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 ‘hay’ was nothing but a ‘hedge.’ In the Hundred Rolls we find such
names occurring as ‘Margery de la Haye’ or ‘Roger de la Hagh,’ or in a
compounded form ‘Richard de la Woodhaye,’ or ‘Robert de Brodheye.’ Of
the simple root the forms most common now are ‘Hay,’ ‘Hayes,’ ‘Haighs,’
‘Haigs,’ and ‘Hawes.’ The composite forms are endless. ‘Roundhay’
explains itself. ‘Lyndsay’ I find spelt at this period as ‘Lyndshay,’ so
that it is not the islet whereon the lind or linden grows, but the hedge
of these shrubs. Besides these we have ‘Haywood’ or ‘Heywood,’ ‘Hayland’
and ‘Hayley.’ From the form ‘hawe,’ mentioned above, we have our
‘Hawleys,’ ‘Haworths,’ and ‘Hawtons,’ or ‘Haughtons,’ and probably the
longest name in the directory, that of ‘Featherstonehaugh.’ We still
talk of the _haw_-thorn and haw-haw. Chaucer uses the term for a
farmyard or garth—
And eke there was a polkat in his hawe
That, as he sayd, his capons had yslawe.
This at once explains such a name as ‘Peter in le Hawe’ found in the
Hundred Rolls. But Chaucer has a prettier use of it than this, a use
still abiding in our ‘Churchays,’ relics of the mediæval ‘de
Chirchehay.’ He speaks twice of the ‘Churchhawe,’ or graveyard. How
pretty it is! almost as pretty as its Saxon synonym ‘Godsacre,’ only
that is more endeared to us, inasmuch as since the acre always denoted
the sowed land (Latin ‘ager’), so it whispers to us hopefully of the
great harvest-tide to come when the seed thus sown in corruption shall
be raised an incorruptible body. Our ‘Goodacres’ are doubtless thus
derived—and with such names as ‘Acreman’ or ‘Akerman,’ ‘Oldacre’ or
‘Oddiker,’ ‘Longacre’ and ‘Whittaker’ (or ‘Whytacre’ or ‘Witacre,’ as I
find it in the thirteenth century), help to remind us how in early days
an acre denoted less a fixed measure of land than soil itself that lay
under the plough. But this by the way. I have just mentioned ‘Hayworth.’
A name like ‘William de la Worth’ (H.R.) represented our ‘Worths’ in the
thirteenth century. Properly speaking, any sufficiently _warded_
place—it had come to denote a small farmstead at the time the surname
arose. ‘Charlesworth’ is the ‘churl’s worth,’ the familiar metamorphosis
of this name being identical with that of the astronomic ‘Charles Wain,’
and with such place-names as ‘Charle-wood,’ ‘Charlton,’ ‘Carlton,’ and
‘Charley.’ Our various ‘Unsworths,’ ‘Ainsworths,’ ‘Whitworths,’
‘Langworthys,’ ‘Kenworthys,’ ‘Wortleys,’ and others of this class are
familiar to us all. Surnames like ‘Roger de la Grange,’ or ‘Geoffrey de
la Grange,’ or ‘John le Granger,’[129] remind us that _grange_ also was
commonly used at this time for a farmstead, it being in reality nothing
more than our _granary_.[130] Piers Plowman portrays the good Samaritan
thus—
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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