(Lord of the Isles, iv. 33.)
Corker is for caulker, i.e. one who stopped the chinks of ships and casks, originally with lime (Lat. calx)—
"Sir, we have a chest beneath the hatches, caulk'd and bitumed ready" (Pericles iii. 1).
Cleaver represents Old Fr, clavier, a mace-bearer, Lat. clava, a club, or a door-keeper, Lat. clavis, a key. Perhaps even clavus, a nail, must also be considered, for a Latin vocabulary of the fifteenth century tells us—
"Claves, -vos vel -vas qui fert sit claviger."
Neither Bowler nor Scorer are connected with cricket. The former made wooden bowls, and the latter was sometimes a scourer, or scout, Mid. Eng. scurrour, a word of rather complicated origin, but perhaps more frequently a peaceful scullion, from Fr. écurer, to scour, Lat. ex-curare—
"Escureur, a scourer, cleanser, feyer" (Cotgrave).
[Footnote: Feyer: A sweeper, now perhaps represented by Fayer.]
A Leaper did not always leap (Chapter XVII). The verb had also in Mid. English the sense of running away, so that the name may mean fugitive. In some cases it may represent a maker of leaps, i.e. fish baskets, or perhaps a man who hawked fish in such a basket.
A Slayer made slays, part of a weaver's loom, and a Bloomer worked in a bloom-smithy, from Anglo-Sax. blo-ma, a mass of hammered iron. Weightman and Warman represent Mid. Eng, waþeman, hunter; cf. the common German surname Weidemann, of cognate origin. Reader and Booker are not always literary. The former is for Reeder, a thatcher—