The Romance of Names Part 1

The Romance of Names.

by Ernest Weekley.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

In preparing this revised edition I have been able to make use of much information conveyed to me by readers interested in the subject. The general arrangement of the book remains unchanged, but a certain number of statements have been modified, corrected, or suppressed.

The study of our surnames has been mostly left to the amateur philologist, and many origins given by my predecessors as ascertained facts turn out, on investigation, to be unsupported by a shred of evidence. I cannot hope that this little book in its new form is free from error, but I feel that it has benefited by the years I have spent in research since its original publication. I would ask reader to accept it, not as a comprehensive treatise containing full information on any name that happens to occur in it, but as a general survey of the subject, and an attempt to indicate and exemplify the various ways in which our surnames have come into existence.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM. April 1922.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The early demand for a new edition of this little book is a gratifying proof of a widespread interest in its subject, rather than a testimony to the value of my small contribution to that subject. Of the imperfections of this contribution no one can be more conscious than myself, but I trust that the most palpable blemishes have been removed in this revised edition. The student of etymology seldom pa.s.ses a day without coming across some piece of evidence which throws new light on a difficult problem (see Chapter XVI), or invalidates what had before seemed a reasonable conjecture. I have to thank many correspondents for sending me information of value and for indicating points in which conciseness has led to misunderstanding. Some of my correspondents need, however, to be reminded that etymology and genealogy are separate sciences; so that, while offering every apology to that Mr.

Robinson whose name is a corruption of Montmorency, I still adhere to my belief that the other Robinsons derive from Robert.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

NOTTINGHAM March 1914.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The interpretation of personal names has always had an attraction for the learned and others, but the first attempts to cla.s.sify and explain our English surnames date, so far as my knowledge goes, from 1605. In that year Verstegan published his Rest.i.tution of Decayed Intelligence, which contains chapters on both font-names and surnames, and about the same time appeared Camden's Remains Concerning Britain, in which the same subjects are treated much more fully. Both of these learned antiquaries make excellent reading, and much curious information may be gleaned from their pages, especially those of Camden, whose position as Clarencieux King-at-Arms gave him exceptional opportunities for genealogical research. From the philological point of view they are of course untrustworthy, though less so than most modern writers on the same subject.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, the period of Archbishop Trench and Canon Taylor, began a kind of boom in works of this kind, and books on surnames are now numerous. But of all these industrious compilers one only, Bardsley, can be taken seriously. His Dictionary of English Surnames, published (Oxford Press, 1901) from his notes some years after his death, is invaluable to students. It represents the results of twenty years' conscientious research among early rolls and registers, the explanations given being usually supported by medieval instances. But it cannot be used uncritically, for the author does not appear to have been either a linguist or a philologist, and, although he usually refrains from etymological conjecture, he occasionally ventures with disastrous results. Thus, to take a few instances, he identifies Prust with Priest, but the medieval le prust is quite obviously the Norman form of Old Fr. le Proust, the provost. He attempts to connect pullen with the archaic Eng. pullen, poultry; but his early examples, le pulein, polayn, etc., are of course Fr. Poulain, i.e. Colt. Under Fallows, explained as "fallow lands," he quotes three examples of de la faleyse, i.e. Fr.

Falaise, corresponding to our Cliff, Cleeve, etc; Pochin, explained as the diminutive of some personal name, is the Norman form of the famous name Poussin, i.e. Chick. Or, coming to native instances, le wenchel, a medieval prototype of Winkle, is explained as for "periwinkle,"

whereas it is a common Middle-English word, existing now in the shortened form wench, and means Child. The obsolete Swordslipper, now only Slipper, which he interprets as a maker of "sword-slips," or sheaths, was really a sword-sharpener, from Mid. Eng. slipen, cognate with Old Du. slijpen, to polish, sharpen, and Ger. schleifen.

Sometimes a very simple problem is left unexplained, e.g. in the case of the name Tyas, where the medieval instances of le tyeis are to a student of Old French clearly le tieis or tiois, i.e. the German, cognate with Ger. deutsch and Ital. tedesco.

These examples are quoted, not in depreciation of conscientious student to whose work my own compilation is greatly indebted, but merely to show that the etymological study of surnames has scarcely been touched at present, except by writers to whom philology is an unknown science. I have inserted, as a specimen problem (ch. xvi.), a little disquisition on the name Rutter, a cursory perusal of which will convince most readers that it is not much use making shots in this subject.

My aim has been to steer a clear course between a too learned and a too superficial treatment, and rather to show how surnames are formed than to adduce innumerable examples which the reader should be able to solve for himself. I have made no attempt to collect curious names, but have taken those which occur in the London Directory (1908) or have caught my eye in the newspaper or the streets. To go into proofs would have swelled the book beyond all reasonable proportions, but the reader may a.s.sume that, in the case of any derivation not expressly stated as a conjecture, the connecting links exist. In the various cla.s.ses of names, I have intentionally omitted all that is obvious, except in the rather frequent case of the obvious being wrong. The index, which I have tried to make complete, is intended to replace to some extent those cross-references which are useful to students but irritating to the general reader. Hundreds of names are susceptible of two, three, or more explanations, and I do not profess to be exhaustive.

The subject-matter is divided into a number of rather short chapters, dealing with the various cla.s.ses and subdivisions into which surnames fall; but the natural a.s.sociation which exists between names has often prevailed over rigid cla.s.sification. The quotations by which obsolete words are ill.u.s.trated are taken as far as possible from Chaucer, whose writings date from the very period when our surnames were gradually becoming hereditary. I have also quoted extensively from the Promptorium Parvulorum, our earliest English-Latin Dictionary (1440).

In ch. vii, on Anglo-Saxon names, I have obtained some help from a paper by the late Professor Skeat (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1907-10, pp. 57-85) and from the materials contained in Searle's valuable Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonic.u.m (Cambridge, 1897).

Among several works which I have consulted on French and German family names, the most useful have been Heintze's Deutsche Familiennamen, 3rd ed. (Halle a. S., 1908) and Kremers' Beitraege zur Erforschung der franzoesischen Familiennamen (Bonn, 1910). The comparative method which I have adopted, especially in explaining nicknames (ch. xxi), will be found, I think, to clear up a good many dark points. Of books on names published in this country, only Bardsley's Dictionary has been of any considerable a.s.sistance, though I have gleaned some sc.r.a.ps of information here and there from other compilations. My real sources have been the lists of medieval names found in Domesday Book, the Pipe Rolls, the Hundred Rolls, and in the numerous historical records published by the Government and by various antiquarian societies.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

Nottingham, September 1913

CHAPTER I.

OF SURNAMES IN GENERAL

"The French and we termed them Surnames, not because they are the names of the Sire, or the father, but because they are super-added to Christian names."

(CAMDEN, Remains concerning Britain.)

The study of the origin of family names is at the same time quite simple and very difficult. Its simplicity consists in the fact that surnames can only come into existence in certain well-understood ways.

Its difficulty is due to the extraordinary perversions which names undergo in common speech, to the orthographic uncertainty of our ancestors, to the frequent coalescence of two or more names of quite different Origin, and to the mult.i.tudinous forms which one single name can a.s.sume, such forms being due to local p.r.o.nunciation, accidents of spelling, date of adoption, and many minor causes. It must always remembered that the majority of our surnames from the various dialects of Middle English, i.e. of a language very different from our own in spelling and sound, full of words that are now obsolete, and of others which have completely changed their form and meaning.

If we take any medieval roll of names, we see almost at a glance that four such individuals as--

John filius Simon

William de la Moor

Richard le Spicer

Robert le Long

exhaust the possibilities of English name-making--i.e. that every surname must be (i) personal, from a sire or ancestor, (ii) local, from place of residence, [Footnote: This is by far the largest cla.s.s, counting by names, not individuals, and many names for which I give another explanation have also a local origin. Thus, when I say that Ely is Old Fr. elie, i.e. Elias, I a.s.sume that the reader will know without being told that it has an alternative explanation from Ely in Cambridgeshire.] (iii) occupative, from trade or office, (iv) a nickname, from bodily attributes, character, etc.

This can easily be ill.u.s.trated from any list of names taken at random.

The Rugby team chosen to represent the East Midlands against Kent (January 22, 1913) consisted of the following fifteen names: Hanc.o.c.k; Mobbs, Poulton, Hudson, Cook; Watson, Earl; Bull, Muddiman, Collins, Tebbitt, Lacey, Hall, Osborne, Manton. Some of these are simple, but others require a little knowledge for their explanation.

PERSONAL NAMES

There are seven personal names, and the first of these, Hanc.o.c.k, is rather a problem. This is usually explained as from Flemish Hanke, Johnny, while the origin of the suffix -c.o.c.k has never been very clearly accounted for (see The suffix -c.o.c.k, Chapter VI). With Hanc.o.c.k we may compare Hankin. But, while the Flemish derivation is possible for these two names, it will not explain Hanson, which sometimes becomes Hansom (Epithesis And a.s.similation, Chapter III).

According to Camden, there is evidence that Han was also used as a rimed form of Ran, short for Ranolf and Randolf (cf. Hob from Robert, Hick from Richard), very popular names in the north during the surname period. In Hankin and Hanc.o.c.k this Han would naturally coalesce with the Flemish Hanke. This would also explain the names Hand for Rand, and Hands, Hance for Rands, Rance. Mobbs is the same as Mabbs (cf.

Moggy for Maggy), and Mabbs is the genitive of Mab, i.e. Mabel, for Amabel. We have the diminutive in Mappin and the patronymic in Mapleson. [Footnote: Maple and Mapple, generally tree names (Chapter XII), are in some cases for Mabel. Maplethorpe is from Mablethorpe (Line.), thorp of Madalbert (Maethelbeorht).] Hudson is the son of Hud, a very common medieval name, which seems to represent Anglo-Saxon Hudda (Chapter VII), the vigorous survival of which into the surname period is a mystery. Watson is the son of Wat, i.e. Walter, from the Old N.E. Fr. Vautier (Gautier), regularly p.r.o.nounced and written Water at one time--

". . . My name is Walter Whitmore.

How now! Why start'st thou? What! doth death affright?

Suffolk. Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.

A cunning man did calculate my birth, And told me that by water I should die."

(2 Henry VI, iv.1)

Hence the name Waters, which has not usually any connection with water; while Waterman, though sometimes occupative, is also formed from Walter, like Hickman from Hick (Chapter VI). Collins is from Colin, a French diminutive of Col, i.e. Nicol or Nicolas.

Tebbitt is a diminutive of Theobald, a favourite medieval name which had the shortened forms Teb, Tib, Tub, whence a number of derivatives.

But names in Teb- and Tib- may also come from Isabel (Chapter X).

Osborne is the Anglo-Saxon name Osbeorn.