"To bere drunken at a fermors house . . . 1s."
In the same way we replace the Fr. -our, -eur by -er, as in Turner, Fr. tourneur, Ginner, Jenner for Jenoure.
The ending -er, -ier represents the Lat. -arius. It passed not only into French, but also into the Germanic languages, replacing the Teutonic agential suffix which consisted of a single vowel. We have a few traces of this oldest group of occupative names, e.g. Webb, Mid. Eng. webbe, Anglo-Sax. webb-a, and Hunt, Mid. Eng. hunte, Anglo-Sax. hunt-a—
"With hunte and horne and houndes hym bisyde"
(A, 1678) —
which still hold the field easily against Webber and Hunter.
So also, the German name Beck represents Old High Ger. pecch-o, baker. To these must be added Kemp, a champion, a very early loan-word connected with Lat. campus, field, and Wright, originally the worker, Anglo-Sax. wyrht-a. Camp is sometimes for Kemp, but is also from the Picard form of Fr, champ, i.e. Field. Of similar formation to Webb, etc., is Clapp, from an Anglo-Sax. nickname, the clapper—
"Osgod Clapa, King Edward Confessor's staller, was cast upon the pavement of the Church by a demon's hand for his insolent pride in presence of the relics (of St. Edmund, King and Martyr)."
(W. H. Hutton, Bampton Lectures, 1903.)