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
We have mentioned ‘de la Woode’ and Attewoode.’ ‘De la Hirst’ is exactly
similar—its compounds equally numerous. The pasture beside it is
‘Hursley’—if filberts abound it is ‘Hazlehurst;’ if ashes, ‘Ashurst;’ if
lindens or linds, ‘Lyndhurst;’ if elms, ‘Elmhurst.’ If hawks frequented
it we find it styled ‘Hawkhurst;’ if goats, ‘Goathirst;’ if badgers or
brocks, ‘Brocklehurst;’ if deer, ‘Dewhurst’ (spelt Duerhurst, 1375). The
‘holt’ was less in size, being merely a coppice or small thicket.
Chaucer speaks of ‘holtes and hayes.’ ‘De la Holt’ is of frequent
occurrence in our early rolls. Our ‘Cockshots’ are but the ‘cocksholt,’
the liquid letter being elided as in ‘Aldershot,’ ‘Oakshot,’[109] and
‘Bagshot,’ or badgers’ holt. A ‘shaw’ or ‘schaw’ was a small woody shade
or covert. An old manuscript says:—
In somer when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
It is fulle mery in feyre foreste
To here the foulys song.
As a shelter for game and the wilder animals, it is found in such
compounds as ‘Bagshaw,’ the badger being evidently common; ‘Hindshaw,’
‘Ramshaw,’ ‘Hogshaw,’[110] ‘Cockshaw,’ ‘Henshaw,’ and ‘Earnshaw.’ The
occurrence of such names as ‘Shallcross’ and ‘Shawcross,’ ‘Henshall’ and
‘Henshaw,’ and ‘Kersall’ and ‘Kershaw,’ would lead us to imagine that
this word too has been somewhat corrupted. Other descriptive compounds
are found in ‘Birkenshaw,’ or ‘Denshaw,’ or ‘Bradshaw,’ or ‘Langshaw,’
or ‘Openshaw.’ As for ‘Shaw’ simple, every county in England has it
locally, and every directory surnominally. Such a name as ‘Richard de la
Frith’ or ‘George ate Frith’ carries us at once to the woodland copses
that underlay our steeper mountain-sides—they represented the wider and
more wooded valleys in fact. We find the term lingering locally in such
a name as ‘Chapel-en-le-frith’ in the Peak of Derbyshire. The usual
alliterative expression of early days was ‘by frith and fell.’ We have
it varied in an old poem of the fourteenth century:—
The Duke of Braband first of all
Swore, for thing that might befall,
That he should both day and night
Help Sir Edward in his right,
In town, in field, in frith and fen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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