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
‘Guy,’ or ‘Guyon,’ dates from the ‘Round Table,’ but it was reserved for
the Norman to make his name so familiar to English lips. The best proof
of this is that the surnames which it has left to us are all but
entirely formed from the Norman-French diminutive ‘Guyot,’ which in
England became, of course, ‘Wyot.’ Hence such entries as ‘Wyot fil.
Helias,’ or ‘Wyott Carpenter,’ or ‘Wyot Balistarius.’ The descendants of
these, I need scarcely say, are our ‘Wyatts.’ But the Norman initial was
not entirely lost. ‘Aleyn Gyot’ is found in the ‘Rolls of Parliament;’
and ‘Guyot’ and ‘Guyatt’ testify to its existence in the nineteenth
century.[21] ‘Ralph,’ or ‘Radulf,’ of whom there were thirty-eight in
Domesday, has survived in a number of forms. Our ‘Raffs’ and ‘Raffsons’
can carry back their descent to days when ‘Raffe Barton’ or ‘Peter
Raffson’ thus signed themselves. The favourite pet forms were ‘Rawlin’
and ‘Randle;’ hence such entries as ‘Raulyn de la Fermerie,’ ‘Raulina de
Briston,’ or ‘Randle de la Mill.’ To these it is we owe our ‘Rawlins,’
‘Rawlings,’ ‘Rawlinsons,’ ‘Rollins,’ ‘Rollinsons,’ ‘Randles’ and
‘Randalls.’ Other and more ordinary corruptions are found in ‘Rawes,’
‘Rawson,’ ‘Rawkins,’ ‘Rapkins,’ and ‘Rapson.’ The reader may easily see
from this that ‘Ralph,’ from occupying a place in the foremost rank of
early favourites, is content now to stand in the very rear.
There are a number of names still in use, although not so popular as
they once were, which were brought in directly by the Normans, and which
were closely connected with the real or imaginary stories of which
Charlemagne was the central figure. Italy, France, and Spain possess a
larger stock than we do of this class, but those which did reach our
shores made for themselves a secure position. ‘Charles,’ by some strange
accident, did not obtain a place in England, nor is it to be found in
our registers, saving in the most isolated instances, till Charles the
First, by his misfortunes, made it one of the commonest in the land. In
France, as Sir Walter Scott, in ‘Quentin Durward,’ reminds us, the pet
form was ‘Charlot’ and ‘Charlat.’ This, as a surname, soon found its way
to England, where it has existed for many centuries. The feminine
‘Charlotte,’ since the death of the beloved Princess of that name, has
become almost a household word. Putting aside ‘Charles,’ then, the
Paladins have bequeathed us ‘Roland,’ ‘Oliver,’ ‘Robert,’ ‘Richard,’
‘Roger,’ ‘Reginald,’ ‘Reynard,’ and ‘Miles.’ We see at once in these
names the parentage of some of our most familiar surnames. ‘Oliver’ was,
perhaps, the least popular so far as numbers were concerned, and might
have died out entirely had not the Protector Cromwell brought it again
into notoriety. ‘Oliver,’ ‘Olver,’ ‘Ollier,’ and ‘Oliverson’ are the
present forms, and these are met by such entries as ‘Jordan Olyver,’ or
‘Philip fil. Oliver.’ ‘Roland,’ or ‘Orlando,’ was the nephew of the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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