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
Since that day that she was last a wife
In patience led a ful simple life,
For litel was her cattle, and her rent:
By husbandry of such as God her sent
She found herself and eke her doughtren two.
————
Her board was served most with white and black,
Milk and brown bread, in which she found no lack,
Singed bacon, and sometimes an egg or twey,
For she was as it were a maner _dey_.[263]
The present representatives of this name are met with in the several
forms of ‘Deye,’ ‘Daye,’ ‘Day,’ ‘Dayman,’ and the more unpleasantly
corrupted ‘Deman.’
It is quite evident, judging from the places of abode in which we find
our early ‘Fishers’ and ‘Fishermans,’ that it is to followers, though
professional, of the quaint and gentle-minded Izaac Walton we owe our
many possessors of these names, rather than to the dwellers upon the
coast, although both, doubtless, are represented. Such entries as
‘Margaret le Fischere,’ or ‘Henry le Fissere,’ or ‘Robert le Fiscere’
are very common. This latter seems a sort of medium between the others
and such a more hard form as ‘Laurence le Fisker.’ The finny species
themselves gave us such sobriquets as ‘John le Fysche’ or ‘William
Fyske,’ and both ‘Fish’ and ‘Fisk’ still exist amongst us. The Norman
angler is seen in ‘Godard le Pescher’ or ‘Walter le Pecheur,’ while
‘Agnes le Pecheresse’ bespeaks the fact that even women did not disdain
the gentle art.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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