Interesting thread if you ever tie any Devon FROUDEs up with FROUDS in Berkshire please let me know
This is what we have found about the name
The Name Froude.
Readers’ Digest Encyclopedic Dictionary.
A descendant of Odin.
or place in Kent called Frode in 13th Century.
P.J. Reavey’s Book of Surnames gives Froude — wise.
Froud, Froude, Frowde, Frude. — ? Bapt. ‘the son of Froud’(?). This name has troubled me much. There is not a trace of it in the Hundred Rolls and other contemporary records, so far as my researches have gone. Mr Lower, however, has an important note upon it. ‘The epithet frode, wise, was applied to more than one eminent Northman’ (v. Laing’s Chronicle of the Sea Kings of Norway). In Domesday we find a Frodo, described as ‘fater Abbatis’ (Bury St Edmunds), and he had a son Gilbert, called ‘filius Frodonid.’ This is a satisfactory statement as far as it goes. I wish I could light upon some intermediate links.
A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, C W Bardsley.
Trees with a Berkshire FROUDE branch