English Surnames: Their Sources and Significations — John Shaqi
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
Thi beste cote, Haukyn,
Hath manye moles and spottes,
It moste ben y-wasshe.
Baldwin had already appeared at the Conquest, for an aunt of William’s
had married Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, and he himself was espoused to
Matilda, daughter of the fifth ‘Baldwin’ of that earldom. No doubt the
Flemings brought in fresh accessions, and when we add to this the fact
of its being by no means an unpopular Angevine name, we can readily see
why ‘Balderson,’ ‘Bolderson,’ ‘Balcock,’ ‘Bodkin,’ and the simple
‘Baldwin,’ have maintained a quiet but steady position in the English
lists ever since. Thus, the Plantagenets are not without memorials, even
in the nineteenth century.
III.—_Names from the Calendar of the Saints._
It is to Norman influence we owe the firm establishment of several
names, which had already got securely settled on the Continent on
account of the odour of sanctity that had gathered about them. The
Reformation threw into the shade of oblivion the memories of many holy
men and women who in their day and generation exercised a powerful
influence on our general nomenclature. Many of my readers will be
unaware that there were three St. Geralds and three St. Gerards held in
high repute previous to the eleventh century. The higher Norman families
seem to have been attached to both, though ‘Gerard’ has made the deepest
impression. ‘Gerald’ and ‘Fitz-Gerald’ are the commonest descendants of
the first. As respects ‘Gerard,’ such names as ‘Garret Widdrington,’ or
‘Jarrarde Hall,’ or ‘Jarat Nycholson,’ found among our Yorkshire
entries, serve to show how far the spirit of verbal corruption can
advance; and our many ‘Garrets,’ ‘Jarrets,’ ‘Jarratts,’ and ‘Jerards,’
as surnames, will probably testify the same to all ages.[37] As there
were twenty-eight ‘Walters’ in Domesday Survey, we cannot attribute the
popularity of that name to St. Walter, abbot of Fontenelle in the middle
of the twelfth century. But, as Miss Yonge shows, it had been spread
over Aquitaine in the earlier part of the tenth century, through the
celebrity of a saintly Walter who resided in that dukedom about the year
990. Few sobriquets enjoyed such a share of attention as this. In one of
its nicknames, that of ‘Water,’[38] we are reminded of Suffolk’s death
in Shakespeare’s _Henry VI._, where the murderer says—
My name is Walter Whitmore.
How now! why start’st thou? What, doth death affright!
_Suffolk._ Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.
A cunning man did calculate my birth,
And told me that by _water_ I should die.
University men will remember a play of another kind upon its other form
of ‘Wat,’ in the poems of C. S. C., whose power of rhyming, at least, I
have never seen surpassed, even by Ingoldsby himself. He thus begins one
of his happiest efforts—
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