Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"The name 'Domesday Book' comes from an Old English word dom, meaning 'reckoning' or 'account.' . . . or he may simply have wanted to learn as much as possible about the land he had conquered twenty years before, which he had only recently brought under effective control. . . . The survey reveals just how drastically the country had been affected by the Norman Conquest. Fewer than 250 people controlled most of the land in England, and among all the tenants-in-chief, only two were English." [1001 Days]