The ancient stock of Wentworth-Woodhouse, co. York, has been rooted in that shire from the earliest period to which the genealogist can usually ascend in his investigations. Of the orthography of the lands, whence originated the name, Domesday
Book and all the old charters have it Winteworth, and such is still the pronunciation of the common people, who do not easily fall into new modes of speech. As to its derivation, Mr. Hunter, in his History of Doncaster, make the following remarks: "The latter half of the name (worth) is one of the most frequent local terminals, and appears to denote some degree of cultivation. The former half accords room for conjecture. It has been suggested that it may be the word givint, preserved in the Breton language, which is a dialect of the Celtic, where it denotes elevation. This sense would undoubtedly apply well to Wentworth, which stands high, as does also another place of the same name in the Isle of Ely, relative to the fens around it. Celtic etymologists are, however, to be admitted with great caution in investigating the names of places cultivated or populated, and perhaps the scribe of Domesday, who, in one of five instances in which the word occurs, has written it thus, Wintrerworde, may have presented us with an ancient and expiring orthography, from when we may conclude that the name of Wentworth is to be classes with Winterton, Winterburn, Winteredge, and other places, which obtained those names from the high, exposed, or cold situations." While the lands of Wentworth-Woodhouse continued to be the seat of chiefs and descended from sire to son in an unbroken series till the succession of male heirs failed with William, the 2nd Earl of Strafford, the junior scions of the family founded, in several instances, houses of rank and influence, the Wentworths of Woolley, of North and South Elmsal, of Bretton, of Nettlested, &c. William de Wyntword, of Wyntword, m. in the time of Henry III, Emma, dau. and heir of William Wodehouse, of Wodehouse, by whom he acquired that estate and, taking up his abode there, the family were subsequently designated the "Wentworths of Wentworth-Woodhouse." He was s. by his son, William de Wentworth. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, England, 1883, p. 575, Wentworth, Barons Wentworth, of Wentworth-Woodhouse,
&c.]
Robert Wentworth, who married Emma, daughter and heir of William Woodhouse (Wodehouse, in old manuscripts), of Woodhouse (a manor or lordship contiguous to Wentworth), and thus acquiring that estate, the family was afterwards designated as Wentworth of Wentworth-Woodhouse. He was living in the reign of Henry III and Edward I; say as late as 1275, and was succeeded by his son and heir, William Wentworth. [A Genealogical Memoir of the Wentworth Family of England, From Its Saxon Origin in the Eleventh Century to the Emigration of one of its Representatives to New England about the Year 1636, Joseph Lemuel Chester]