Classes of Local Names
The local name may range in origin from a country to a plant (France, Darbishire, Lankester, Ashby, Street, House, Pound, Plumptre, Daisy), and, mathematically stated, the size of the locality will vary in direct proportion to the distance from which the immigrant has come. Terentius Afer was named from a continent. I cannot find a parallel in England, but names such as the nouns France, Ireland, Pettingell (Portugal), or the adjectives Dench, Mid. Eng. dense, Danish, Norman, Welsh, (Walsh, Wallis, etc.), Allman (Allemand), often perverted to Almond, were considered a sufficient mark of identification for men who came from foreign parts. But the untravelled inhabitant, if distinguished by a local name, would often receive it from some very minute feature of the landscape, e.g. Solomon Daisy may have been descended from a Robert Dayeseye, who lived in Hunts in 1273. It is not very easy to see how such very trifling surnames as this last came into existence, but its exiguity is surpassed in the case of a prominent French airman who bears the appropriately buoyant name of Brindejonc, perhaps from some ancestor who habitually chewed a straw.
An immense number of our countrymen are simply named from the points of the compass, slightly disguised in Norris, Anglo-Fr. le noreis, 1 Sotheran, the southron, and Sterling, for Easterling, a name given to the Hanse merchants. Westray was formerly le westreis. A German was to our ancestors, as he still is to sailors, a Dutchman, whence our name Douch, Ger. deutsch, Old High Ger. tiutisc, which, through Old French tieis, has given Tyas. 2
But not every local name is to be taken at its face value. Holland is usually from one of the Lancashire Hollands, and England may be for Mid. Eng. ing-land, the land of Ing (cf. Ingulf, Ingold, etc.), a personal name which is the first element in many place-names, or from ing, a meadow by a stream. Holyland is not Palestine, but the holly-land. Hampshire is often for Hallamshire, a district in Yorkshire. Dane is a variant of Mid. Eng. dene, a valley, the inhabitant of Denmark having given us Dench (Chapter XI) and Dennis (le daneis). Visitors to Margate will remember the valley called the Dane, which stretches from the harbour to St. Peters. Saxon is not racial, but a perversion of sexton (Chapter XVII). Mr. Birdofredum Sawin, commenting on the methods employed in carrying out the great mission of the Anglo-Saxon race, remarks that—
“Saxons would be handy
To du the buryin’ down here upon the Rio Grandy”
(Lowell, Biglow Papers).
The name Cockayne was perhaps first given derisively to a sybarite—
“Paris est pour le riche un pays de Cocagne” (Boileau), but it may be an imitative form of Coken in Durham.
Names such as Morris, i.e. Moorish, or Sarson, i.e. Saracen (but also for Sara-son), are rather nicknames, due to complexion or to an ancestor who was mine host of the Saracen’s Head. Moor is sometimes of similar origin. Russ, like Rush, is one of the many forms of Fr. roux, red-complexioned (Chapter II). Pole is for Pool, the native of Poland being called Polack—
“He smote the sledded Polack on the ice” (Hamlet, I. i).
But the name Pollock is local (Renfrewshire).
Notes
1 The corresponding le surreis is now represented by Surridge.
2 Tyars, or Tyers, which Bardsley puts with this, seems to be rather Fr. Thiers, Lat. tertius.