Ernest Weekley

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is quite natural, for just as the man who lived on a hill became known as Hill, Peake, etc., and not as Skiddaw or Wrekin, so the man who lived by the waterside would be known as Bywater, Rivers, etc. No Londoner talks of going on the Thames, and the country-dweller also usually refers to his local stream as the river or the water, and not by its geographical name. Another reason for the absence of such surnames is probably to be found in the fact that our river (and mountain) names are almost exclusively Celtic, and had no connotation for the English population. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tendency to accompany every noun by an adjective seems to belong to some deep-rooted human instinct. To this is partly due the Protean character of this part of speech, for the word, like the coin, becomes dulled and worn in circulation and needs periodically to be withdrawn and replaced. An epithet which is complimentary in one generation is ironical in the next and eventually offensive. Moody, with its northern form Mudie, which now means morose, was once valiant (Chapter I) ; and pert, surviving in the name Peart, meant active, brisk, etc.—
"Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 class, 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Bardsley first drew attention to the very large number of surnames derived from an ancestress. His views have been subjected to much ignorant criticism by writers who, taking upon themselves the task of defending medieval virtue, have been unwilling to accept this terrible picture of the moral condition of England, etc. This anxiety is misplaced. There are many reasons, besides illegitimacy, for the adoption of the mother's name. In medieval times the children of a widow, especially posthumous children, would often assume the mother's name. Widdowson itself is sufficiently common. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have a fair number of Celtic words connected with natural scenery, but they do not as a rule form compounds, and as surnames are usually found in their simple form. Such are Cairn, a stony hill, Crag, Craig, and the related Carrick and Creagh, Glen or Glynn, and Lynn, a cascade. Two words, however, of Celtic origin, don, or down, a hill, and combe, a hollow in the hills, were adopted by the Anglo-Saxons and enter into many compounds. Thus we find Kingdon, whence the imitative Kingdom, Brandon, from the name Brand (Chapter VII) , Ashdown, etc. ”

“ A careful analysis of some of the most important medieval name-lists would furnish hundreds of further examples, some too outspoken to have survived into our degenerate age, and others which are now so corrupted that their original vigour is quite lost. ”

“ Goss may also be a dialect pronunciation of gorse, the older form of which has given the name Gorst. Coward, though humble, cow-herd, is no more timid than Craven, the name of a district in the West Riding of Yorkshire. ”

“ Taking as an example the father of all men, we find derived from the name Adam the following: Adams, Adamson, Adcock, Addis, Addison, Adds, Addy, Ade, Ades, Adey, Adis, Ady, Addey, Aday, Adee, Addyman, Adkin, Adkins, Adkinson, Adnett, [Footnote: Adenet (little Adam) le Roi was an Old French epic hero.] Adnitt, Adnet, Adnot, Atkin, Atkins, Atkinson, and the northern Aitken, etc. This list, compiled from Bardsley's Dictionary of Surnames, is certainly not exhaustive. ”

“ The Yorkshire name Tankard is identical with Tancred. Stiggins goes back to the illustrious Anglo-Saxon name Stigand, as Wiggins does to wigand, a champion. Cadman represents Caedmon, the name of the poet-monk of Whitby. Segar is an imitative form of the Anglo-Sax. Saegaer, of which the normal modern representative is Sayers. Giblett is not a name one would covet, but it stands in the same relationship to Gilbert as Hamlet does to Hamo.
A small difference in spelling makes a great difference in the look of a name. ”

“ In dealing with surnames we begin after the Conquest, for the simple reason that there were no surnames before. Occasionally an important person has come down in history with a nickname, e.g. Edmund Iron-side, Harold Harefoot, Edward the Confessor; but this is exceptional, and the Anglo-Saxon, as a rule, was satisfied with one name. It is probable that very many of the names in use before the Conquest, whether of English or Scandinavian origin, were chosen because of their etymological meaning, e.g. ”

“ Crease is a West-country word for squeamish, but the East Anglian name Creasey, Cressy, is usually for the local Kersey (Suffolk) . The only solution of Pratt is that it is Anglo-Sax. praett, cunning, adopted early as a personal name, while Storr, of Scandinavian origin, means big, strong. It is cognate with Steer, a bull. Devey and Dombey seem to be diminutive forms of deaf and dumb, still used in dialect in reference to persons thus afflicted. We find in French and German surnames corresponding to these very natural nicknames. ”

“ Garrick, a Huguenot name, is Fr, gangue, an old word for heath.
TREE NAMES
Trees have in all countries a strong influence on topographical names, and hence on surnames. Frean, though usually from the Scandinavian name Fraena, is sometimes for Fr. frêne, ash, Lat. fraxinus, while Cain and Kaines [Footnote: There is one family of Keynes derived specifically from Chahaignes (Sarthe) .] are Norm. quêne (chêne) , oak. The modern French for beech is hêtre, Du. heester, but Lat. fagus has given a great many dialect forms which have supplied us with the surnames Fay, Foy, and the plural dim. Failes. ”

“ As a rule, when an apparent nickname is also susceptible of another solution, baptismal, local, or occupative, the alternative explanation is to be preferred, as the popular tendency has always been towards twisting names into significant words. ”