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
While ‘atte’ has been unquestionably the one chief prefix to these more
familiar local terms, it is not the sole one that has left its mark. Our
‘Bywaters’ and ‘Bywoods’ are but the descendants of such mediæval folk
as ‘Elias Bi-the-water,’ or ‘Edward By-the-wode,’ and our ‘Byfords,’
‘Bytheseas,’ and ‘Bygates,’ or ‘Byatts,’ are equally clearly the
offspring of some early ancestor who dwelt beside some streamlet
shallow, or marine greensward, or woodland hatchway.
In this pursuit after individuality, however, this was not the only
method adopted. Another class of names arose from the somewhat contrary
practice of appending to the place-word a termination equally
significative of residence. This suffix was of two kinds, one ending in
‘er,’ the other in ‘man.’ Thus if the rustic householder dwelt in the
meadows, he became known among his acquaintance as ‘Robert the Fielder,’
or ‘Filder;’ if under the greenwood shade, ‘Woodyer,’ or ‘Woodyear,’ or
‘Woodman’—relics of the old ‘le Wodere’ and ‘le Wodeman;’ if by the
precincts of the sanctuary, ‘Churcher’ or ‘Churchman’ in the south of
England, or ‘Kirker’ or ‘Kirkman’ in the north; if by some priory,
‘Templer’ or ‘Templeman;’ if by the village cross, ‘Crosser,’ or
‘Crossman,’ or ‘Croucher,’ or ‘Crouchman;’ if by the bridge, ‘Bridger’
or ‘Bridgman;’ if by the brook, ‘Brooker,’ or ‘Brookman,’ or ‘Becker,’
or ‘Beckman;’ if by the well, the immortal ‘Weller,’ or ‘Welman,’ or
‘Crossweller,’ if, as was often the case, it lay beneath the roadside
crucifix; if by some particular tree, ‘Beecher,’ once written ‘le
Beechar,’ or ‘Asher,’ or ‘Hollier,’ or ‘Holleyman,’ or ‘Oker,’ and so
on.
A certain number of names of the class we are now dwelling upon have
arisen from a somewhat peculiar colloquial use of the term ‘end’ in
vogue with our Saxon forefathers. The method of its employment is still
common in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The poorer classes still speak of a
neighbour as dwelling ‘at the street end;’ they never by any chance use
the fuller phrase ‘the end of the street.’ Chaucer uses it as a familiar
mode of expression. The Friar, in the preface to his story, says
slightingly—
A Sompnour is a rener up and doun
With mandments for fornication,
And is beaten at every tounes ende.
In the ‘Persones Prologue,’ too, the same poet says—
Therewith the moons exaltation
In mene Libra, alway gan ascende
As we were entring at the thorpes ende.
How colloquial it must have been in his day we may judge from the
following list of names I have been enabled to pick up from various
records, and which I could have enlarged had I so chosen:—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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