English Surnames: Their Sources and SignificationsBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
English Surnames: Their Sources and Significations
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, English; Names, Personal -- English
Piers Plowman, too, speaks similarly of Noah’s Ark as the ‘shyngled
ship.’[240] All these names have, occupatively speaking, now become
obsolete, or nearly so; our ‘Slaters,’ or ‘Sclaters,’ or ‘Slatters,’
having usurped the entire position they were formerly content to share
with their humbler brethren.[241]
In the majority of the above names we shall find the Saxon to be in all
but whole possession of the field. The fact is, the roof and its
appurtenances were little regarded for a long period by our early
architects, if we may give such a grand term to those who set up the
ordinary homestead of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There
were no chimneys even in the residences of the rich and noble. A hole in
the roof, or the window, or the door, one of these, whether in the homes
of the peer or the peasant, was the outlet for all obnoxious vapours.
With the Normans, however, came a great increase of refinement in the
masonry and wooden framework of which our houses are composed. Such
names as ‘Adam le Quarreur,’ or ‘Hugh le Quareur,’ ‘Walter le Marbiler,’
or ‘Geoffrey le Merberer,’ ‘Gotte le Mazoun,’ or ‘Walter le Masun,’ or
‘Osbert le Machun’ represent a cultivation of which the earlier settled
race, if they knew something, did not avail themselves in their merely
domestic architecture. Two of these occupations are referred to by
‘Cocke Lorelle,’ when he speaks of—
Masones, male-makers, and merbelers.[242]
‘Henry le Wallere,’ whose sobriquet was ennobled later on by one of our
poets, is the only entry I can set by these as belonging to the Saxon
tongue.[243] It is the same with the Norman ‘Amice le Charpenter’ and
‘Alan le Joygnour.’ While the former framed the more solid essentials,
the very name of the latter infers a careful supervision of minutiæ, of
which only a more refined taste would take cognizance. The descendants
of such settlers as these still hold the place they then obtained, and
are unchanged otherwise than in the fashion of spelling their name.
Of the plaster work we have a goodly array of memorials, the majority of
which, of course, are connected with a higher class work than the mere
cottager required. The ordinary term in use at present for a maker of
lime is ‘limeburner.’ It is quite possible that in our ‘Limebears’ or
‘Limebeers’ we have but a corruption of this. Such sobriquets as ‘Hugh
le Limwryte’ and ‘John le Limer’ give us, however, the more general
mediæval forms. The latter is still to be met with among our surnames.
But these are not all. We have in our ‘Dawbers’ the descendants of the
old ‘Thomas le Daubour,’ or ‘Roger le Daubere,’ of the thirteenth
century. ‘Cocke Lorelle,’ whom I have but just quoted, mentions among
other workmen—
Tylers, bryckeleyers, hardehewers;
Parys-plasterers, daubers, and lymeborners.
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