The Distribution of Names
The commonest local names naturally include none taken from particular places. The three commonest are Hall, Wood and Green, from residence by the great house, the wood, and the village green. Cf. the French names Lasalle, Dubois, Dupré. Hall is sometimes for Hale (Chapter II), and its Old French translation is one source of Sale. Next to these come Hill, Moore, and Shaw (Chapter XII); but Lee would probably come among the first if all its variants were taken into account (Chapter III).
Of baptismal names used unaltered as surnames the six commonest are Thomas, Lewis, Martin, James, Morris, Morgan. Here again the Welsh element is strong, and four of these names, ending in -s, belong also to the next group, i.e. the class of surnames formed from the genitive of baptismal names. The frequent occurrence of Lewis is partly due to its being adopted as a kind of translation of the Welsh Llewellyn, but the name is often a disguised Jewish Levi, and has nearly absorbed the local Lewes. Next to the above come Allen, Bennett, Mitchell, all of French introduction. Mitchell may have been reinforced by Mickle, the northern for Bigg. It is curious that these particularly common names, Martin, Allen, Bennett (Benedict), Mitchell (Michael), have formed comparatively few derivatives and are generally found in their unaltered form. Three of them are from famous saints’ names, while Allen, a Breton name which came in with the Conquest, has probably absorbed to some extent the Anglo-Saxon name Alwin (Chapter VII). Martin is in some cases an animal nickname, the marten. Among the genitives Jones, Williams, and Davi(e)s lead easily, followed by Evans, Roberts, and Hughes, all Welsh in the main. Among the twelve commonest names of this class those that are not preponderantly Welsh are Roberts, Edwards, Harris, Phillips, and Rogers. Another Welsh patronymic, Price (Chapter VI), is among the fifty commonest English names.
The classification of names in -son raises the difficult question as to whether Jack represents Fr. Jacques, or whether it comes from Jankin, Jenkin, dim. of John. 1
Taking Johnson and Jackson as separate names, we get the order Johnson, Robinson, Wilson, Thompson, Jackson, Harrison. The variants of Thompson might put it a place or two higher. Names in -kins (Distribution of names, Chapter IV), though very numerous in some regions, are not so common as those in the above classes. It would be hard to say which English font-name has given the largest number of family names. In Chapter V. will be found some idea of the bewildering and multitudinous forms they assume. It has been calculated, I need hardly say by a German professor, that the possible number of derivatives from one given name is 6, 000, but fortunately most of the seeds are abortive.
Of nicknames Brown, Clark, and White are by far the commonest. Then comes King, followed by the two adjectival nicknames Sharp and Young.
The growth of towns and facility of communication are now bringing about such a general movement that most regions would accept Brown, Jones and Robinson as fairly typical names. But this was not always so. Brown is still much commoner in the north than in the south, and at one time the northern Johnson and Robinson contrasted with the southern Jones and Roberts, the latter being of comparatively modern origin in Wales (Chapter IV). Even now, if we take the farmer class, our nomenclature is largely regional, and the directories even of our great manufacturing towns represent to a great extent the medieval population of the rural district around them. 2 The names Daft and Turney, well known in Nottingham, appear in the county in the Hundred Rolls. Cheetham, the name of a place now absorbed in Manchester, is as a surname ten times more numerous there than in London, and the same is true of many characteristic north-country names, such as the Barraclough, Murgatroyd, and Sugden of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley. The transference of Murgatroyd (Chapter XII) to Cornwall, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore, must have been part of the intentional topsy-turvydom in which those two bright spirits delighted.
Diminutives in -kin, from the Old Dutch suffix -ken, are still found in greatest number on the east coast that faces Holland, or in Wales, where they were introduced by the Flemish weavers who settled in Pembrokeshire in the reign of Henry I. It is in the border counties, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford, and Monmouth, that we find the old Welsh names such as Gough, Lloyd, Onion (Enion), Vaughan (Chapter XXII). The local Gape, an opening in the cliffs, is pretty well confined to Norfolk, and Puddifoot belongs to Bucks and the adjacent counties as it did in 1273. The hall changes hands as one conquering race succeeds another—
“Where is Bohun? Where is de Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the silk mercer, lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing” (Emerson, English Traits), but the hut keeps its ancient inhabitants. The descendant of the Anglo-Saxon serf who cringed to Front de Boeuf now makes way respectfully for Isaac of York’s motor, perhaps on the very spot where his own fierce ancestor first exchanged the sword for the ploughshare long before Alfred’s day.
Notes
1 See E. B. Nicholson, The Pedigree of Jack.
2 See Guppy, Homes of Family Names.