The Romance of Names Part 31

bourdon, meant a staff, especially a pilgrim's staff. Daunger is described as having--

"In his honde a gret burdoun"

(Romaunt of the Rose, 3401).

But the name Burdon is also local. Bracegirdle, i.e. breeks-girdle, must have been the nickname of one who wore a gorgeous belt. It is a curious fact that this name is chiefly found in the same region (Cheshire) as the somewhat similar Broadbelt. The Suss.e.x name Quaile represents the Norman p.r.o.nunciation of coif. More usually an adjective enters into such combinations. With the historic Curthose, Longsword, Strongbow we may compare Shorthouse, a perversion of shorthose, Longstaff, Horlock (h.o.a.r), Silverlock, Whitlock, etc.

Whitehouse is usually of local origin, but has also absorbed the medieval names Whitehose and White-hawse, the latter from Mid. Eng.

hawse, neck. Woollard may be the Anglo-Saxon personal name Wulfweard, but is more probably from woolward, i.e. without linen, a costume a.s.sumed as a sign of penitence

"Wolwarde, without any lynnen nexte ones body, sans chemyse."

(Palsgrave.)

The three names Medley, Medlicott, and Motley go together, though all three of them may be local (the mid-lea, the middle-cot, and the moat-lea). Medley mixed, is the Anglo-French past participle of Old Fr. mesler (meler). Motley is of unknown origin, but it was not necessarily a fool's dress--

"A marchant was ther with a forked berd, In mottelye, and hye on horse he sat, Upon his heed a Flaundryssh bevere hat" (A, 270).

So also the Serjeant of the Law was distinguished his, for the period, plain dress--

"He rood but hoomly in a medlee cote" (A, 328).

Gildersleeve is now rare in England, though it still flourishes in the United States. [Footnote: We have several instances of this phenomenon. A familiar example is Lippincott, a surname of local origin (Devonshire). But Bardsley's inclusion of American statistics is often misleading. It is a well-known fact that the foreign names of immigrants are regularly a.s.similated to English forms in the United States. In some cases, such as Cook for Koch, Cope (Chapter XII) for Kopf, Stout (Chapter XXII) for Stolz or Stultz, the change is etymologically justified. But in other cases, such as Tallman for Thalmann, dale-man, Trout for Traut, faithful, the resemblance is accidental. Beam and Chestnut, common in the States but very rare in England, represent an imitative form of Bohm or Behm, Bohemian, and a translation of Kestenbaum, chestnut tree, both Jewish names. The Becks and Bowmans of New York outnumber those of London by about five to one, the first being for Beck, baker (Chapter XV), and the second for Baumann, equivalent to Bauer, farmer. Bardsley explains the common American name Arrison by the fact that there are c.o.c.kneys in America. It comes of course from Arend, a Dutch name related to Arnold.

"A remarkable record in changes of surname was cited some years ago by an American correspondent of Notes and Queries. 'The changes which befell a resident of New Orleans were that when he moved from an American quarter to a German neighbourhood his name of Flint became Feuerstein, which for convenience was shortened to Stein. Upon his removal to a French district he was re-christened Pierre. Hence upon his return to an English neighbourhood he was translated into Peters, and his first neighbours were surprised and puzzled to find Flint turned Peters.'"

(Daily Chronicle, April 4, 1913.)]

PHYSICAL FEATURES

Names like Beard, Chinn, Tooth were conferred because of some prominent feature. In Anglo-French we find Gernon, moustache, now corrupted to Garnham, and also al gernon, with the moustache, which has become Algernon. But we have already seen (Chapter XIII) that some names which appear to belong to this cla.s.s are of local origin.

So also Tongue is derived from one of several places named Tong or Tonge, though the ultimate origin is perhaps in some cases the same, a "tongue" of land. Quartermain is for Quatre-mains, perhaps bestowed on a very acquisitive person; Joscius Quatre-buches, four mouths, and Roger Tunekes, two necks, were alive in the twelfth century; and there is record of a Saracen champion named Quinze-paumes, though this is perhaps rather a measure of height. Cheek I conjecture to be for Chick. The odd-looking Kidney is apparently Irish. There is a rare name Poindexter, appearing in French as Poingdestre, "right fist."

[Footnote: President Poincare's name appears to mean "square fist."]

I have seen it explained as from the heraldic term point dexter, but it is rather to be taken literally. I find Johannes c.u.m pugno in 1184, and we can imagine that such a name may have been conferred on a medieval bruiser. There is also the possibility, considering the brutality of many old nicknames, that the bearer of the name had been judicially deprived of his right hand, a very common punishment, especially for striking a feudal superior. Thus Renaut de Montauban, finding that his unknown opponent is Charlemagne, exclaims--

"J'ai forfait le poing destre dont je l'ai adese (struck)."

We have some nicknames describing gait, e.g. Ambler and Shaylor--

"I shayle, as a man or horse dothe that gothe croked with his leggs, je vas eschays" (Palsgrave)--

and perhaps sometimes Trotter. If George Eliot had been a student of surnames she would hardly have named a heroine Nancy Lammiter, i.e.

cripple--

"Though ye may think him a lamiter, yet, grippie for grippie, he'll make the bluid spin frae under your nails" (Black Dwarf, ch. xvii.).

Pettigrew and Pettifer are of French origin, pied de grue (crane) and pied de fer. The former is the origin of the word pedigree, from a sign used in drawing genealogical trees. The Buckinghamshire name Puddifoot or Puddephatt (Podefat, 1273) and the aristocratic Pauncefote are unsolved. The former may be a corruption of Pettifer, which occurs commonly, along with the intermediate Puddifer, in the same county. But the English Dialect Dictionary gives as an obsolete Northants word the adjective puddy, stumpy, pudgy, applied especially to hands, fingers, etc., and Pudito (puddy toe) occurs as a surname in the Hundred Rolls. As for Pauncefote, I believe it simply means what it appears to, viz. "belly-foot," a curious formation, though not without parallels, among obsolete rustic nicknames. If these two conjectures are correct, both Puddifoot and Pauncefote may be almost literal equivalents of the Greek OEdipus, i.e. "swell-foot."

In other languages as well as English we find money nicknames. It is easy to understand how some of these come into existence, e.g. that Pierce. Pennilesse was the opposite of Thomas Thousandpound, whose name occurs c. 1300. With the latter we may compare Fr. Centlivre, the name of an English lady dramatist of the eighteenth century.

Moneypenny is found in 1273 as Manipeni, and a Londoner named Manypeny died in 1348. The Money- is partly north country, partly imitative.

Money itself is usually occupative or local (Chapter XVII), and Shilling is the Anglo-Saxon name Scilling. The oldest and commonest of such nicknames is the simple Penny, with which we may compare the German surname Pfennig and its compounds Barpfennig, Weisspfennig, etc. The early adoption of this coin-name as a personal name is due to the fact that the word was taken in the sense of money in general.

We still speak of a rich man as "worth a pretty penny." Hallmark is folk-etymology for the medieval Half-mark. Such medieval names as Four-pence, Twenty-mark, etc., probably now obsolete, are paralleled by Fr. Quatresous and Sixdenier, still to be found in the Paris Directory. It would be easy to form conjectures as to the various ways in which such names may have come into existence. To the same cla.s.s must belong Besant, the name of a coin from Byzantium, its foreign origin giving it a dignity which is absent from the native Farthing and Halfpenny, though the latter, in one instance, was improved beyond recognition into MacAlpine.

IMPRECATIONS

There is also a small group of surnames derived from oaths or exclamations which by habitual use became a.s.sociated with certain individuals. We know that monarchs had a special tendency to indulge in a favourite expletive. To Roger de Collerye we owe some information as to the imprecations preferred by four French kings--

"Quand la Pasque-Dieu (Louis XI.) deceda, Le Bon Jour Dieu (Charles VIII.) luy succeda, Au Bon Jour Dieu deffunct et mort Succeda le Dyable m'emport (Louis XII).

Luy decede, nous voyons comme Nous duist (governs) la Foy de Gentilhomme (Francis I.)."

So important was this branch of linguistics once considered that Palsgrave, the French tutor of Princess Mary Tudor, includes in his Esclarciss.e.m.e.nt de la Langue Francoyse a section on "The Maners of Cursyng." Among the examples are "Le grant diable luy rompe le col et les deux jambes," "Le diable l'emporte, corps et ame, tripes et boyaux," which were unfortunately too long for surname purposes, but an abridged form of "Le feu Saint Anthoyne l'arde" [Footnote: Saint Anthony's fire, i.e. erysipelas, burn him!] has given the French name Feulard. Such names, usually containing the name of G.o.d, e.g.

G.o.dmefetch, HelpusG.o.d, have mostly disappeared in this country; but Dieuleveut and Dieumegard are still found in Paris, and Gottbehut, G.o.d forbid, and Gotthelf, G.o.d help, occur in German. G.o.dbehere still exists, and there is not the slightest reason why it should not be of the origin which its form indicates. In Gracedieu, thanks to G.o.d, the second element is an Old French dative. Pardoe, Purdue, whence Purdey, is for par Dieu--

"I have a wyf pardee, as wel as thow" (A, 3158).

There is a well-known professional footballer named Mordue ('sdeath), and a French composer named Boieldieu (G.o.d's bowels). The French nickname for an Englishman, G.o.ddam--

"Those syllables intense, Nucleus of England's native eloquence"

(Byron, The Island, iii. 5)--

goes back to the fifteenth century, in which invective references to the G.o.dons are numerous. [Footnote: "Les Anglais en verite ajoutent par-ci, par-la quelques autres mots en conversant; mais il est bien aise de voir que G.o.ddam est le fond de la langue" (Beaumarchais, Mariage de Figaro, iii. 5).]

Such nicknames are still in common use in some parts of France--

"Les Berrichons se designent souvent par le juron qui leur est familier. Ainsi ils diront: 'Diable me brule est bien malade. Nom d'un rat est a la foire. La femme a Diable m'estrangouille est morte.

Le garcon a Bon You (Dieu) se marie avec la fille a Dieu me confonde.'"

(Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue francaise, iv. 209).

PHRASE-NAMES

Perhaps the most interesting group of nicknames is that of which we may take Shakespeare as the type. Incidentally we should be thankful that our greatest poet bore a name so much more picturesque than Corneille, crow, or Racine, root. It is agreed among all competent scholars that in compounds of this formation the verb was originally an imperative. This is shown by the form; cf. ne'er-do-well, Fr.

vaurien, Ger. Taugenichts, good-for-naught. Thus Hasluck cannot belong to this cla.s.s, but must be an imitative form of the personal name Aslac, which we find in Aslockton.

As Bardsley well says, it is impossible to retail all the nonsense that has been written about the name Shakespeare--"never a name in English nomenclature so simple or so certain in its origin; it is exactly what it looks--shake-spear." The equivalent Schuttespeer is found in German, and we have also in English Shakeshaft, Waghorn, Wagstaff, Breakspear, Winspear. "Winship the mariner" was a freeman of York in the fourteenth century. Cf. Benbow (bend-bow), Hurlbatt, and the less athletic Lovejoy, Makepeace. Gathergood and its opposite Scattergood are of similar origin, good having here the sense of goods. Dogood is sometimes for Toogood, and the latter may be, like Thoroughgood, an imitative form of ThurG.o.d (Chapter VII); but both names may also be taken literally, for we find Ger. Thunichtgut, do no good, and Fr. Trodoux (trop doux).

As a pendant to Dolittle we find a medieval Hack-little, no doubt a lazy wood-cutter, while virtue is represented by a twelfth-century Tire-little. Sherwin represents the medieval Schere-wynd, applied to a swift runner; cf. Ger. Schneidewind, cut wind, and Fr. Tranchevent.

A nurseryman at Highgate has the appropriate name Cutbush, the French equivalent of which, Taillebois, has given us Tallboys; and a famous herbalist was named Culpepper. In Gathercole the second element may mean cabbage or charcoal. In one case, Horniblow for horn-blow, the verb comes after its object.

Names of this formation are very common in Mid. English as in Old French, and often bear witness to a violent or brutal nature. Thus Scorch-beef, which is found in the Hundred Rolls, has no connection with careless cookery; it is Old Fr. escorche (ecorche) -buef, flay ox, a name given to some medieval "Skin-the-goat." Catchpole (Chapter XX) is formed in the same way, and in French we find, applied to law officials, the surnames Baillehart, give halter, [Footnote: Bailler, the usual Old French for to give, is still used colloquially and in dialect.] and Baillehache, give axe, the latter still appropriately borne, as Bailhache, by an English judge.

It has sometimes been a.s.sumed that most names of this cla.s.s are due to folk-etymology. The frequency of their occurrence in Mid. English and in continental languages makes it certain that the contrary is the case and that many surnames of obscure origin are perversions of this very large and popular cla.s.s. I have seen it stated somewhere that Shakespeare is a corruption of an Old French name Sacquespee, [Footnote: Of common occurrence in Mid. English records.] the theorist being apparently unable to see that this latter, meaning draw-sword, is merely an additional argument, if such were needed, for the literal interpretation of the English name. [Footnote: In one day's reading I came across the following Mid. English names: Baillebien (give good), Baysedame (kiss lady), Esveillechien (wake dog), Lievelance (raise lance), Metlefrein (put the bridle), Tracepurcel (track hog), Turnecotel (turn coat), together with the native Cachehare and Hoppeschort.]