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
the limits of the metropolitan cathedral, was to be seen, joining
reverently in the service, His Majesty King Pepple! What can more
vividly demonstrate to us in the nineteenth century the ease with which
these nicknames—some sober, some ludicrous, some complimentary, some the
reverse—would be affixed to certain of our forefathers four or five
hundred years ago, and cling to them and to their posterity to all time?
Every old list of names had its large proportion of nicknames. Take the
members of the York Corpus Christi Guild of the fifteenth century. We
find such associates as Henry Langbane (Longbone), John Ambuler (from his
gait), Thomas Chaste, William Fellowship (from his social habits), Agnes
Blakmantyll (Black-mantle, from some favoured garment she wore), Margaret
Amorous, Thomas Brownlace, William Fairbarne (pretty child), Agnes Fatty,
William Goodbarne (good child), William Goodlad, John Godherd (if not
Goddard, then Good-herd), Richard Gayswain, Richard Preitouse, John
Young, Robert Pepirkorne, John Makblyth (Make-blithe, a very pretty
name), Isabella Maw, William Wyldest, Peter Trussebutt, John Handelesse,
John Corderoy, John Bentbow, Robert Sparrow, and William Nutbrown. These
are all trades members of the same guild in the then small city of York.
Their origins are as simple as they are various. In Makeblithe,
Fellowship, and Gayswain, we see a joyous disposition; in Peppercorn and
Truss-butt, the owners’ business; in Amorous, Chaste, or Goodbairn, moral
characteristics; in Blackmantle and Brownlace, peculiarities of habit; in
Longbone, Handless, and Nutbrown, bodily idiosyncracies. And so on with
the rest. What a mine of surnames is here opened out to view! How
largely representative is the London Directory, we have already seen in
the case of animal names, to which class belongs Robert Sparrow in the
above list.
In continuing the subject, it is at once manifest that we can but
generalize. We have had to do so with all the other classes; especially
are we compelled in the division we have styled “Nicknames.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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