The surname MNASON and its connection with those of NASON and MASON

by M. Nason

Cherrington Parish Register 1771, baptism of Robert, son of John Nason. The surname MNASON and its connection with those of NASON and MASON by M. Nason

The surname MNASON is extinct in England and descendants of known MNASONs think of themselves as either NASON or MASON. The investigation must start with the historically more numerous NASONs.

The English NASON. In its English genealogy, the surname NASON is neither numerous nor rare; or it is both, if considered on a geographical basis!

The 1881 census distribution chart, as presented in the UCL surname profiler, shows that Nason was found predominantly in Warwickshire, Oxfordshire, and Essex, in which places it might be considered common, but had no visible presence elsewhere. This indicator is supported by sources older than the 1881 census. For example, searches of The National Archive catalogue with the keyword ‘Nason’ return sources that concentrate in the Warwickshire area.

However, there are limitations on the understanding to be derived from such analyses, some of which are explained in the website ‘Modern British Surnames’. It has become clear to this author that there has been a distortion of the NASON record and, concomitantly, in the record of some MASON genealogies. In certain localities, this might distort a statistical analysis significantly.

The surname is now distributed world-wide and, within the white Commonwealth and in the United States of America, the NASON diaspora is widely regarded as having spread out from Britain, where, as we have seen, the name is and has been concentrated in the southern Midlands area.

To date, the earliest documented English record of NASON is found in the accounts of the Gild of the Holy Cross, Stratford on Avon, circa 1501 where a chaplain Sir John NASON is mentioned. He may be the same John NASON who was the priest at Hampton Poyle, Oxfordshire from 1504 to 1544. We can conclude that John NASON was born in or close to the last quarter of the C15th.

The C16th record in the Stratford on Avon area includes numerous NASON entries, which continue into the present day. Only slightly later, a few NASON entries are found in Broadwell, Gloucestershire, toward the Warwickshire/Oxfordshire borders, in the second half of the C16th.

There was an early NASON presence in Ireland, which is rumoured to have originated in the Stratford on Avon area. The well-documented NASON presence in the C18th Kinsale/Youghal area may have arisen from lines established during plantation times or, perhaps, from late C16th awards of lands.

The modern distribution of the surname, as shown in the UCL study of the 1881 census, shows a presence in Essex. There is strong evidence which suggests that the Essex NASONs were descended from French Huguenot NEZONs and have no genetic connection with earlier NASON events. There is no evidence to support the conjecture that the Irish NASONs may also have Huguenot origins, other than that early Huguenot NEZONs were commissioned into the Irish Army establishment.

The name occurs sporadically in the west Country and in Hertfordshire in the C17/18th. Such incidences are inexplicable at this time and Huguenot connections are not entirely discounted.

The origins of NASON. The name has occurred in Continental Europe and its origin there, it has been conjectured, is to be found in Roman Italy. The poet Ovid’s family name was NASO – a French C18th engraving of him is named Publius Ovidius NASON. The name occurs in modern Italy, in the glass manufacturer in Murano, and is readily understood to mean ‘big nose’. This meaning is ascribed to NASO, which was said to have been a soubriquet given to Ovid’s father, who had a large nose.

The Huguenot NEZON may well be simply the French manifestation of the Latin NASO; a C18th French work on Ovid refers to ‘Le Chevalier Publius Ovidius NASON. There are also C18th Le NEZON genealogies. A C14th. Bohemian family has been variously recorded as NAZ, NASO, and NASONIUS, all of which have been rendered into English as ‘NASON’.

However, rather than a single originator of the name, it is more likely that the nickname NASO would have been used for the many individuals who either had a large nose or who poked it too often into other people’s business. In Roman Italy, if we are to believe the talk of ‘Roman’ noses or accept the evidence of Roman sculpture, large noses were a widespread characteristic of the Latins. It would seem logical, therefore, to conclude that a nickname of ‘large nose’ would arise where the generality of the population had small noses. In Ovid’s case, it was his father who first earned the the name, by reason of his large nose. The family lived in North Africa where, perhaps, the natives had small, or smaller, noses?

Accepting that ‘NASON’ refers to the nose and that, as a surname, it falls into the nickname category, it is appropriate to consider whether or not it could, in England, have had a native origin.

Words referring to the nose in Anglo-Saxon sound similar to the Latin; for example ‘nasthryl’ = nostril; pre-Doomsday references to various place names that reflect a geographical feature (a promontory or ‘nose’ of land), as in Nazing, Essex and Nassington, Northants. A C12th document refers to ‘Geoffrey de Nasyng’ (of Nazing). English mediaeval documents written in Latin refer to individuals as ‘cum naso’. ‘Geoffrey cum naso’ (Geoffrey with the nose) and ‘cum naso curto’ (Shortnose). Could the written Latin have established itself as the English vernacular form of the name? The act of writing, and writing in Latin, was the preserve of very few and, while Latin words are numerous in modern English, English itself is a continuum from the Dark Ages to the present.

In England, during the period when surnames were solidifying, someone with a large nose might have been nicknamed ‘big nose’ or, perhaps, ‘long nose’. The modern surname ‘Bigg’ and the rarer ‘Bighead’ (Cottle 1967) suggest that ‘big nose’ would have survived in a similar form, as have surnames like Longbone or Rawbone. That process suggests that a surname like NASON is unlikely to have a native English origin.

If NASON was not a native English name, what was its origin in England? The very limited evidence, as rehearsed above, suggests that the name was brought into England from the continent of Europe. When might that have been?

The surname NASON is today relatively rare in England and is still geographically localised. The current dataset shows that, in the early C16th there were only there or four NASON families, centred in the Stratford on Avon area. Thereafter the name expands but still within number and geographical limits. So far only two persons have been indentified as being born in the late C15th., both probably in the Stratford area.

Expansion of the data for the late mediaeval/early modern period may require a revision of any conclusion drawn but it presently seems likely that the progenitor of the English NASON arrived from continental Europe in the years 1400-1450.

Current research suggests a possible candidate from central Europe. It is possible to construct connections between Johannes Nasonius, a prominent official of the central European church, and its political dealings with the court of Henry VIII and that of King Sigismund of Bohemia. This research is at an early stage and any further comment could only be speculative.

MNASON. The surname MNASON has been found in the Shipston on Stour (pre-1974 Worcestershire) registers where, in September 1602, William son of Anthony MNASON, was baptised.

Other MNASON entries have been found in parish registers: Itchenor, Sussex, in 1642 (1 entry) Speen, Berkshire, in 1691(1 entry, unconfirmed). Cherrington, Warwickshire, 1723 – 1744 (and a Poor Law record for 1762) St. Pancras, London, in 1725, 1726, and 1729. Salford, Oxfordshire, in 1761, 1763, and 1774. Westcote, Gloucestershire, in 1758, 1759, 1760, 1763, 1768, 1853 and 1854. Sutton under Brailes, Warwickshire, in 1818. With the exception of the Speen and Itchenor entries, MNASON occurs in tandem with both NASON and MASON events. Research has shown that some, perhaps many, modern NASON and MASON families descend from MNASONs.

Baptism 1735

MNASON looks and sounds un-English. As a name it existed in ancient Greece and can still be found there today. It appears once in the Bible, which occurrence was the basis of the character in Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, widely read since its publication in the late 1600s.

If the English incidences of the name are taken at face value, it might be taken to have an origin in a Greek migrant. However, the forces that both erode and accrete words may have produced the name from some other native origin, just as the name itself has more recently changed into NASON and MASON. We are all familiar with the origin of the surname ‘PRICE’.

MASON. The history of the surname MASON is widely accepted as an occupational name coming into England by way of Norman French. In Cherrington, Warwickshire, where, in the 1700’s, there is a mix of MASONs, NASONs, and MNASONs, the record shows the presence of MASONs as far back as 1327 but none of either NASON or MNASON before 1700.

There can be no doubt that MASON has a long established and honoured history.

MNASON alias NASON alias MASON The surname MNASON has shown a surprising pugnacity, even if it did finally succumb and disappear from the English record.

Thomas MNASON married in 1723 in Cherrington. His children appear in the register as MNASON, including John who was baptised in 1735. The Cherrington register records that John NASON and Elizabeth HARVEY married in February 1762 and baptised their first child in November. Their subsequent children were uniformly recorded as NASON.

A ‘Harmless’ certificate, issued by the overseers of Ebrington, Gloucestershire, just before the birth of John and Elizabeth’s child reads in part as follows: ‘. . . . . acknowledge that John Mnason Labourer and Elizabeth his wife now living in Cherrington Aforesaid are Inhabitants legaly settled in our said Parrish of Ebrington . . . . Octr 21 1762 . . .’ The dating and wording of the certificate leaves little doubt that John NASON was in fact John MNASON baptised 1735. Descendants of John and Elizabeth were recorded as both NASON and MASON, which family names seem to have become fixed in the C19th. The author’s line is uniformly recorded as NASON, whereas collateral modern American and New Zealand lines call themselves MASON.

John NASON was baptised in Great Rollright, Oxfordshire in 1831. He married Anne BISHOP in 1849 at Shipston on Stour and settled in Great Rollright, Oxfordshire, where his father and grandfather lived, latterly moving to Ettington (Eatington), Warwickshire.

In the 1861 census for Ettington, John NASON reports a son John age 7 born in Westcote, Gloucestershire. There the register records that John, son of John and Ann MNASON, was baptised 31st July 1853. A daughter Ann MNASON was baptised in 1854, but both births were registered locally (and, subsequently, nationally) as MASON.

Baptism 1854

John’s (1831) father and grandfather were variously recorded as NASON and MASON in censuses and registers. Some register entries show hesitation on the initial letters of MNASON or NASON, as though there was some doubt in the writer’s mind.

While the written record of Cherrington MNASON/NASONs and their descendants exhibits an ambivalence, the same line recorded as either MASON or NASON, there seems little doubt that they all knew they were actually MNASONs. It is presumed that they, being illiterate, were unable to control what went into the record.

The surname MNASON, in one family line, appears to have been in continuous use by them prior to 1700 and up to 1854. Why did these MNASONs permanently abandon that name, once into the late C19th? Perhaps the tenacity of a ‘folk’ memory was undermined and eventually destroyed by the basic literacy that became universal; no one had to remember any more because it was officially recorded somewhere?

The experience of the Cherrington MNASON surname seems to have been repeated elsewhere. In Salford, Oxfordshire, three MNASON entries are found among a number of NASON and MASON entries that clearly all refer to the same family.

The same Westcote that recorded MNASON baptisms in 1853/54 also records MNASON events in the mid-C18th, again with MASON entries that almost certainly refer to the same family.

The pattern is seen in Shipston on Stour where Edward NAYSSON married in 1573, Edward NAYSSON was baptised in 1575, a NAYSON was baptised in 1577 and in 1582, and a NAYSSON in 1585. In 1601 Anthony NASON married Elizabeth BRANLES and, in 1602, William son of Anthony MNASON was baptised. William MNASON was buried in 1602 and Anthony MNASON in 1603. Elizabeth MNASON appears to have re-married in 1605.

The London MNASON entries of 1725, 1726, and 1729 appear to refer to the same family. The register does not exhibit NASON entries but there are occasionally MASON, MASSON, or MARSON events that could conceivably be connected. These MNASON entries are contemporaneous with the Cherrington events and, therefore, William MNASON could be brother to Thomas MNASON.

The isolated 1642 Itchenor MNASON entry does not exhibit in a MASON or NASON context. The Speen entry has not been seen in the original, so useful comment cannot yet be made.

Marriage 1605 Shipston on Stour

The name MNASON has ancient precedents. Records from ancient Alexandria in Egypt also refer to a MNASON. The name appears both in Ancient Greece and in the modern Athens telephone directory. A MNASON appears in the King James version of the Bible and was the prototype of the character of that name in John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’.

MNASON summary. In summarising the known MNASON evidence, it seems beyond doubt that the surname existed, that it was real and has a considerable history. It is equally clear that MNASON has been recorded as NASON and MASON and that those alternative names have been permanently adopted by some lines.

MNASON almost always occurs in a context of other NASON/MASON entries or variants thereof and where it does so the presumption that those NASON and MASON events were actually MNASONs must arise.

The earlier NASON history must now be looked at in the light of the known MNASON history. The study of the Cherrington MNASON line shows that the written record exhibits only NASON for several generations and it is only when an isolated MNASON event surfaces that doubt is found. What about those early NASON events, from the late 1400s on, where no hint of MNASON is found?

There is clear evidence of the orthographic variation of the name MNASON producing both MASON and NASON. The earliest known MNASON entry is that of 1601 in Shipston on Stour, which entry probably connects with Edward NAYSSON married 1573. If Edward was actually a MNASON, then so were his parents. That being the case we are almost at the earliest known NASON event and, where the two names are contemporary and proximate, then MNASON, because of the circumstances of its incidence elsewhere, must be considered as the prime source. It is now known that some modern British NASONs have at least two origins; from the French Huguenot NEZONs, and from the Cherrington MNASONs. It is possible that there is yet a third origin, that of a genuine continental NASON, pre-dating the MNASONs and NEZONs, which name arose from the characteristic of having a large nose, as in the modern Italian understanding of the name.

Contrarily, with the knowledge of how the record has seen interchange between the surnames MNASON, NASON, and MASON, is it possible that all English NASONs descend from a MNASON, perhaps a Greek merchant trading into England in the C14/15th? An Italian genealogy traces the surname NASON into C15th Venice, where the name is still found nearby. Is it significant that mediaeval Venice had a large population of Greek merchants?

It seems very probable that both NASON and MNASON did not have native English origins. For those of a MNASON descent a key question is whether or not the two names share a common origin.

The clinical evidence points toward separate origins but intuitively it seems improbable that it was just coincidence that brought such similar surnames to the same area of England at approximately the same time.