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Friday, October 10, 2014

The Name

Back in the days before the Multiculti cult when people had countries full of their peers, family and tribe, it was pretty easy to know from where people hailed. They had names one recognised. 

Nowadays one's neighbour could have been born in Bangladesh or  Botswana, the next street or the next town. Who can tell? Some names are virtually unpronouncable. 

Anglophile peoples however are a closer named lot.

Well, it used to be so. The most popular boy's name in many parts of the English-speaking world now is Mohammed.

Many of us have surnames passed down to us from ancestors in England. Last names weren’t widely used until after the Norman conquest in 1066,  despite the Romans the Danes the Saxons and various others who had been 'absorbed'. But after the bloody Normans, as the country’s population grew, people found it necessary to be more specific when they were talking about somebody else. 




Thus arose descriptions like Thomas the Baker, Norman son of Richard, Henry the Whitehead, Elizabeth of the Field, and Joan of York that, ultimately, led to many of our current surnames.

There are perhaps 45,000 different English surnames, but most had their origins as one of these seven types.

Occupational
Occupational names identified people based on their job or position in society. Calling a man “Thomas Carpenter” indicated that he worked with wood for a living, while someone named Knight bore a sword. Like wot I did.  Some Knights passed their own names on though.

Other occupational names include Archer, Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Carter, Clark, Cooper, Cook, Dyer, Farmer, Faulkner, Fisher, Fuller, Gardener, Glover, Head, Hunt or Hunter, Judge, Mason, Page, Parker, Potter, Sawyer, Slater, Smith, Taylor, Thatcher, Turner, Weaver, Woodman, and Wright (or variations such as Cartwright and Wainwright) — and there are many more.

This kind of name also gave a clue about whom a servant worked for. Someone named Vickers might have been a servant to Mr. Vicker, and someone named Williams might either have served a William or been adopted by him.



From the obscure fact department: In medieval England, before the time of professional theater, craft guilds put on “mystery plays” (“mystery” meaning “miracle”), which told Bible stories and had a call-and-response style of singing. A participant’s surname — such as King, Lord, Virgin, or Death — may have reflected his or her role, which some people played for life and passed down to their eldest son.

Describing a personal characteristic
Some names, often adjectives, were based on nicknames that described a person. They may have described a person’s size (Short, Long, Little), coloring (Black, White, Green, or Red, which could have evolved into “Reed”), or another character trait (Stern, Strong, Swift). Someone named Peacock might have been considered vain.


Try that today and you would face a Tribunal 
when someone takes Offence.

From an English place name
A last name may have pointed to where a person was born, lived, worked, or owned land. It might be from the name of a house, farm, hamlet, town, or county. Some examples: Bedford, Burton, Hamilton, Hampshire, Sutton. Writer Jack London’s ancestor may have hailed from London.

From the name of an estate
Those descended from landowners may have taken as their surname the name of their holdings, castle, manor, or estate, such as Ernle or Staunton. Windsor is a famous example — it was the surname George V adopted for the British royal family.



From a geographical feature of the landscape
Some examples are Bridge, Brooks, Bush, Camp, Fields, Forest, Greenwood, Grove, Hill, Knolles, Lake, Moore, Perry, Stone, Wold, Wood, and Woodruff. Author Margaret Atwood is probably descended from someone who lived “at the wood.”

Patronymic, matronymic, or ancestral
Patronymic surnames (those that come from a male given name) include Benson (“the son of Ben”), Davis, Dawson, Evans, Harris, Harrison, Jackson, Jones (Welsh for John), Nicholson, Richardson, Robinson, Rogers, Simpson, Stephenson, Thompson, Watson, and Wilson.

Matronymic ones, surnames derived from a female given name, include Molson (from Moll, for Mary), Madison (from Maud), Emmott (from Emma), and Marriott (from Mary).

Scottish clan names make up one set of ancestral surnames. These include Armstrong, Cameron, Campbell, Crawford, Douglas, Forbes, Grant, Henderson, Hunter, MacDonald, and Stewart.

Signifying patronage
Some surnames honored a patron. Hickman was Hick’s man (Hick being a nickname for Richard). Kilpatrick was a follower of Patrick.

Wondering whether your family name is English? Try plugging your surname into the Ancestry.com.au Last Names Meanings and Origins widget. Type in the surname “Duffield,” and you’ll see it’s English, a “habitational name from places in Derbyshire and East Yorkshire, so named from Old English Dufe ‘dove’ + feld ‘open country.’”

http://blogs.ancestry.com.au/cm/there-are-7-types-of-english-surnames-which-one-is-yours/

And mine?  Amfortas.  It is famous; or was. 




The name has been derived from the Latin, infirmitas and also from the Old French, enfertez, both words meaning infirmity. I gained it from the Wound. 

The ever-wounded King. 

Offence marks a man.  Especially when the One offended is instead owed so much. It can impact a King's life and follow him through millenia.


Make your peace. 

Clean your past.

Clean your Soul. 

One day your name will be called out.



Pax.

2 comments:

  1. I have done a bit of family history research and one of the curiosities is how some names change and evolve over time. One of my female ancestors (early 1800s) who married into my paternal line originated from Cornwall and moved to Yorkshire.

    The first record of her name was Bensley but when she arrived in Yorkshire she was recorded as Buisley, Bonsley and Bansley. I suspect this is due partly to the difference in accent and misunderstanding of the name and partly due to the level of literacy at the time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Looking at old birth, marriage and death certificates, one is struck by how poorly people wrote in those days. The 'official' scribes were quite sloppy. Mix that with the various quite distinct accents and syllable emphases found all over the Islands and change/evolution of names is to be expected.

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