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In modern times, a phonologically interesting development has affected names which, if abbreviated in a way which would yield a CVC structure, would have /r/ as the second C. Such a word-final /r/ is phonologically inadmissible in the non-rhotic accents of British English, and it has been treated in one of two ways: substitution by /l/ or by /z/, both of which share the apicality and voicedness of the historic /r/. The former tactic has been available for centuries for names applicable to both sexes, as in Hal for Harry (as old as Shakespeare), but the set of names treated in this way has gained recent recruits such as Del for Derek and Tel for Terence. The latter has grown up as a competitor, as in Dez for Derek, Loz for Laurence (I have also heard Lol, but not recently), Baz for Barry, Gaz for Gary and Daz for Darren; in the latter two cases there is no competing form in /l/. Female names may be affected in the same way, e.g. Shaz for Sharon, Caz for Carol(ine).
Towards the end of the twentieth century, the tide turned decisively away from pet-forms for male names that show alternation of either the initial consonant or the stressed vowel. Informal polls among people around twenty years old now show that the hypocoristics Bill, Bob, Ned/Ted, Dick and the like are in full retreat before Will, Rob, Ed and Rick/Rich.
Suffixal pet-forms have been found at all periods, but in modern times almost exclusively formations in /-i( )/ suffixed to either the full form of a name (Johnny, Janey) or a pet-form consisting of the stressed syllable or a hypocoristic of it, the stressed syllable carrying any intervocalic consonant(s) shared with the following syllable as its coda (Rob, Jim, Poll; ‘(Alec)sand(er)’, (Re)bec(ca), (A)mand(a),
(E)liz(abeth)). Exceptional are Penny and Cassie, based on the written form of the initial but unstressed syllable of Penelope and Cassandra, and in the former case supported by the homophonous lexical word. This is especially widely found as a tactic for making female pet-names, and some phonological research has suggested that, for some, the suffix may now stereotypically connote femininity. Indeed, striking numbers of female basic names, with a wide variety of origins, have this shape (Mary, Lucy, Lindsey, Sally, Sophie, Wendy, Dulcie,
Daisy, Bonnie, Tracy), whilst relatively few male ones do (though note Barry, Gary, Henry/Harry, Jamie/Jaime). For different reasons, therefore, both men and women may have reason to avoid it. This may account for the preference of some women to be known by a hypocoristic without /-i( )/ where that is traditional, e.g.
Jen or Cath rather than Jenny or Cathy.
6.4Surnames
6.4.1 |
The origin of surnames |
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Surnames came into use among the Norman aristocracy shortly before the Conquest. The practice was neither universal nor stable then or in the early period of Norman rule in England, though by about 1250 it was the norm in
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the highest social class and the knightly and other taxpaying classes. Between 1300 and 1400 the practice had spread to the urban moneyed classes, though it appears that in some towns, such as York, the lower classes might be without surnames till as late as 1600. Rural small free tenants, for whom evidence is more scant, began to acquire surnames before 1300 in the south, and the practice moved northwards, with new surnames still being formed in Lancashire as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and this development is mirrored by that of the servile class. The adoption of surnames did not happen overnight anywhere, and our knowledge of the process is hindered by the different degrees to which social classes are represented in the record; see McKinley (1990: 5, 25–39). Women might take their husbands’ surnames from about 1350 onwards, sometimes, in the southern half of England, in a genitival form where the surname was occupational; in the north, there was an alternative custom of using a name of the husband’s (personal name or by-name) with wife to form a by-name. But there is no hard and fast pattern in the practice of female surnaming; in some areas of England the custom of adopting the husband’s surname was not established till the sixteenth century, and in Welsh Wales not finally till the nineteenth (McKinley, 1990: 47–9).
Surnames are distinguishing names given to people bearing the same personal name, and many of these came to be inherited, though the system is not in fully complete operation everywhere till the 1600s. Those which have been inherited were of course the ones originally bestowed on males, for a complex of reasons involving unambiguous identification of the rightful heir. As the system developed, it is clear that legalistic causes were not the only, or even the main, stimulus to surname development. It is hard to believe that administrators were the sole creators of such names as Grosseteste ‘big head’, Paramore ‘philanderer’, Sweetapple or the startling (and extinct) Clawcunte; surely they were recording (or translating) what contemporaries called them.
6.4.2 |
Some problems with surname interpretation |
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There are many pitfalls in the study of surnames. Many occur in a wide range of different spellings. This may be important in cases of popular insistence that, for example, Brown and Browne are not the same name; which is of course true at the orthographic level synchronically, but historically misleading since they have the same origin and became fixed in particular spellings for individual families at a time when orthography had not been standardised. It is worth mentioning that some ‘English’ surnames are of multiple origin, and that only detailed scrutiny of a person’s genealogy may be capable of determining the source in difficult cases. Mitchell may be a French form of Michael or the early ME for ‘big’; Law may be a pet-form of Lawrence or a topographical name from the north country meaning ‘hill’; Hurley may be an English place-name or it may represent the Anglo-Irish O’Herlihy. Some names do not have the obvious origin, and folk-etymological sports abound. Reader is normally ‘thatcher’. Redwood
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is generally traced to the ME red¯ -wod¯ ‘enraged to the point of being scarlet; irascible’. Prettyjohn is for the mythical Christian ruler in the Orient, Prester John, made famous through Mandeville’s Travels. Other radical and irregular changes, many analogical, have taken place. Honeyball and Hannibal are for the Old French female name Amabel/Anabel. Lillicrap means ‘lily(-white) crop (i.e. head)’, ‘blond hair’. We cannot do justice to all these difficulties here.
6.4.3 |
Types of surname |
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From the outset, surnames have been of only four denotational types: |
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1.those derived from true by-names, having the form of an adjective alone or with a complement, or of a noun phrase, being descriptive of or predicable of the original bearer, such as Reid/Read ‘red(-haired)’, Short, Secrett ‘discreet’, Cornish, Tait (Scandinavian) ‘joyful’; Strongitharm; Goodfellow, Bairnsfather ‘(alleged) father of the child’; in this category may also be included elliptical or synecdochic names such as Whitelegg ‘(having) pale legs’, Fairfax ‘(having) fair or nice hair’, Godsmark ‘(having a) plague-spot’. We can identify further a category of metonymic by-name surnames, such as Christmas or Midwinter (from the time of birth); and further still nouns or noun phrases lacking an article that function metaphorically to indicate personal qualities or attributes such as Nightingale, Bull, Milsopp ‘milksop’, Gildersleeve ‘golden sleeve’. Some verbphrase names indicating such characteristics are also found, again ranging from what amount to truthful by-names to metonymic names; these include names such as Standaloft, Golightly, Rideout, Hopshort and Drinkwater, and there are sentence-names (optative mood) which encode favourite expressions (often pious or impious) of the bearer, such as Dugard (French) ‘God look after (you)’, and Godber (sometimes) ‘God be here’, not to mention the imprecation Bigod ‘by God’.
2.those derived from locations, i.e. expressions descriptive of where the original bearer lived, and therefore strictly metonymic, e.g. Marsh,
Green, Street, Newhouse, Townsend, and true place-names, e.g. Bristow (‘Bristol’), Crawley, Keenlyside, Litherland, Sutton, Thickness,
Darbyshire, Ireland, Sessions (‘Soissons’ in Normandy); also in this general type belong prepositional phrases (usually without the article) such as Uppiby ‘up in the village’ (Scandinavian), Atwell, Bysouth, atten Oak and the original type represented by the French de Lacy, where the last word is a place-name. This type was once extremely frequent, but over the centuries the prepositions have mostly disappeared. The original surnames of the landed classes were predominantly of this type, both in Normandy and in England, and often took the form [de/of + place-name].
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3.those derived from family relationships, i.e. normally incorporating the original bearer’s father’s name, e.g. Andrew, Andrews, Anderson, either in its full form or a pet-form in the abbreviated (Nickson and Dobson) or suffixal state (Wilcockson and Wilkinson). More rarely they incorporate the mother’s – Marjorison, Sibson (Sibyl), Tillotson (Matilda) – or some other relative’s – Hitchmough (see Section 6.4.4), Cousins; and, more rarely still, from some relationship not mentioning the name of the ancestor, e.g. Cookson, Masterson, or from a nonblood relationship, perhaps usually indicating a feudal tie or other bond, e.g. King(s)man and maybe Dukes, Hickman ‘Hick’s (serving-)
man’ or Henman ‘Henry’s’. Names such as Andrew or Bishop, with no overt expression of filiation or any other relationship, may be regarded as metonymic, i.e. expressing an unspecified association.
4. those derived from occupational terms, e.g. Coward ‘cowherd’, Cartwright, Smith, Latimer ‘professional Latin-user’, Bailey
‘bailiff’, Baker, Reeve, Hayward, Collier ‘charcoal-burner’, Billiter
‘bellfounder’; and metonymic allusions to such occupations, Wain ‘cart’, Whitbread ‘wheatbread’, i.e. implying a baker of high-quality bread, Runcie ‘nag, old horse’, perhaps for one who looked after them, and the more obvious Hogsflesh, Goodale and Jewell. This category is covered in the comprehensive study by Fransson (1935). Some have dropped out of use, like Mustardmaker and Dishward, and it is not possible without genealogical investigation to say whether this is because the male line has died out or whether the name has been discarded in favour of an alternative; see further Reaney (1967).
These four categories are not as distinct as might appear at first sight; they are all in origin by-names, i.e. expressions true of the original bearer at the moment of bestowal, either directly or by metonymy. Sometimes they may be ironic inversions, i.e. deliberately false of the person on whom they have alighted, and they were sometimes perhaps applied slanderously. We cannot be sure that everyone named Short had a tiny ancestor, for the word might be ironically applied to a seven-footer. Mildmay is ‘gentle maiden’ – recall that all surnames were originally applied to men. As for Halfknight – we shall probably never know whether he held half a knight’s fee, or whether he was truly or falsely a helmet short of a suit of armour.
By-names become surnames at the moment at which they are inherited, since they then attach to someone for whom they were not invented, and of whom they are not necessarily true (allowing for irony). The development of surnames was hesitant: not every by-name crystallised into a surname, and those that did were not immune from replacement after a few generations.
Much is still to be learned about the preference for different surname types by different social groups, though the monographs by McKinley and Postles make excellent attempts to identify patterns which to some extent differ regionally. The