Pettigrew and Pettifer are of French origin, pied de grue (crane) and
pied de fer. The former is the origin of the word pedigree, from a
sign used in drawing genealogical trees. The Buckinghamshire name
Puddifoot or Puddephatt (Podefat, 1273) and the aristocratic
Pauncefote are unsolved. The former may be a corruption of Pettifer,
which occurs commonly, along with the intermediate Puddifer, in the
same county. But the English Dialect Dictionary gives as an obsolete
Northants word the adjective puddy, stumpy, pudgy, applied especially
to hands, fingers, etc., and Pudito (puddy toe) occurs as a surname in
the Hundred Rolls. As for Pauncefote, I believe it simply means what
it appears to, viz. "belly-foot," a curious formation, though not
without parallels, among obsolete rustic nicknames. If these two
conjectures are correct, both Puddifoot and Pauncefote may be almost
literal equivalents of the Greek OEdipus, i.e. "swell-foot."
In other languages as well as English we find money nicknames. It is
easy to understand how some of these come into existence, e.g. that
Pierce. Pennilesse was the opposite of Thomas Thousandpound, whose
name occurs c. 1300. With the latter we may compare Fr. Centlivre,
the name of an English lady dramatist of the eighteenth century.
Moneypenny is found in 1273 as Manipeni, and a Londoner named Manypeny
died in 1348. The Money- is partly north country, partly imitative.
Money itself is usually occupative or local (Chapter XVII), and
Shilling is the Anglo-Saxon name Scilling. The oldest and commonest
of such nicknames is the simple Penny, with which we may compare the
German surname Pfennig and its compounds Barpfennig, Weisspfennig,
etc. The early adoption of this coin-name as a personal name is due
to the fact that the word was taken in the sense of money in general.
We still speak of a rich man as "worth a pretty penny." Hallmark is
folk-etymology for the medieval Half-mark. Such medieval names as
Four-pence, Twenty-mark, etc., probably now obsolete, are paralleled
by Fr. Quatresous and Sixdenier, still to be found in the Paris
Directory. It would be easy to form conjectures as to the various
ways in which such names may have come into existence. To the same
class must belong Besant, the name of a coin from Byzantium, its
foreign origin giving it a dignity which is absent from the native
Farthing and Halfpenny, though the latter, in one instance, was
improved beyond recognition into MacAlpine.
IMPRECATIONS
There is also a small group of surnames derived from oaths or
exclamations which by habitual use became associated with certain
individuals. We know that monarchs had a special tendency to indulge
in a favourite expletive. To Roger de Collerye we owe some
information as to the imprecations preferred by four French kings--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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