Surnominal Snobbishness
A particularly idiotic form of snobbishness has sometimes led people to advance strange theories as to the origin of their names. Thus Turner has been explained as from la tour noire. Dr. Brewer, in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1 apparently desirous of dissociating himself from malt liquor, observes that—
“Very few ancient names are the names of trades... A few examples of a more scientific derivation will suffice for a hint:—
Brewer. This name, which exists in France as Bruhière and Brugère, is not derived from the Saxon briwan (to brew), but the French bruyère (heath), and is about tantamount to the German Plantagenet (broom plant). Miller is the old Norse melia, our mill and maul, and means a mauler or fighter.
Ringer is the Anglo-Saxon hring-gar (the mailed warrior). Tanner, German Thanger, Old German Dane-gaud, is the Dane-Goth...
This list might easily be extended.”
There is of course no reason why such a list should not be indefinitely extended, but the above excerpt is probably quite long enough to make the reader feel dizzy. The fact is that there is no getting away from a surname of this class, and the bearer must try to look on the brighter side of the tragedy. Brewer is occasionally an accommodated form of the French name Bruyère or Labruyère, but is usually derived from an occupation which is the high-road to the House of Lords. The ancestor of any modern Barber may, like Salvation Yeo’s father, have “exercised the mystery of a barber-surgeon,” which is getting near the learned professions. A Pottinger (Chapter XV) looked after the soups, Fr. potage, but the name also represents Pothecary (apothecary), which had in early Scottish the aphetic forms Poticar, potigar—
“‘Pardon me,’ said he, ‘I am but a poor pottingar. Nevertheless, I have been bred in Paris and learnt my humanities and my cursus medendi’”
(Fair Maid of Perth, ch. vii.).
Notes
1 Thirteenth edition, revised and corrected.