Feast-Days
A very interesting group of surnames are derived from font-names taken from the great feasts of the Church, date of birth or baptism, etc. 1 These are more often French or Greco-Latin than English, a fact to be explained by priestly influence. Thus Christmas is much less common than Noel or Nowell, but we also find Midwinter (Chapter II) and Yule. Easter has a local origin (from a place in Essex) and also represents Mid. Eng. estre, a word of very vague meaning for part of a building, originally the exterior, from Lat. extra. It survives in Fr. les êtres d’une maison. Hester, to which Bardsley gives the same origin, I should rather connect with Old Fr. hestre (hêtre), a beech. However that may be, the Easter festival is represented in our surnames by Pascall, Cornish Pascoe, and Pask, Pash, Pace, Pack.
Patch, formerly a nickname for a jester (Chapter XX), from his motley clothes, is also sometimes a variant of Pash. And the dim. Patchett has become confused with Padgett, from Padge, a rimed form of Madge. Pentecost is recorded as a personal name in Anglo-Saxon times. Michaelmas is now Middleman (Chapter III), and Tiffany is an old name for Epiphany. It comes from Greco-Latin theophania (while Epiphany represents epiphania), which gave the French female name Tiphaine, whence our Tiffin. Lammas (loaf mass) is also found as a personal name, but there is a place called Lammas in Norfolk. We have compounds of day in Halliday or Holiday, Hay-day, for high day, Loveday, a day appointed for reconciliations, and Hockaday, for a child born during Hocktide, which begins on the 15th day after Easter. It was also called Hobday, though it is hard to say why; hence the name Hobday, unless this is to be taken as the day, or servant (Chapter XIX), in the service of Hob; cf. Hobman.
The days of the week are puzzling, the only one at all common being Munday, though most of the others are found in earlier nomenclature. We should rather expect special attention to be given to Sunday and Friday, and, in fact, Sonntag and Freytag are by far the most usual in German, while Dimanche and its perversions are common in France, and Vendredi also occurs. This makes me suspect some other origin, probably local, for Munday, the more so as Fr. Dimanche, Demange, etc., is often for the personal name Dominicus, the etymology remaining the same as that of the day-name, the Lord’s day. Parts of the day seem to survive in Noon, Eve, and Morrow, but Noon is local, Fr. Noyon (cf. Moon, earlier Mohun, from Moyon), Eve is the mother of mankind, and Morrow is for moor-wro, the second element being Mid. Eng. wra, comer, whence Wray.
Notes
1 Names of this class were no doubt also sometimes given to foundlings.