SURNAMES.
(Vol. v., p. 509.)
I shall endeavour to answer some of Mr. Lower's Queries.
1. Names having the prefix Le and ending in er or re. They are undoubtedly Norman or French, and generally relate to personal trade or employment, as Le Mesurier, Le Tellier, Le Tanneur, Le Fevre. Another class with the prefix Le, but of various terminations, are obviously of French origin, as Leblanc, Lenoir, Lebreton, Lechaplin, Lemarchant. All these came to us by the French Protestant refugees, or from Jersey and Guernsey.
2. The meaning of worth. This word generally implies a military work, and, I think, an earth-work; and I doubt whether worth and earth are not from the same root; I personally have been able to trace works in many places whose names end in worth. I am satisfied all such surnames were local, that is, derived from places so named from military mounds or earth-works.
3. The meaning of Le Chaloneur. It is evidently the same as our English name Challoner, which Cole admits into his dictionary as "the name of an ancient family." It means in old French either the boatman, from "chalun," a boat; or a fisherman, from "chalon," a kind of net. As we have in English Fisher, in modern French Lepécheur, in Italian Piscatory.
4. Le Cayser. The same as Cæsar, a name now, we believe, extinct amongst us, but preserved in our literature by Lord Clarendon and Pope. I suspect that it was of a class of fancy names which I shall mention presently.
5. Baird and Aird are Scotch names, and probably local. Jameson (whose authority is very low with me) derives Baird from bard, and Aird he does not mention. Aird or ard is Celtic for high, and is a common local denomination in Scotland and Ireland.
6. For the rest of the out-of-the-way names Mr. Lower mentions I can give no more explanation than of many thousands others which have been probably produced by some peculiarity or incidents in the first nominee, or some corruption of a better known name. As to this class of fancy names, I can give Mr. Lower a hint that may be of use to him. It used to be the custom at the old Foundling Hospital and in all parish workhouses, to give the children what I venture to call fancy names. I remember being shocked at the heterogeneous nomenclature that was outpoured on fifty or a hundred poor babes at the Foundling. I happened once to accompany a noble lady—the daughter of a great sea officer—to one of these Foundling christenings, when the names of Howe, Duncan, Jervis, and Nelson, were in fashion, and they were each given to half-a-dozen children; and while this was going on, my fair and noble friend whispered me, "What a shame! all these poor little creatures will grow up to be our cousins." Sometimes the names given were grotesque, such as ought not to have been permitted; and sometimes the children brought into the hospital, pinned to their clothes, names in which I suppose the poor mother may have had a meaning, but which seemed to us fantastical and extravagant.
Illegitimacy is a considerable source of strange names. I could give some droll instances. Corruption is another; there are half-a-dozen names of labourers in my village which are mere corruptions by vulgar pronunciation of some of the noblest names of the peerage.
Mr. Lower cannot have failed to observe the
great tendency in the United States to vary the orthography, and of course, I suppose, the pronunciation of some of their old English patronymics; not from any dislike to them, for the contrary sentiment, I believe, is very prevalent, but the emigrants who carried out the names were ignorant or indifferent as to the true orthography or pronunciation, and in time the departure grows more wide. Instances of this may be also found in the small towns of England, where Mr. Lower will find on the signs frequent deviations from the usual spelling of the commonest as well as of the rarer names.
C.
In glancing through Cole's MSS. in the British Museum, my eye rested on two paragraphs, which perhaps may be unknown to Mr. Lower. In Additional MSS. No. 5805. p. iv., Cole says:
"Before surnames were in use they were forced to distinguish one another by the addition of Fitz or Son, as John Fitz-John, or John the son of John, or John Johnson, as now in use. This was in the first Edward's time: nay, so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in some places in France they had no surnames, but only Christian names, as the learned Monsieur Menage informs us: 'Il y a environ cent ans, à ce que dit M. Baluze, qu'à Tulle on n'avait que des noms propres, et point de surnoms.'—Menagiana, tom. i. p. 116. edit. 1729."
Again, in Cole's MSS., vol. xliii. p. 176., relating to a deed of the Priory of Spalding, Cole says:
"One observes in this deed several particulars: first that the Priory used a seal with an image of the Blessed Virgin, together with one of their arms; if possibly they used one of the latter sort so early as this John the Spaniard's time, in the reign, as I conceive, of King Richard I., when arms for the chief gentry were hardly introduced. Among the witnesses are two Simons, one distinguished by his complexion, and called Simon Blondus, or the Fair; the other had no name as yet to distinguish him by, and therefore only called here 'another Simon.' This occasioned the introduction of sirnames, and shows the necessity of them."
J. Y.
Hoxton.