The commonest local names naturally include none taken from particular
places. The three commonest are Hall, Wood and Green, from residence
by the great house, the wood, and the village green. Cf. the French
names Lasalle, Dubois, Dupre. Hall is sometimes for Hale (Chapter
II), and its Old French translation is one source of Sale. Next to
these come Hill, Moore, and Shaw (Chapter XII); but Lee would probably
come among the first if all its variants were taken into account
(Chapter III).
Of baptismal names used unaltered as surnames the six commonest are
Thomas, Lewis, Martin, James, Morris, Morgan. Here again the Welsh
element is strong, and four of these names, ending in -s, belong also
to the next group, i.e. the class of surnames formed from the genitive
of baptismal names. The frequent occurrence of Lewis is partly due to
its being adopted as a kind of translation of the Welsh Llewellyn, but
the name is often a disguised Jewish Levi, and has nearly absorbed the
local Lewes. Next to the above come Allen, Bennett, Mitchell, all of
French introduction. Mitchell may have been reinforced by Mickle, the
northern for Bigg. It is curious that these particularly common
names, Martin, Allen, Bennett (Benedict), Mitchell (Michael), have
formed comparatively few derivatives and are generally found in their
unaltered form. Three of them are from famous saints' names, while
Allen, a Breton name which came in with the Conquest, has probably
absorbed to some extent the Anglo-Saxon name Alwin (Chapter VII).
Martin is in some cases an animal nickname, the marten. Among the
genitives Jones, Williams, and Davi(e)s lead easily, followed by
Evans, Roberts, and Hughes, all Welsh in the main. Among the twelve
commonest names of this class those that are not preponderantly Welsh
are Roberts, Edwards, Harris, Phillips, and Rogers. Another Welsh
patronymic, Price (Chapter VI), is among the fifty commonest English
names.
The classification of names in -son raises the difficult question as
to whether Jack represents Fr. Jacques, or whether it comes from
Jankin, Jenkin, dim. of John. [Footnote: See E. B. Nicholson, The
Pedigree of Jack.]
Taking Johnson and Jackson as separate names, we get the order
Johnson, Robinson, Wilson, Thompson, Jackson, Harrison. The variants
of Thompson might put it a place or two higher. Names in -kins
(Distribution of names, Chapter IV), though very numerous in some
regions, are not so common as those in the above classes. It would be
hard to say which English font-name has given the largest number of
family names. In Chapter V. will be found some idea of the
bewildering and multitudinous forms they assume. It has been
calculated, I need hardly say by a German professor, that the possible
number of derivatives from one given name is 6, 000, but fortunately
most of the seeds are abortive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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