Ernest Weekley

“ Many people are particular about the spelling of their names. I am myself, although, as a student of philology, I ought to know better. The greatest of Englishmen was so careless in the matter as to sign himself Shakspe, a fact usually emphasized by Baconian when speaking of the illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon. Equally illiterate must have been the learned Dr. Crown, who, in the various books he published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, spelt his name, indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The modern spelling of any particular name Is a pure accident. ”

“ A linguistic invasion such as that of English by Old French is almost unparalleled. We have instances of the expulsion of one tongue by another, e.g., of the Celtic dialects of Gaul by Latin and of those of Britain by Anglo-Saxon. But a real blending of two languages can only occur when a large section of the population is bilingual for centuries. ”

“ Moreover, it must not be forgotten that our medieval nomenclature is preponderantly French, as the early rolls show beyond dispute, so that, even where a modern name appears susceptible of an Anglo-Saxon explanation, it is often safer to refer it to the Old French cognate; for the Germanic names introduced into France by the Frankish conquerors, and the Scandinavian names which passed into Normandy, contained very much the same elements as our own native names, but underwent a different phonetic development. ”

“ Men have always been fascinated by word-lore. The Greeks and Romans played with etymology in a somewhat metaphysical fashion, a famous example of which is the derivation of lucus a non lucendo. Medieval writers delight in giving amazing information as to the origin of the words they use. Their method, which may be called learned folk-etymology, consists in attempting to resolve an unfamiliar word into elements which give a possible interpretation of its meaning. ”

“ Just as, in studying a new language, the linguist finds it most helpful to take a simple text and hammer out in detail every word and grammatical form it contains, so the student of name-lore cannot do better than tackle a medieval roll and try to connect every name in it with those of the present day. ”

“ In these remarks on surnames I have only tried to show in general terms how they come into existence, "hoping to incur no offence herein with any person, when I protest in all sincerity, that I purpose nothing less than to wrong any whosoever" (Camden) . Many names are susceptible of alternative explanations, and it requires a genealogist, and generally some imagination, to decide to which particular source a given family can be traced. The two arguments sometimes drawn from armorial bearings and medieval Latin forms are worthless. ”

“ The origin and cognates of each word are given as concisely as possible, but "etymology" has been taken in its widest sense as a science dealing not only with the phonetic elements of which words are composed, but also with the adventures which they have met with during their life in the language and the strange paths that many of them have followed in reaching a current sense or use often widely remote from the original. ”

“ In modern Dutch it has become accijns, through confusion with cijns, tax (Lat. census; cf. Ger. Zins, interest) . But the Dutch word is from Fr. accise, which appears in medieval Latin as accisia, as though connected with "cutting" (cf. tallage, from Fr. tailler, to cut) , or with the "incidence" of the tax. It is perhaps a perversion of Ital. assisa, "an imposition, or taxe, or assesment" (Torriano) ; but there is also an Old Fr. aceis which must be related to Latin census.
When folk-etymology and contamination work together, the result is sometimes bewildering. ”

“ Cheetham, the name of a place now absorbed in Manchester, is as a surname ten times more numerous there than in London, and the same is true of many characteristic north-country names, such as the Barraclough, Murgatroyd, and Sugden of Charlotte Brontë's Shirley. The transference of Murgatroyd (Chapter XII) to Cornwall, in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, must have been part of the intentional topsy-turvydom in which those two bright spirits delighted. ”

“ We have all noticed the fantastic way in which ideas are linked together in our thoughts. One thing suggests another with which it is accidentally associated in memory, the second suggests a third, and, in the course even of a few seconds, we find that we have travelled from one subject to another so remote that it requires an effort to reconstruct the series of links which connects them. ”

“ It appears in Anglo-Saxon as seolc. Now, at that early period, words of Latin origin came to us by the overland route and left traces of their passage. But all the Romance languages use for silk a name derived from Lat. sæta, bristle, and this name has penetrated even into German (Seide) and Dutch (zijde) . The derivatives of sericum stand for another material, serge. Nor can it be assumed that the r of the Latin word would have become in English always l and never r. There are races which cannot sound the letter r, but we are not one of them. ”

“ To sum up, we may say that the Anglo-Saxon element in our surnames is much larger than one would imagine from Bardsley's Dictionary, and that it accounts, not only for names which have a distinctly Anglo-Saxon suffix or a disguised form of one, but also for a very large number of monosyllabic names which survive in isolation and without kindred. ”

“ What livery is, we by common use in England know well enough, namely, that it is allowance of horse-meat, as they commonly use the word in stabling; as, to keep horses at livery; the which word, I guess, is derived of livering or delivering forth their nightly food. So in great houses, the livery is said to be served up for all night, that is, their evening allowance for drink ”

“ Among the better class of these immigrants was to be found the flower of French intellect and enterprise, and one has only to look through an Army or Navy list, or to notice the names which are prominent in the Church, at the Bar, and in the higher walks of industry and commerce, to realize the madness of Louis XIV. and the wisdom of the English Government. ”

“ In considering the Old French element in English, one has to bear in mind a few elementary philological facts. Nearly all French nouns and adjectives are derived from the accusative. I give, for simplicity, the nominative, adding the stem in the case of imparisyllabic words. The foundation of French is Vulgar Latin, which differs considerably from that we study at school. I only give Vulgar Latin forms where it cannot be avoided. ”

“ BABY PHONETICS
Finally, we have to consider what may be called baby phonetics, the sound-changes which seem rather to transgress general phonetic laws. Young children habitually confuse dentals and palatals, thus a child may be heard to say that he has "dot a told." This tendency is, however, not confined to children. My own name, which is a very uncommon one, is a stumbling-block to most people, and when I give it in a shop the scribe has generally got as far as Wheat- before he can be stopped. ”

“ The term folk-etymology is often applied in a narrower sense to the corruption of words through a mistaken idea of their etymology or origin. The tendency of the uneducated is to distort an unfamiliar or unintelligible word into some form which suggests a meaning. ”

“ The Grubbe family, according to Burke, came from Germany about 1450, after the Hussite persecution; but we find the name in England two centuries earlier, "without the assistance of a foreign persecution to make it respectable" (Bardsley, Dictionary of English Surnames) . The Minet family is known to be of Huguenot origin, but the same name also figures in the medieval Rolls. The fact is that there was all through the Middle Ages a steady immigration of foreigners, whether artisans, tradesmen, or adventurers, some of whose names naturally reappear among the Huguenots. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII METAPHOR
Every expression that we employ, apart from those that are connected with the most rudimentary objects and actions, is a metaphor, though the original meaning is dulled by constant use. Thus, in the above sentence, expression means what is "squeezed out," to employ is to "twine in" like a basket maker, to connect is to "weave together," rudimentary means "in the rough state," and an object is something "thrown in our way." ”

“ In almost every case where man has interfered with nature the resulting local name is naturally of Anglo-Saxon or, in some parts of England, of Scandinavian origin. The Roman and French elements in our topographical names are scanty in number, though the former are of frequent occurrence. ”

“ The converse process of people being nicknamed from animals is also common and the metaphor is usually pretty obvious. An interesting case is shrew, a libel on a very inoffensive little animal, the shrew-mouse, Anglo-Sax. scrēawa. Cooper describes mus araneus as "a kinde of mise called a shrew, which if he go over a beastes backe he shall be lame in the chyne; if he byte it swelleth to the heart and the beast dyeth." This "information" is derived from Pliny, but the superstition is found in Greek. The epithet was, up to Shakespeare's time, applied indifferently to both sexes. ”

“ The spelling of the language is now practically normalized, although in conformity with no sort of principle; but the family name, as a private possession, has kept its freedom. Thus, if we wish to speak poetically of a meadow, I suppose we should call it a lea, but the same word is represented by the family names Lea, Lee, Ley, Leigh, Legh, Legge, Lay, Lye, perhaps the largest group of local surnames we possess.
In matters of spelling we observe various tendencies. One is the retention of an archaic form, which does not necessarily affect pronunciation. Late Mid. ”

“ The ferrule of a walking-stick is a distinct word from ferule, an aid to education. The latter is Lat. ferula, "an herbe like big fenell, and maye be called fenell giant. Also a rodde, sticke, or paulmer, wherewith children are striken and corrected in schooles; a cane, a reede, a walking staffe" (Cooper) . Ferrule is a perversion of earlier virrel, virrol, Fr. virole, "an iron ring put about the end of a staffe, etc., to strengthen it, and keep it from riving" (Cotgrave) .
The modern meaning of pester is due to a wrong association with pest. ”

“ Even a cursory perusal of these lists should Suffice to dispel all recollection of the nightmare "philology" which has been so much employed to obscure what is perfectly simple and obvious; while a very slight knowledge of Latin and French is all that is required to connect these names of men who were dead and buried before the Battle of Crecy with those to be found in any modern directory. The brief indications supplied under each name will be found in a fuller form in the various chapters of the book to which references are given. ”

“ The population of this country is educationally divided by the letter h into three classes, which we may describe as the confident, the anxious, and the indifferent. The same division existed in imperial Rome, where educated people sounded the aspirate, which completely disappeared from the every-day language of the lower classes, the so-called Vulgar Latin, from which the Romance languages are descended, so far as their working vocabulary is concerned. ”

“ In Egg we have rather the survival of the Mid. English spelling of Edge. Braid, Lang, Strang, are Northern variants of Broad, Long, Strong. Auld is for Old while Tamson is for Thompson and Dabbs for Dobbs (Robert) . We have the same change of vowel in Raper, for Roper. Venner generally means hunter, Fr. veneur, but sometimes represents the West-country form of Fenner, the fen-dweller; cf. Vidler for fiddler, and Vanner for Fanner, the winnower.
We all the difficulty we have in catching a new and unfamiliar name, and the subterfuges we employ to find out what it really is. ”

“ Modern English contains some six or seven hundred pairs or sets of homonyms, i.e., of words identical in sound and spelling but differing in meaning and origin. The New English Dictionary recognises provisionally nine separate nouns rack. The subject is a difficult one to deal with, because one word sometimes develops such apparently different meanings that the original identity becomes obscured, and even, as we have seen in the case of flour and mettle (p. 144) , a difference of spelling may result. ”

“ In the Middle Ages there was no great class of retail dealers distinct from the craftsmen who fashioned objects. The same man made and sold in almost every case. There were of course general dealers, such as the French Marchant or his English equivalent the Chapman (Chapter II) , the Dutch form of which has given us the Norfolk name Copeman. ”

“ When we turn from fiction to fact, we find that the oldest French name was pétrinal, explained by Cotgrave as "a petronell, or horse-man's peece." It was occasionally corrupted, perhaps owing to the way in which the weapon was slung, into poitrinal. This corruption would be facilitated by the 16th-century pronunciation of oi (peitrine) . The French word is borrowed either from Ital. petronello, pietronello, "a petronell" (Florio) , or from Span. pedreñal, "a [198] petronall, a horse-man's peece, ita dict. quod silice petra incenditur" (Minsheu, Spanish Dictionary, 1623) . ”

“ Without pinning our faith to any particular anecdote, we need have no hesitation in accepting Turnbull as a sobriquet conferred for some feat of strength and daring on a stalwart Borderer. We find the corresponding Tornebeuf in Old French, and Turnbuck also occurs. Trumbull and Trumble are variants due to metathesis followed by assimilation (Chapter III) , while Tremble is a very degenerate form. In Knatchbull we have the obsolete verb knatch, which in Mid. English meant to strike on the head, fell. Crawcour is Fr. Crèvecoeur, breakheart, which has also become a local name in France. ”

“ Unkempt, uncombed, and uncouth, unknown, are fossil remains of obsolete verb forms.
In addition to these main constituents of our language, we have borrowed words, sometimes in [3] considerable numbers, sometimes singly and accidentally, from almost every tongue known to mankind, and every year sees new words added to our vocabulary. The following chapters deal especially with words borrowed from Old French and from the other Romance languages, their origins and journeyings, and the various accidents that have befallen them in English. ”

“ THE COMMONEST FONT-NAMES
Many people, in addressing a small boy with whom they are unacquainted, are in the habit of using Tommy as a name to which any small boy should naturally answer. In some parts of Polynesia the natives speak of a white Mary or a black Mary, i.e. woman, just as the Walloons round Mons speak of Marie bon bec, a shrew, Marie grognon, a Mrs. Gummidge, Marie quatre langues, a chatterbox, and several other Maries still less politely described. We have the modern silly Johnny for the older silly Billy, while Jack Pudding is in German Hans Wurst, John Sausage. ”