The Romance of the London DirectoryBardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
History
The Romance of the London Directory
Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell
Names, English -- England -- London; Names, Personal -- England -- London
(_f_) _Names of counties_ naturally follow the last class: as
Derbyshire, or Kent, or Lancashire, or Cumberland, or Kentish, or
Devonish, or Cornish, or Cornwall. A new comer would easily get a
sobriquet of this sort after stepping across the border line of two
contiguous shires.
(_g_) _Names of countries and nationalities_ may fitly be set last: as
Ireland, Scott, Welsh, Walsh, Wallace, English. These, of course, are
marks of migration. If an Englishman went into Scotland he would be
Peter the English, or Inglis; or _vice versâ_, he would be Peter the
Scot. Foreign districts are represented by such names as “Britton” from
Brittany, “Burgon,” or “Burgoyne,” from Burgundy, “Gaskin” from Gascony,
and so on with French, Holland, Fleming, and Aleman or Alman, the old
name for Germany. The French form for this latter is “D’Almaine,” or
“Lallimand.” Both have found their way to London; thus showing a double
immigration, first from Germany to France, and then from France to
England. Our Sarasins and, Sarsons (when not metronymics for Sara-son,
_i.e._ Sarah’s son) are interesting relics of crusading times, when the
Templar loved to bring back with him a young Saracen boy to act as his
page. The name is enrolled as “Sarracen” in many ancient registers.
Turk also exists. A “William le Turk” lived in London just four hundred
years ago, and four “Turks” may be seen in the Directory to-day. The
Rev. Richard Thorpe, incumbent of Christ Church, Camberwell, married
Thomas Turk to Jane Russ on October 26th, 1877, during the negotiations
for peace at Constantinople. How one wishes that such a hopeful union
might be brought about between the nations represented by the names of
this pair! It is fair to add, that in this case “Russ” is merely a
corruption of “Rous,” or of “Rouse,” red-haired or ruddy-complexioned—a
favourite nickname with our forefathers. Our “Rowses” and “Russells” are
of similar origin.
One name in the London Directory deserves a paragraph to itself, and also
to be classified alone, if one single sobriquet can be said to comprise a
class. This remarkable surname is “World.” What a cosmopolitan the
ancestor of the bearer of this title must have been! Mr. Bowditch, an
American writer on surnames, has recorded an instance in the Western
continent, for he says, “Columbus discovered a world, and so have I. Mr.
World lives at Orilla.” The sobriquet of course is a corruption, but of
what I cannot say.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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