To return to the social summit, we have Kingson, often confused with
the local Kingston, and its Anglo-French equivalent Fauntleroy.
Faunt, aphetic for Anglo-Fr. enfaunt, is common in Mid. English. When
the mother of Moses had made the ark of bulrushes, or, as Wyclif calls
it, the "junket of resshen," she--
"Putte the litil faunt with ynne"
(Exodus ii. 3)
The Old French accusative (Chapter I) was also used as a genitive, as
in Bourg-le-roi, Bourg-la-rein, corresponding to our Kingsbury and
Queensborough. We have a genitive also in Flowerdew, found in French
as Flourdieu. Lower, in his Patronymics Britannica (1860), the first
attempt at a dictionary of English surnames, conjectures Fauntleroy to
be from an ancient French war-cry Defendez le roi! for "in course of
time, the meaning of the name being forgotten, the de would be
dropped, and the remaining syllables would easily glide into
Fauntleroy." [Footnote: I have quoted this "etymology" because it is
too funny to be lost; but a good deal of useful information can be
found in Lower, especially with regard to the habitat of well-known
names.]
ECCLESIASTICAL NAMES
Names of ecclesiastics must usually be nicknames, because medieval
churchmen were not entitled to have descendants. This appears clearly
in such an entry as "Bishop the crossbowman," or "Johannes Monacus et
uxor ejus Emma," living in Kent in the twelfth century. But these
names are so numerous that I have put them with the Canterbury
Pilgrims (ch. xvii.). Three of them may be mentioned here in
connection with a small group of occupative surnames of puzzling form.
We have noticed (Chapter XII) that monosyllabic, and some other,
surnames of local origin frequently take an -s, partly by analogy with
names like Wills, Watts, etc. We rarely find this -s in the case of
occupative names, but Parsons, Vicars or Vickers, and Monks are
common, and in fact the first two are scarcely found without the -s.
To these we may add Reeves (Chapter XVII), Grieves (Chapter XIX), and
the well-known Nottingham name Mellers (Chapter XVII). The
explanation seems to be that these names are true genitives, and that
John Parsons was John the Parson's man, while John Monks was employed
by the monastery. This is confirmed by such entries as "Walter atte
Parsons," "John del Parsons," "Allen atte Prestes," "William del
Freres," "Thomas de la Vicars," all from the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
Another exceptional group is that of names formed by adding -son to
the occupative names, the commonest being perhaps Clarkson, Cookson,
Smithson, and Wrightson. To this class belongs Grayson, which
Bardsley shows to be equivalent to the grieve's son.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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