplete with years missing or destroyed.
The year 1597 gives us our first Tavendale or Tevidale. This was David who lived in Brechin which is in the north of Angus near the border with Kincardineshire. The first one in Kincardineshire is David Tevidaile who appears in 1617 in Kinneff. Kinneff is on the Kincardineshire coast a few miles south of the county town of Stonehaven. Approximately 30 miles from Brechin.
The name appears as Tavendell in Aberdeenshire, about 50 miles further north, in 1628 with Margaret.
Where did the name come from?
It isn't listed as a Scottish surname although clearly it has been in the North East of Scotland since, at least, the 1600s.
It's origin is still unclear at this point. Both Aberdeen on the coast of Aberdeenshire and Montrose on the Angus coast did a roaring trade with the Continent and Scandanavia in medieval times so it could have come from anywhere.