Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley

“ Looking back at what has been recorded, what a living proof they afford us of the truth of Horace Smith’s assertion that surnames ‘ever go by contraries.’ The art of colouring may be hereditary, but certainly not the dyes themselves. Who ever saw a ‘Whytehead’ who was not dark, or a ‘Blacklock’ who was not a blonde? Who ever saw reddish hair on a ‘Russell,’ or a swarthy complexion on a ‘Morell’? How invariably does it happen that our ‘Lightfoots’ are gouty, and our ‘Hales’ dyspeptic, our ‘Bigges’ are manikins, and our ‘Littles’ giants. Such are the tricks that Time plays with us. ”

“ Every social casualty had an effect upon our names which it could not have upon our words. The names found in Domesday Book, casting aside the new importation, were, in the great majority of cases, obsolete by the end of the twelfth century, and of those which have survived and descended to us as surnames, well-nigh all are devoid of diminutive or patronymic desinences—a clear proof that they were utterly out of fashion as personal names during the era of surname formation. The Norman invasion was not a conquest of our language, but it was of our nomenclature. ”

“ When we turn our eyes for a moment to the old monastic institutions, we see that they, too, are far from being without their relics. In them we have more distinctly the echo of a departed time. Many of my readers will be familiar with the distinction recorded in such names as ‘Alexander le Seculer’ and ‘Walter le Religieuse,’ or ‘man of religion,’ as Chaucer would have termed the latter. To be ‘religious’ in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was to be one of a monastic order bound by vows. ”

“ We cannot but see that could we only grasp their true meaning, could we but take away the doubtful crust in which they are oftentimes imbedded, then should we be speaking out of the very mouth of history itself. For names are enduring—generations come and go; and passing on with each, they become all but everlasting. Nomenclature, in fact, is a well in which, as the fresh water is flowing perennially through, there is left a sediment that clings to the bottom. ”

“ Perhaps one of the most beautiful features that help to make up a truly English rural landscape is the hedgerows, following the windings of our lanes, and mazy bypaths skirting our meadows. England is eminently a land of enclosures. Still all this has been the result of progressing time. If our pinder be now an obsolete officership it is because the lines of appropriation have become more clearly marked. ”

“ Coming gradually to more definite traces of human habitation, we may mention some of our tree names. Of several, such as ‘Nash,’ and ‘Nalder,’ and ‘Nokes,’ we have already spoken. Such a name as ‘Henry atte Beeche,’ or ‘Walter de la Lind,’ or ‘Richard atte Ok,’ now found as simple ‘Beech,’ and ‘Lind,’ and ‘Oake,’ reminds us that we are not without further obligations to the tree world. Settling by or under the shade of some gigantic elm or oak, a sobriquet of this kind would be perfectly natural. ”

“ I doubt whether any relics we possess so completely convey to our minds the radical changes which have swept across the face of our English Commonwealth as do these lingering surnames. They remind us of the invention of printing, of the spread of literature, and of the slow decay thereby of the professions they represented. They tell us of a changed society, they tell us of a day of rougher cast and looser trammels ”

“ And now we come to what we may term the second branch of local surnames, that branch which throws a light upon the migratory habits and roving tendencies of our forefathers. So far we have touched upon names implying a fixed residence in a fixed locality. We may now notice that class which by their very formation throw our minds upon that which precedes settlement in a particular spot, viz., removal—that which speaks to us of immigration. Such a name in our mediæval rolls as ‘Peter le Newe,’ or ‘Gilbert le Newcomen,’ or ‘Walter le Neweman,’ declares to us at once its origin. ”

“ Comparisons we know are ever odious, but set beside the more Saxon ‘Steads’ and ‘Steadmans’ the former inevitably suffer. The very names of these latter betray to us the well-nigh best characteristics of the race whence they are sprung. To be steady and stedfast are its best and most inherent qualities—qualities which, added to the dash and spirit of the Norman, have given the position England to-day occupies among the nations of the world. ”

“ A very interesting name which has escaped the notice of surname hunters is that of ‘Gerish’ or ‘Gerrish,’ both forms being found in our modern directories. They are but the truer representatives of the word ‘garish’ as used by our later poets. Shakespeare’s Juliet, we may remember, apostrophizes Night, and bids her, when Romeo be dead, cut him into stars, and thus—
All the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun. ”

“ Thus was it then that at length our country was enabled to produce a cloth which could afford a comparison with that of the Flemish cities themselves. Of this incoming many surnames of this date remind us, the most important of which I have already mentioned in my chapter upon local names, ‘Fleming,’ as a general name for all these settlers, being the commonest.
When, however, we turn to the occupations themselves connected with the industry, we cannot but be struck by the wonderful impress it has made upon our nomenclature. ”

“ So far as the nomenclature of our country itself is concerned, England is at this present day as rude, as untutored, and as heathen as at the moment those Norwegian and Germanic hordes grounded their keels upon our shores, for all our place-names, saving where the Celt still lingers, are their bequest, and bear upon them the impress of their life and its surroundings. ”

“ Accustomed as our fathers were to seeing the fierce and eager instincts of the bird, to nickname a man of rapacious and grasping habits by such a term as ‘John le Kyte,’ or ‘William le Hawk,’ or ‘Richard le Falcon,’ would be the most natural thing in the world. ”

“ Though it is to the more open plains and woodlands we must look for the majority of our place-names, nevertheless, looking up our steeps and into the fissures of the hills, we may see that every feature in the landscape has its memorial in our nomenclature. ‘De la Hill’ needs no remark. ‘De la Helle’ and ‘atte Helle’ are somewhat less pleasant to look upon, but they are only another form of the same. ”

“ In these days their hides almost invariably furnished forth their current designations. Thus we find the horse familiarly known by such titles as ‘Morell,’ from its moorish or swarthy tan, or ‘Lyard,’ that is, dapple-grey, or ‘Bayard,’ bay, or ‘Favell,’ dun, or ‘Blank,’ white. The dark hide of the ass got for it the sobriquet of ‘Dun,’ a term still preserved in the old proverb, ‘As dull as Dun in the mire,’ while again as ‘Burnell’ its browner aspect will be familiar to all readers of Chaucer. ”

“ CHAPTER VI.
1ENGLISH SURNAMES.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. To review the sources of a people’s nomenclature is to review that people’s history. When we remember that there is nothing without a name, and that every name that is named, whether it be of a man, or man’s work, or man’s heritage of earth, came not by chance, or accident so called, but was given out of some nation’s spoken language to denote some characteristic that language expressed, we can readily imagine how important is the drift of each—what a record must each contain. ”

“ Such are the strange humours that pass over the hearts of men and communities. Such are the changes that the nomenclature of peoples, as well as of places and things, undergo through the more extraordinary convulsions which sometimes seize the body corporate of society. Truly it is a strange story this that our surnames tell us. ”

“ It can be no matter of astonishment to us, when we reflect upon it, that our nomenclature should owe so much to this one single specialty of the human physique. The face is the mark of all recognition among men, and how much of its character belongs to the simple appanage we have been speaking of we may easily gather from the difference the slightest change in the style of dressing or cutting it makes among those with whom we are most familiar. ”

“ Not merely did the occasional husbandman possess his two or three hives, but there were those who gave themselves up wholly to the tendence of bees, and who made for themselves a comfortable livelihood in the sale of their produce. Many of our surnames still bear testimony to this. ‘Beman,’ or ‘Beeman,’ or ‘Beaman,’ will be familiar to all, and ‘Honeyman’ is scarcely less common. In an old roll of 1183 we have the name Latinised in such an entry as ‘Ralph Custosapium.’ But not merely honey, but spices of all kinds were also infused into these various drinks, whether of wine or ale. ”

“ In the Hundred Rolls we find a ‘Will Litleking.’ This sobriquet would readily attach to one such feast-appointed monarch whose diminutive stature would but impart additional merriment to the occasion. ‘Roger Wyteking’ (Testa de Neville) would owe his nom-de-plume to the dress he wore. It is to such an institution as this, again, we must ascribe the origin of such names as ‘Reginald Kyngessone,’ and perchance ‘Richard Kyngesman,’ both found in the Hundred Rolls also. That our ‘Kings’ are but a memorial of the festivities of our forefathers, is an undoubted fact. ”

“ Of all how much might be said, but I refrain, lest I be liable to a charge of acting contrary to the spirit of the kindly old adage, ‘de mortuis nil nisi bonum’—‘speak no evil of the dead.’ Thus telltale, however, are our surnames, and if it be no pleasant task to expose the weaknesses and the frailties of them whose bones have so long ere this crumbled into decay, still we may comfort ourselves with the remembrance that their names, with many others I could have adduced had space permitted, offer no kind of reflection upon their present possessors. ”

“ While objectionable designations, or even those of but equivocal character, have been gradually shuffled off or barely allowed to survive, the mere fact of this being at the present day one of the most familiar, and in respect of sobriquet nomenclature the absolutely most common, of our surnames, shows that the human heart is not altered by lapse of generations, and that pride then, as now, wielded a powerful sceptre over the minds of men. Our ‘Belhams’ represent but the fuller ‘Bellehomme’ (‘William Bellehomme,’ M.) . ”

“ In the present day, if we were to speak of a man in connexion with his county, we should say he was a Derbyshire or a Lancashire man, as the case might be. That they did this five or six hundred years ago is evidenced by the existence of these very names in our midst. Thus we can point in our records to such designations as ‘John Hamshire,’ or ‘Adam de Kent,’ or ‘Richard de Wiltshire,’ or ‘Geoffrey de Cornwayle.’ Still this was not the only form of county nomenclature. ”

“ In collecting materials for a History of Costume of more importance than the little Handbook which has met with so much favour as an elementary work, I was not only made aware of my own deficiencies, but surprised to find how much more vague are the explanations and contradictory the statements of our best authorities than they appeared to me when, in the plenitude of my ignorance, I rushed upon almost untrodden ground, and felt bewildered by the mass of unsifted evidence and unhesitating assertion which met my eyes at every turn. ”

“ Some, once so popular that they scarce gave identity to the bearer, are now all but obsolete, while numerous appellations at present generally current were then utterly unknown. There are surnames familiar to our ears whose root as a Christian name is now passed out of knowledge; while, on the other hand, many a Christian name now daily upon our lips has no surname formed from it to tell of any lengthened existence. The fact is, that while our surnames, putting immigration aside, have been long at a standstill, we have ever been and are still adding to our stock of baptismal names. ”

“ We owe many existing and several obsolete surnames to this custom. Our ‘Childs’ are but descendants of such a sobriquet as ‘Ralph le Child;’ our ‘Eyres’ of such an entry as ‘William le Eyre;’ some of our ‘Barnes’ may be but the offspring of such a personage as ‘Thomas le Barne’ (now ‘bairn,’ that is, the born one) ; while ‘Stephen le Enfant’ or ‘Walter le Enfaunt’ represents an appellation that is now obsolete in England. ”

“ There is scarcely a hamlet, however small, that does not contribute to swell the sum of the metropolitan mass, and while ‘London’ itself is of comparatively great rarity in our nomenclature, an insignificant village like, say Debenham, in Suffolk, will have its score of representatives—so great was the flow, so small the ebb. ”