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
A series of names, some of them connected with the heroic and legendary
lore of Northern Europe, were formed from the root ‘sig’—conquest. Many
of these maintained a position as personal names long after the Norman
invasion, and now exist in our directories as surnames. Nevertheless, as
with the others hitherto mentioned, they are all but invariably found in
their simple and uncompounded form. Our ‘Sewards,’ ‘Seawards,’ and
‘Sawards’ represent the chief of these. It is found in England in the
seventh century, and was a great Danish name. Entries like ‘Syward
Godwin’ or ‘Siward Oldcorn’ are found as late as the beginning of the
fourteenth century. Next we may mention our ‘Segars,’ ‘Sagars,’
‘Sahers,’ ‘Sayers,’ and ‘Saers,’ undoubted descendants of such men as
‘Saher de Quincy,’ the famous old Earl of Winchester. The registrations
of this as a personal name are very frequent. Such entries as ‘John fil.
Saer,’ ‘Saher Clerk,’ ‘Saher le King,’ or ‘Eudo fil. Sygar,’ are common.
Nor has ‘Sigbiorn’ been allowed to become obsolete, as our ‘Sibornes’
and ‘Seabornes’ can testify. I cannot discover any instance of ‘Sibbald’
as a personal name after the Domesday Survey, but as a relic of
‘Sigbald’ it is still living in a surnominal form. Though apparently
occupative, our registers clearly proclaim that ‘Seman’ or ‘Seaman’ must
be set here. As a personal name it is found in such designations as
‘Seman de Champagne,’ or ‘Seaman de Baylif,’ or ‘Seaman Carpenter.’ With
the mention of ‘Sebright’ as a corruption of ‘Sigbert’ or ‘Sebert,’ I
pass on; but this is sufficient to show that a name whose root-meaning
implied heroism was popular with our forefathers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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