Cognomen

“ 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. ”

“ I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which—men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning—a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. ”

“ The study of the origin of family names is at the same time quite simple and very difficult. Its simplicity 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 orthographic 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 local pronunciation, accidents of spelling, date of adoption, and many minor causes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With many families it is a convenient custom to christen the sons by the mother’s maiden name in addition to their first individual name; but the whole conversion of surnames into Christian names is exclusively English, and is impossible on the Continent, as state and church both refuse to register what is not recognized as in use. Of English surnames we need say nothing; they have been fully treated of in other works, and as any one may be used in baptism, at any time, the mention of them would be endless. ”

“ The notebook devised for the "clan" genealogy will serve admirably for collecting the skeleton of facts desired for these notices of the brothers and sisters of our ancestors.
The research necessary for a "Grafton" genealogy sounds every note in the gamut of joys peculiar to ancestry-hunting, and adds a special appeal to those who wish to join one of the patriotic societies. If the line of our surname fails to yield ancestors who had the foresight to qualify us for membership in a given organization, it may be that another line will give better results. ”

“ Kemble was the first to call attention to the fact that very many of the names of places in England, as disclosed by the forms in which these names appear in ancient charters, consist of a personal name in a patronymic form. Some of these names consist simply of a nominative plural in ingas, as Æscingas, the sons or descendants of Æsc, others of a genitive plural in inga, with ton, ham, &c., appended, as in Billingatun, the town of the Billings, i.e. sons or descendants of Billa. ”

“ LOCAL SURNAMES. In well-nigh every country where personal nomenclature has assumed a sure and settled basis, that is, where a second or surname has become an hereditary possession in the family, we shall find that that portion of it which is of local origin bears by far the largest proportion to the whole. ”

“ This vista of varieties would lead us far; but it is enough to notice, nonsense apart, that the most ordinary English surnames have become unique in their social significance; they stand for the man rather than the race or the origins. Even when they are most common they are not communal. What we call the family name is not now primarily the name of the family. The family itself, as a corporate conception, has already faded into the background, and is in danger of fading from the background. In short, our Christian names are not the only Christian things that we may lose. ”

“ The fact that, with but one or two exceptions, the usual pet addenda, ‘kin,’ ‘cock,’ and ‘ot,’ or ‘et,’ are absolutely wanting, or even the patronymic ‘son,’ shows decisively that they cannot be numbered among what we must call the popular names of the period. Introduced here and there in the community at large, they struggled on for bare existence, and have descended to us as surnames in their simple and unaltered form. ”

“ E. H. Y. will find the question, surname or sirname, slightly touched upon in my English Surnames (3rd edit., vol. i. p. 13.) , and argued at length in the Literary Gazette for Nov. 1842, in a correspondence originating out of a notice of the first edition of my book. I think the balance of evidence is in favour of surname; that is, a name superadded to the personal or baptismal appellation, which applies with equal propriety to the sobriquets given to monarchs and distinguished men, and to the hereditary designations of people of humble rank. ”

“ But there is another class of surnames we may fitly introduce here, which, I doubt not, forms no small proportion in the aggregate mass of our nomenclature—that of sign-names. We in a cultivated age like that of the present fail, as we must, to realize the effect of these latter upon the current life of our forefathers. ”

“ Most people nowadays have one or more Christian names and a surname, but this was not always the case. Every Christian from the earliest days of Christianity must have had a Christian name given to him at baptism. And before the days of Christianity every man, woman, or child must have had some name. But the practice of giving surnames grew up only very gradually in the countries of Europe. ”

“ There is another point connected with family portraits that has given me occasion of thought and speculation; and that is, the way in which those [230] children who are named after an ancestor or ancestress sometimes, I do not say often or always, but certainly sometimes, do in a very remarkable manner receive the stamp of the features of that ancestor after whom named. This has nothing to do with the naming of the child at baptism because of a supposed resemblance, for in very young infants none such can be traced, but the likeness grows in the child to the person whose name it bears. ”

“ In order to avoid the use of people's own names, parents are sometimes named after their children, uncles and aunts after their nephews and nieces, and so forth. The common custom of naming parents after their children seems to arise from a reluctance to mention the real names of persons addressed or directly referred to. When it is deemed necessary that a man's real name should be kept secret, it is often customary, as we have seen, to call him by a surname or nickname. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a general custom among all these nations not to have any special family names, titles, or surnames; using, as I have before said, but one appellation. Now, besides the Christian name, Juan or Pedro, they use as a surname that which the mother gives them at birth—although there are mothers so Christian and civilized that they will not use this latter name, but prefer that both Christian name and surname be conferred in baptism; this we often do. ”

“ Every Chinese man and woman inherits a family name or surname. A woman takes her husband’s surname, followed in official documents by her maiden name. Children usually have a pet name given to them soon after birth, which is dropped after a few years. Then there is the ming or name, which once given is unchangeable, and by which the various members of a family are distinguished. But only the father and mother and certain other relatives are allowed to use this. ”

“ Before, however, we enter into the history of these, and with regard to England that is the purpose of this book, it will be well to take a brief survey of the actual state of human nomenclature in preceding times. Surnames, we must remember, were the simple result of necessity when population, hitherto isolated and small, became so increased as to necessitate further particularity than the merely personal one could supply. ”

“ After all, however, it is, perhaps, complexion which has occupied for itself the largest niche in our more general nomenclature. Nor is this unnatural. It is 444still that which, in describing people, we seize upon as the best means of recognition. Sobriquets of this kind were so numerous, indeed, that there was no term in the vocabulary of the day which could be used to denote the colour of the dress, the hair, or the face, which did not find itself a place among our surnames. ”

“ Any student of our family nomenclature must be struck by the fact that the number of foreign names now recognizable in England is out of all proportion to the immense number which must have been introduced at various periods of our history. Even the expert, who is often able to detect the foreign name in its apparently English garb, cannot rectify this disproportion for us. The number of names of which the present form can be traced back to a foreign origin is inconsiderable when compared with the much larger number assimilated and absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ It is an improvement, but in most cases at the expense of nothing but imitation, the sound and the fashion being the only guides. After all, nomenclature cannot be otherwise than imitative, but the results are most curious and interesting, when it is either the continuation of old hereditary names, like the Algernon of the Howards or the Aubrey of the de Veres, or else the record of some deeply felt event, like the Giustina of Venice, in honour of the battle of Lepanto, or our own Arthur, in memory of the deeds of our great duke. ”

“ A limitation more or less similar prevails in Germany and other European countries.
As regards the surname (Fr. surnom, name in addition) , custom has universally decreed that a man shall be known by the name of his father. But in England and the United States, at least, this custom is not legally binding; there is no law preventing man from taking whatever name he has a fancy for, nor are there any particular formalities required to be observed on adopting a fresh surname ”

“ Thus if one knew a person’s name one could injure him by working evil on it and the part of his life contained in it, just as one could injure him through the clippings of his hair, his spittle, clothes or the earth pressed by his foot. This is the reason for the common custom of having two names, one of which, the true name, is kept secret and only used on ceremonial occasions when it is essential, as at a wedding, while the other is employed for everyday life. ”

“ We have seen in a preceding chapter that the earliest Saxon place-names in England are derived from a personal name, and that the idea contained is that of a modified form of common right. We shall find that a very large proportion of the later Anglo-Saxon place-names are also derived from the name of a man, but that the idea contained is now that of individual ownership or occupation. The extent to which English place-names are derived from ancient names of men is, in my judgment, very much greater than is generally supposed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The invention of original names usually takes place in the early stages of a people’s history, for a preference soon arises for established names, already borne by kindred, and as the spoken tongue drifts away, from the primitive form, the proper name becomes a mere appellative, with the original meaning forgotten, and often with a new one incorrectly applied to it. ”