Itinerant Merchants
The itinerant dealer was usually called by a name suggesting the pack which he carried. Thus Badger, Kidder, Kiddier, Pedder, now pedlar, are from bag, kid, related to kit, and the obsolete ped, basket; cf. Leaper, Chapter XV. The badger, who dealt especially in corn, was unpopular with the rural population, and it is possible that his name was given to the stealthy animal formerly called the bawson (Chapter I.), brock or gray (Chapter XXIII). That Badger is a nickname taken from the animal is chronologically improbable, as the word is first recorded in 1523 (New English Dictionary).
To the above names may be added Cremer, Cramer, a huckster with a stall in the market, but this surname is sometimes of modern introduction, from its German cognate Krämer, now generally used for a grocer. Packman, Pakeman, and Paxman belong more probably to the font-name Pack (Chapter IX), which also appears in Paxon, either Pack’s son, or for the local Paxton.
The name Hawker does not belong to this group. Nowadays a hawker is a pedlar, and it has been assumed, without sufficient evidence, that the word is of the same origin as huckster. The Mid. Eng. le haueker or haukere (1273) is quite plainly connected with hawk, and the name may have been applied either to a Falconer, Faulkner, or to a dealer in hawks. As we know that itinerant vendors of hawks travelled from castle to castle, it is quite possible that our modern hawker is an extended use of the same name.
Nor is the name Coster to be referred to costermonger, originally a dealer in costards, i.e. apples. It is sometimes for Mid. Eng. costard (cf. such names as Cherry and Plumb), but may also represent Port. da Costa and Ger. Köster, both of which are found in early lists of Protestant refugees.
Jagger was a north-country name for a man who worked draught-horses for hire. Mr. Hardy’s novel Under the Greenwood Tree opens with “the Tranter’s party.” A carrier is still a “tranter” in Wessex. In Medieval Latin he was called travetarius, a word apparently connected with Lat. transvehere, to transport.