The Romance of Names the Romance of Words
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THL . liiiii :)MANCE OF Nlifi ERNEST WEEKLEY LIBRARY Brigham Young University Da Hat \:a'Sj> y29.h 192903 -f Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2009 with funding from Brigham Young University http://www.archive.org/details/romanceofnamesOOweek THE ROMANCE OF NAMES THE ROMANCE OF WORDS BY ERNEST WEEKLEY, M.A. 3s. 6d. net Those interested in the curiosities of lan- guage will find a veritable feast in this volume. The book is popular in the best sense : that is to say, Mr. Weekley does not presuppose any profound knowledge of language in his readers, and he is contented to surprise, in- terest, and amuse without attempting to draw a moral or bother one with theorizing. — "A scholarly, yet diverting book," **A very fascinating book," —"More fascinating than a novel,"—"A really delightful book," are among the nany compliments paid *' THE ROMANCE OF WORDS" by the reviewers. Vv/^/ THE ROMANCE OF^ NAMES B^ fl) ERNEST WEEKLEY, M.A. PROFESSOR OF FRENCH AND HEAD OF THE MODERN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT AT UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM J SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE " I conceive, I say, that my descent from that great restorer of learning is more creditable to me as a man of letters than if I had num- bered in my genealogy all the brawling, bullet- headed, iron-fisted old Gothic barons since the days of Crentheminachcryme—not one of whom, I suppose, could write his own name." (Scott, The Antiquary, ch. vi.) 1:B;2:9(>3 LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1 914 Aix Rights Reserved > • • PREFACE The interpretation of personal names has always had an attraction for the learned and others, but the first attempts to classify and explain our English surnames date, so far as my knowledge goes, from 1605. ^^ that year Verstegan published his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, which contains chapters on both font- names and surnames, and about the same time ap- peared 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 untrust- worthy, 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 sur- names 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 ; vi PREFACE twenty years' conscientious research among early rolls and registers, the explanations given being usually sup- ported 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 occa- sionally 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 in- stances, le wenchel, a medieval prototype of Winkle, is explained as for " periwinkle," whereas it is a common Middle-English word, originally a diminutive of wench, and means Child. The obsolete Swordslipper, now only Slipper, which he interprets as a maker of " sword-slips," orsheaths, 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 a conscientious student to whose work my own com- pilation is greatly indebted, but merely to show that PREFACE vii the etymological study of surnames has scarcely been touched at present, except by writers to whom philo- logy 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 in- numerable 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 propor- tions, but the reader may assume that, in the case of any derivation not expressly stated as a conjecture, the connecting links exist. In the various classes 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 com- plete, 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 sus- ceptible 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 classes and subdivisions into which surnames fall ; but the natural association which exists between names has often prevailed over rigid classification. The quota- tions by which obsolete words are illustrated are taken as far as possible from Chaucer, whose writings VllI PREFACE date from the very period when our surnames were gradually becoming hereditary. I have also quoted extensively from the Promptorium Parvulorum, our earhest English-Latin Dictionary (1440). In ch. vii, on Anglo-Saxon names, I have ob- tained 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-Saxonicum (Cam- bridge, 1897). Among several works which I have con- sulted on French and German family names, the most useful have been Heintze's Deutsche Familiennamen, 3rd ed. (Halle a. S., 1908) and Kremers' Beitrdge zur Erforschung der franzosischen 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 assistance, though I have gleaned some scraps of infor- mation 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 191 3. CONTENTS CHAPTER I TAGS OF SURNAMES IN GENERAL .... I CHAPTER II A MEDIEVAL ROLL ...... 13 CHAPTER III SPELLING AND SOUND 2.^ CHAPTER IV BROWN, JONES AND ROBINSON ... 43 CHAPTER V THE ABSORPTION OF FOREIGN NAMES . 49 CHAPTER VI TOM, DICK AND HARRY ..... 56 ix CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAOB GODERIC AND GODIVA ..... 68 CHAPTER VIII PALADINS AND HEROES ..... 78 CHAPTER IX THE BIBLE AND THE CALENDAR ... 84 CHAPTER X METRONYMICS. .... 92 CHAPTER XI LOCAL SURNAMES ...... 96 CHAPTER XII SPOT NAMES ....... 102 CHAPTER XIII THE HAUNTS OF MAN ..... 120 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XIV PAOB NORMAN BLOOD ...... I37 CHAPTER XV OF OCCUPATIVE NAMES ..... I43 CHAPTER XVI A SPECIMEN PROBLEM I58 CHAPTER XVII THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS .... 162 CHAPTER XVIII TRADES AND CRAFTS ..... 168 CHAPTER XIX HODGE AND HIS FRIENDS .... I77 CHAPTER XX OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC . • . 183 xii CONTENTS CHAPTER XXI PAGE OF NICKNAMES IN GENERAL . 189 CHAPTER XXII ADJECTIVAL NICKNAMES 2o8 CHAPTER XXIII BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES . 217 INDEX 231 The following dictionaries are quoted without further refer- ence : Protnptorium Parvulorum (1440), ed. Mayhew (E.E.T.S., 1908). Palsgrave, L'Esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530), ed. Genin (Paris, 1852). Cooper, Thesaurus Lingua RomancB et BritanniccB (London, 1573)- CoTGRAVE, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London, 161 1). The Middle English quotations, except where otherwise stated, are from Chaucer, the references being to the Globe edition. XIV THE ROMANCE OF NAMES 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 sitper- 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 sim- plicity 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 ortho- graphic uncertainty of our ancestors, to the frequent coalescence of two or more names of quite different origin, and to the multitudinous forms which one single name can assume, such forms being due to \/i local pronunciation, accidents of spelling, date of assumption, and many minor causes.