The Romance of the London Directory
Date: 2016-04-12T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Names; Personal -- England -- London; English -- England -- London

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Title: The Romance of the London Directory

Author: Charles Wareing Endell Bardsley

Release date: April 12, 2016 [eBook #51739]

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the [1899] “Hand and Heart” edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANCE OF THE LONDON DIRECTORY ***

Transcribed from the [1899] “Hand and Heart” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

THE ROMANCE
OF
THE LONDON DIRECTORY.

BY

CHARLES W. BARDSLEY, M.A.,

Vicar of Ulverston,

AUTHOR OF “ENGLISH SURNAMES,” ETC.

“This Booke containes the names of mortall men;
But thear’s a Booke with characters of golde,
Not writ with incke, with pensill, or with pen,
Wheare Gode’s elect for ever are inrolde,
The Booke of Life; wheare labor thou to bee,
Beefore this Booke hath once re-gistred thee.”

From a Church Register.

London:
“HAND AND HEART” PUBLISHING OFFICES,
1, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C.

[The right of translation is reserved.]

HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEY, PRINTERS
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

PREFACE.

When the enterprising and energetic editor of The Fireside wrote suggesting that he should print my articles on the London Directory, published at various intervals during the last two years in that magazine, I was somewhat taken aback.  I will candidly confess that half of them, or thereabouts, were written with some degree of care: I will as honestly admit that the rest were indited amid the press of heavy ministerial labours, and had to take their chance, as regards manner, method, and matter.  Nevertheless, I may add that, however wanting in order and sequence several chapters appeared on paper, I was not afraid for the accuracy of their contents.  My only credit for this, supposing my lack of fear to be well founded, is that which attaches to diligent research.  The only true means of discovering the origin of our surnames is to find the earliest form of entry.  Light upon that, and half the difficulty vanishes.  This is a means which is as open to any of my readers as myself—more so in the case of those who dwell in the metropolis.

I take this opportunity of apologising to many readers of The Fireside, who have written to me asking for information in respect of their own, or some other name they were interested in.  A few I have been able to answer; the rest have had to lie by, for I have not had the time or health to attend to them.  I only wish there was the possibility of this preface meeting the eye of my American cousins.  I have a large batch of letters of inquiry, from the other side of the Atlantic, to scarcely one of which have I been able to make reply.  I feel truly sorry, for I would not seem to be wanting in courtesy to one of them.  These more distant inquiries have resulted rather from the publication of “English Surnames” (issued by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly), than the articles in The Fireside.  And I would take this opportunity of recommending such of my readers as have become interested in the science of nomenclature, through a perusal of these elementary papers, to study that work.  I can do this the more readily as I have no pecuniary interest in the sale thereof!

Not the least of the pleasures attending the writing of these papers has been the opportunity it gave me of making personal acquaintance with the Editor.  I trust God will bless him in his most useful enterprise.

St. Mary’s Vicarage, Ulverston.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

INDIVIDUALIZATION AND LOCALIZATION

9

CHAPTER II.

THE DIVISIONS OF LONDON SURNAMES

24

CHAPTER III.

IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION

41

CHAPTER IV.

ROBIN HOOD AND THE LONDON DIRECTORY

55

CHAPTER V.

EARLY PET NAMES

68

CHAPTER VI.

THE BIBLE AND NOMENCLATURE

82

CHAPTER VII.

OFFICERSHIP

98

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EMPLOYMENTS OF OUR FOREFATHERS

114

CHAPTER IX.

NICKNAMES

132

CHAPTER X.

NICKNAMES (continued)

148

CHAPTER I.
INDIVIDUALIZATION AND LOCALIZATION.

All proverbs are not necessarily true, but that which asserts that “every man has his hobby” few will gainsay.  Nothing in a house so well betrays this hobby as the owner’s bookcase.  It may be large, or it may be small, but there the secret lies.  One man’s hobby is angling, and his shelf begins with quaint Isaac Walton, and ends with the Field newspaper of last week.  Another has a liking for natural science, and his library is a vade mecum of its mysteries.  A third—oftentimes a lady—loves ferns, and her study is a little compendium of that curious literature that has all but wholly sprung up within the present generation.  Even the young lady’s shelf of poems, or novels, or histories, betrays, if not the bent of her mind, the bias of her education.

My hobby is Nomenclature, and my library betrays my weakness in—what class of books, do you think?—directories!  You would think I was a postal official.  I have London Directories, Provincial Town Directories, and County Directories.  I have even a Paris and a New York Directory.  But herein lies a strange truth.  I find as much pleasure in perusing these directories as any schoolgirl over her first and most sensational novel.  The grand finale of murders, suicides from third-storey windows, and runaway weddings, all so thrillingly blended, cannot be half so absorbing to her—not that I recommend her to read such things—as the last chapter of the London Post Office Directory, from Y to Z, is to me.  It is the conclusion of one of the grandest and most highly wrought romances ever put together by the ingenuity of man.  Oftentimes in the evening I take it down from my shelf, and I never feel tempted to skip the pages.  Nay, when I have at last got to Z, I can begin at A again with but freshened interest; for the Directory will bear reading twice.

The London Directory, to every one who has the key that unlocks its treasures, is at once an epitome of all antiquarian knowledge.  In it I can trace the lives of my countrymen backwards for many a century.  In it is furnished a full and detailed account of the habits and the customs of my ancestry—the dress they wore, the food they ate, six hundred years ago; though that it is not so far back as the Welshman’s pedigree, which hung from his sitting-room ceiling to the floor, and half-way up had a note to the effect that “about this time Adam was born.”  No, I can but pretend to go up some eighteen or twenty steps of the ladder of my family nomenclature.  Nevertheless, by one glance at your name I can tell you—unless its spelling be hopelessly corrupted—whether the progenitor of your race was Scotch, Irish, English, Norman, French, German, or even Oriental.  I can tell you what was his peculiar weakness, or his particular vocation in life.  I can declare the complexion of his hair; whether he was long or short, straight or crooked, weak or strong.  I can whisper to you what his neighbours thought of him; whether they deemed him generous or miserly, churlish or courteous.  Yes, sometimes I must tell you unpleasant truths about your great, great, great (ad infinitum) grandfather.  For the Directory is remarkably truthful; it won’t spare anybody, high or low, rich or poor.  I have heard people telling of the greatness of their ancestral name, and the said name on their visiting card was laughing at them all the time “behind its back.”  I have seen men dwelling in back slums contented with their sphere, and yet ignorant of the fact that they bore a sobriquet which six centuries ago would have brought them respect from the king on his throne down to the humblest cottager in the land.  Oh, the ups and downs of life, as related in this big romance, put to paper by prosaic clerks, who never smiled at the fun, nor dropped a tear at the distress, simply because they lacked the manual that should explain its merriment and interpret its pathos!  Hieroglyphics, believe me, are not confined to Egyptian obelisks or Oriental slabs.

But some reader, perchance, will say, “What do you mean?  Is there anything more in a surname than the individuality it gives to the present bearer?  In itself is it not purely accidental?”  Of course it is accidental.  A fossil shell is accidental; but place it in the hand of a geologist, and he will talk for five days upon it, barring the time he will want for eating and sleeping.  And a surname is a fossil—not millions of years old, may be, like the shell; only six hundred—still a fossil, and therefore stereotyping the state and condition of human life at the period when it came into being.  A surname not only gives individuality to the present bearer, but is a distinct statement of some condition or capacity enjoyed or endured by the first possessor.  An instance will prove this.  Take the name of “Cruikshank.”  There must have been some particular ancestor so designated because he had a “crooked leg.”  That is a fact to start with.  Do you want to know where he lived, and when?  Well, there is no great difficulty in the matter.  The very spelling “cruik,” and not “crook,” proves that he was a north countryman.  Is that all?  No.  The word “shank” shows that he received this nickname before “leg” had come into ordinary use.  Leg is always used for shank now, yet it is first found in England about the year 1250.  It is comparatively modern.  Hence there is no surname that I know of with “leg” as an ingredient. [12]  In later days he would have been called “Bow-leg.”  Once more, nickname-surnames are scarcely ever found to be hereditary before the year 1200.  Here then I glean four facts about “Cruikshank”:—

(1)  The first Mr. Cruikshank was bow-legged.

(2)  He came from the borders of Scotland, or still more north.

(3)  He lived previous to the year 1400.

(4)  And not earlier than the year 1200.

I have taken this instance hap-hazard.  I might have selected an exacter illustration, but this will answer my purpose.  It is possible my reader will now say, “But there must be a good substructure of primary knowledge laid before I can take up the London Directory, and pretend to be immensely interested in it, and tell my friends what capital reading it is.”  Of course, every true pleasure must be bought, and study will purchase infinitely higher delights than money can ever do.  It is partly that you may learn how to acquire that necessary elementary knowledge that I am about to write these short chapters upon the London Directory.

Before I begin, let me say a few words about personality and locality.  We should always begin at the beginning.  The preacher never starts at fourthly; soup by some mysterious law ever precedes fish.  Remember, the necessity for individuality has given us our Names.  The need of an address has originated our Directories.

(1)  Individualization.  The word surname means an added name—i.e., a sobriquet added to the personal or baptismal name.  Why?  Because one was not sufficient to give individuality to the bearer.  Adam and Eve, and Seth, and Abel, and Joseph, and Moses, all were enough while population was small; but manifestly such simplicity could not last.  In the wilderness there were, say, 2,500,000 Israelites.  How could one suffice there, especially if “Caleb” or “Joshua” had become so popular that there were, say, 50 or 100 of each in the closely-packed community?  It was not enough: therefore we find a surname adopted, that is, an added name.  “Joshua, the son of Nun”—“Caleb, the son of Jephunneh”—are amongst the world’s first surnames.  In Directory language this is simply “Joshua Nunson,” or “Caleb Jephunneh.”  Simon Barjonas is nothing more than Simon Johnson.  Remember, however, these were not hereditary.  They died with their owner, and the child, if there was one, got a surname of his own.  Surnames did not become hereditary in Europe even till the beginning of the twelfth century, and among the lower classes not till the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Imagine London with, say, 3,000,000 souls, each possessing but one name.  Picture to yourself to-morrow’s post bringing 1000 letters to “Mr. John,” or “John, Esquire.”  We can’t conceive it.  No, a surname became an imperative necessity when population increased, when men herded together, and communities began to be formed.  It is curious to note that some of these surnames have become so common that they have failed of their object, and ceased to give individuality.  There are 270,000 “Smiths” in England and Wales, and as many “Joneses.”  They would together form a town as large as Manchester, or separately as big as Leeds.  William Smith scarcely individualizes the bearer now; so he either gets three names or four names at the font, or his identity is eked out by a remarkable single name, perchance “Plantagenet,” or “Kerenhappuck,” or “Napoleon,” or “Sidney.”  The worst of it is that “Sidney” was so greedily fixed upon after it became famous that there are now hundreds of “Sidney Smiths,” and thus it has ceased to give proper individuality.  It is the same with “John Jones.”  The Registrar-General says that if “John Jones” were called out at a market in Wales, either everybody would come, or nobody: either everybody, thinking that you meant each, or nobody, because you had not added some description which should distinguish the particular John Jones you wanted.  I remember at college two John Joneses went in for examination for the “little go.”  Both belonged to the same college; one passed, the other did not.  The one who got first to the schools bore away his certificate in triumph.  The one who came last always declared that his confrère had robbed him of his “testamur,” and I have no doubt will die assured of the same!  I believe a day will come when, either by compulsory enactment or by voluntary arrangement, there will be a redistribution of surnames in Wales; the sooner the better.

(2)  Localization.  So much for the personality; now for locality.  It is one thing to know the name of the man you want; it is another thing to know where you can find him.  In a word, where does he live?  “Go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus,” says the Divine Book.  This would not be enough in the nineteenth century.  There are streets a mile long now.  There are restaurants above the shops, and offices above the restaurants, and the old woman who cleans the building above them all.  How is Mrs. Betsy Pipps to be found of her friends?  Yet a letter from her daughter in the country about the cows and the turnips has as much right to find its way to that top room in the murky city as a posted document about Turkey and Russia to Lord Derby in that big place a little further on.

One of the greatest transformations the streets of London ever saw was when the signboards were taken down.  These were at first adopted purely to localize the inhabitant of the house pendent from whose wall the signboard swung.  Until the reign of Queen Anne, the streets could scarcely be seen further than a few yards because of these innumerable obstructions.  They darkened the streets, obscured the view, and threatened the very lives of the horsemen who rode along.  The personal discomfort to wayfarers was great, for not only did the rain drip unpleasantly from them, but the wooden spouts, which frequently shot forward from the roof in order that the signboard might swing from them, poured their little cataracts upon the devoted heads of the passers-by.  This infliction was patiently endured for several centuries; but the British ratepayer at last made his voice heard, as in the end he always does.  This time, too, he had right on his side, as he invariably thinks he has, and an alteration took place.  The ruling powers ordered the obnoxious signs to be placed flat against the walls.  The idea of removing them entirely was reserved for a more brilliant intellect a few years later on.  I have not yet seen the printed regulation for the metropolis, but no doubt the Manchester document was but a copy of it.  The declaration issued for that town runs as follows: “With the approbation and concurrence of the magistrates, we, the borough reeve and constables, request the shopkeepers and innholders of this town, who have not already taken down their signs, to do the same as soon as possible, and place them against the walls of their houses, as they have been long and justly complained of as nuisances.  They obstruct the free passage of the air, annoy the passengers in wet weather, darken the streets, etc.,—all which inconvenience will be prevented by a compliance with our request, and be manifestly productive both of elegance and utility.”

Of the utility there could be no doubt.  In wet weather, as already hinted, everybody who had a coat collar had to turn it up to prevent each swinging sign from dripping the rain-water down the back of the neck.  Umbrellas were still rare, costly, and curious luxuries.  In a word, the swinging sign was voted an intolerable nuisance, was found guilty, and condemned—not to the gallows, of course, for the charge against it was that it had been hanging there to the public detriment all its days—but to oblivion.  I daresay London had made away with many of its cumbersome signboards many years before the provincial towns.  It is curious to note that in a hundred different nooks and corners of old London there still linger some of the tradesmen’s signs, either flattened against the wall, or carved upon the now crumbling stonework.

There are endless allusions to the signs of old London in the comic or semi-comic rhymes of the period.  Thomas Heywood, early in the seventeenth century, says:—

“The gintry to the King’s Head,
The nobles to the Crown,
The knights unto the Golden Fleece,
And to the Plough the clowne.
The Churchman to the Mitre,
The shepherd to the Star,
The gardener hies him to the Rose,
To the Drum the man of war.”

There is a capital collection of these names in a ballad of the Restoration, which is far too long to quote in full, but of which the following is a specimen:—

“Through the Royal Exchange as I walked,
Where gallants in sattin doe shine,
At midst of the day they parted away,
To seaverall places to dine.
The ladyes will dine at the Feathers,
The Globe no captaine will scorne,
The huntsman will goe to the Greyhound below,
And some will hie to the Horne.
The farriers will to the Horse,
The blacksmith unto the Locke,
The butchers unto the Bull will goe,
And the carmen to Bridewell Clocke.
The pewterers to the Quarte Pot,
The coopers will dine at the Hoope,
The coblers to the Last will goe,
And the bargemen to the Sloope.
The goldsmith will to the Three Cups,
For money they hold it as drosse;
Your Puritan to the Pewter-canne,
And your Papists to the Crosse.
Thus every man in his humour,
That comes from the northe or the southe;
But he that has no money in his purse
May dine at the signe of the Mouth.”

Again, Pasquin, in his “Night-cap,” says:—

“First there is Maister Peter at the Bell,
A linen draper, and a wealthy man;
Then Maister Thomas that doth stockings sell,
And George the grocer at the Frying Pan.
And Maister Miles the mercer at the Harrow,
And Maister Mike the silkman at the Plow,
And Maister Nicke the Salter at the Sparrow,
And Maister Dicke the vintner at the Cow.”

Another jingling rhyme began:—

“I’m amused at the signs
As I pass through the town,
To see the odd mixture,—
A ‘Magpie and Crown,’
The ‘Whale and the Crow,’
The ‘Razor and Hen,’
The ‘Leg and Seven Stars,’
The ‘Scissors and Pen,’
The ‘Axe and the Bottle,’
The ‘Tun and the Lute,’
The ‘Eagle and Child,’
The ‘Shovel and Boot.’”

These double signs were very common, and are easily explained.  Now-a-days a man who has taken the goodwill of a well-established shop paints over the door “Snooks, late Jopson, Chemist.”  The apprentice in old days added his own badge to that of his late master, and the signboard displayed perhaps the “Mermaid and Gridiron,” or the “Leg and Crow,” the old sign being linked to the new.

The reader may think I have dwelt somewhat long upon this matter; but I am writing about localization, and these signboards in their day were the only means of identifying the London tradesman.  Names and numbers were practically useless.  How small a proportion of the London population could read even two hundred years ago!  Mr. Baxter might have “Baxter” in the largest gilt characters over his front; he might further add that he made and sold that newly-discovered luxury tobacco on the counter within,—but how many of the passers-by would be any the wiser!  But if he had a large swinging board at the end of a pole, facing the wayfarers, with a huge Turk’s head with a pipe in its mouth, there was none but could tell his occupation.  Sometimes the real article was exhibited.  The hosier would dangle a pair of stockings from his pole.  Thus it was that every shopkeeper was known by his sign.  The housewife would send little Tom to the “Cock,” or the “Three Cranes,” or the “Ark,” or the “Hand-in-hand” for her little domestic wants, where now she would bid him run to “Tomkins’,” or “Sawyer’s,” or “Robinson’s.”  In course of time the sign did not always harmonize with the articles sold within, but it was quite enough for the neighbours dwelling around.  What an array of creaking posts and grotesque frames must there not have been along the leading thoroughfares, such as Cheapside, and old London Bridge! and leaving out the question of discomfort, and the perils of a broken head if you drove on a coach, what a picturesque scene it must have been!

I dare not say what a large proportion of names in the London Directory that look like nicknames must be set down as the result of this old-fashioned custom.  The fourteenth century saw London streets looking as if hung with bannerets, so crowded were they with signs.  That was a period when half of the lower middle class were still without an hereditary surname.  The consequence is, we find such entries as “Hugh atte Cokke,” or “Thomas atte Ram,” or “Thomas del Hat,” or “Margery de Styrop.”  The reader must see at a glance that we have here the origination of half our “Cocks” and “Coxes,” “Rams,” “Roebucks,” “Tubbs,” “Bells,” “Crows.”  There are three “Hatts” to forty-one “Heads,” three “Pates” and two “Crowns” in the London Directory, not to mention three “Harrows,” two “Plows,” four “Boots,” and ten “Pattens.”  All these, and a hundred other names that appear difficult of origination, are easily explained when we recall this faded custom of a few centuries ago.

The plan of having numbered doors came into use but very recently.  The signboards were disused in many parts of London before numerals were instituted.  The addresses on letters appeared very strange as a consequence.

John Byrom, the great epigrammatist, writing to his wife from Cambridge in 1727, addresses his letter to “Mistress Eliz. Byrom, near the old Church, in Manchester.”  That was the ordinary method, to choose some big well-known building, and state your friends’ position to it by the compass.  The first Directory ever published, of any pretensions, was Kent’s, in 1736.  “The Directory,” it is called, “sold by Henry Kent, in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange.”  It contains about 1200 names, all the tradesmen and merchants of London.  There are such entries as “Samuel Wilson, hardwareman, in Cannon Street, the corner of Crooked Lane,” or “John Bradshaw, opposite the Monument, at a barber’s.”

Manifestly this could not go on.  In the edition for 1770 occurs the following: “The Directory . . . with the numbers as they are affixed to their houses, agreeable to the late Acts of Parliament.”  The Legislature had had to take the matter into hand.  London was getting far too big for indistinct addresses such as these.  The first street in the metropolis to possess numbered doors was New Burlington Street.  This was accomplished in June 1764.  Other important throughfares followed suit, and before ten years had gone by, we find the Directory particularizing as follows: “John Trelawney, haberdasher, No. 22, Nightingale Lane,” or “Hamnett Townley, hop merchant, No. 69, Great Tower Street.”  Occasionally a “Vincent Trehearn, hatmaker, behind St. Thomas’s,” comes, but rarely; and by-and-by such entries disappear altogether.  Manchester began the same practice in 1772, at the request of the borough reeve and constable, and was the second town in the kingdom to adopt the practice.

It was reserved for the year 1877 to put a climax, I think, to ingenuity of this kind.  In Manchester, probably in London also, there are lamp-post Directories.  You cannot always have a Directory at your elbow.  Even this difficulty is remedied by the lamp-post Directory.  The names of all shopkeepers in that particular street wherein the lamp-post stands are printed alphabetically on a circular tablet, which revolves round the post.  You turn it round till you find the name you want.

What ingenious creatures we are!  Well might our great poet say, “What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties!”  Well might one greater than William Shakespear declare, “Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels”!  The ingenuity of man has created the surprises of history.

CHAPTER II.
THE DIVISIONS OF LONDON SURNAMES.

We have explained the origin of surnames as an institution.  We have shown that as the population of the earth increased, and mankind began to form themselves into closely-packed communities, a demand arose for a more distinct individuality.  As a consequence, men took an additional sobriquet; or rather, it was fixed on them by their neighbours, for in nine cases out of ten the bearer had no voice in the matter.

The peculiar feature of our earlier surnames is that they were not hereditary—father, mother, daughters, sons, and even the grandchildren, might all be living at the same time, in the same hamlet, even under the same roof, and yet possess each a distinct sobriquet, which was the mark of their identity.  Let us first draw out an imaginary pedigree, and then quote from a real one.

[25]

This would have to be the kind of family tree drawn out among our country yeomen and town merchants, from say 1200 to 1450, after which date we may begin to look for hereditary surnames.  The great-grandfather, Richard, is known by the village in which his house is situate.  Of three sons the eldest, Richard, is distinguished from Richard his father by his small stature.  He becomes therefore Richard Little in the common parlance of his neighbours.  The second son, William, has taken charge of the village pound for strayed cattle.  He is known as William atte Pound (i.e. at the Pound).  The third son, Henry, has very light hair, almost white, although he is still but a youth.  This being somewhat remarkable, causes him to be distinguished from all other Henrys in the same community by the sobriquet of Henry Whitehead.  Of the third generation, William atte Pound has two sons, one of whom, Bartholomew, becomes a servitor of more menial rank in the great baron’s castle hard by.  Of course he becomes Bartholomew Page.  The other John stays at home to help his father.  Naturally he is better recognised by his filial relationship than his brother, and becomes John William’s son, and by-and-by John Williamson.  But Henry Whitehead has a son also, and as Hawkin or Halkin was then the pet form of Henry, Adam, the son, becomes Adam Hawkins.  The fourth generation will now be beyond the need of explanation.

Take now a real pedigree from Camden:—

[26]

There is nothing that needs explanation in this pedigree except Philip’s surname of Gough.  The family residence was at Malpas, as seen above.  This was on the Welsh frontier.  Gough is the Welsh for “red,” so that Philip had evidently got his surname or nickname amongst the Cambrian population from his ruddy complexion.

We are now well on the way to survey the groups or classes into which the surnames in the London Directory can be divided.  Nothing can simplify the study of nomenclature so readily as a consideration of the classes into which surnames may be placed.  If the reader will turn to the imaginary pedigree of the Colton family, he will see that the ten surnames therein contained may be set under five heads.  Richard of Colton, William atte Pound, and James Bentham, are known by a place-name; John Williamson, Adam Hawkins and Alice Adams by the father’s Christian name; Richard the Baker by his daily occupation; Bartholomew the Page by his official capacity; and Richard the Little and Henry Whitehead by a sobriquet having reference to their personal appearance.  Here, then, are five distinct classes.  There is not a surname in the London Directory, nor in England, nor in Europe, nor in the whole known or unknown world, that cannot be placed, and placed correctly, under one of the five heads that I have thus foreshadowed:—(1) Local names.  (2) Baptismal names.  (3) Names of occupation.  (4) Official names.  (5) Nicknames.  The first of these to become hereditary were the Norman local names.  Many of the Conqueror’s followers took or received as a surname the title of the place they left in Normandy.  He who left the chapelry of St. Clair across “the silver streak” settled in England as “William, or Robert de St. Clair.”  In course of time this became “Sinclair” and “Sinkler;” just as “St. Denis” became “Sidney;” “St. Pierre,” “Spier” and “Spiers;” or “St. Leger,” “Selinger.”  “Sinkler” is as vile a corruption of “Sinclair” as “Boil” from “Boyle.”  Some folk say, “What’s in a name?”  One thing is clear: there is a good deal in the spelling of it.  These local names, however, were the first hereditary names in England.  But the Normans introduced representatives of all five classes.  Take a single instance of each.

Norman-English.

Saxon-English.

I.

Local

Sidney

Burton.

II.

Baptismal

Fitz-Hamon

Jenkinson.

III.

Occupative

Taylor

Baker.

IV.

Official

Chamberlain

Steward.

V.

Nicknames

Fortescue

Sheepshanks.

“Fortescue” means “brave” or “strong shield.”  Hence the family motto has a punning allusion: “Forte Scutum, salus ducum,”—i.e., “A strong shield is the safety of leaders.”  If we take a glimpse at any village roll four hundred years ago, representatives of all these classes will invariably be found, although the baptismal and local will largely predominate.  Look at the “Custom Roll and Rental of the Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, 1422” (Chetham Society Publications).

I.

Local

Robert of Chadwick

Thomlyn of the Leghes.

II.

Baptismal

Tomlyn Diconson

Robyn Robynson.

III.

Occupative

Roger the Baxter (Baker)

Richard the Smith.

IV.

Official

Jak the Spenser

William Somaster (Summaster).

V.

Nicknames

Elyn the Rose

Hobbe the Kynge.

Every secluded village in England at this moment, every churchyard with its simple epitaphs, every vestry register with its recorded births and marriages and deaths, contains representatives of these several divisions.  When we come to such a big place as the metropolis, a little world of itself, we expect to find these classes largely exhibited.  I have taken the trouble to analyse the first five letters of the alphabet in the London Directory.  Curious are the results.  We may premise that there are about 120,000 names in the Commercial list.  My analysis concerns about 30,000 of these—that is, exactly one-fourth.

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

Total.

Local

915

5093

3259

1377

716

11,360

Baptismal

1763

1647

1535

1935

1323

8203

Occupative

37

899

1546

169

—

2651

Official

139

575

949

48

26

1737

Nicknames

45

2089

685

210

67

3096

(Foreign)

184

569

293

419

119

1584

(Doubtful)

120

850

476

193

56

1694

Total

3203

11,722

8743

4351

2307

30,326

Without some further explanation, these figures will seem utterly incongruous.  I make no apology for the somewhat large number of doubtful instances.  Those who have studied this subject will consider it small.

Notice under “A,” the baptismal names are double all other classes added together; while under “B,” the local names, excluding doubtful instances (a large proportion of which must be local), are also double the rest.  This is easily explained.  Five hundred years ago some Christian names were enormously popular.  Andrew was one.  Under the forms of Andrews and Anderson, etc., we have a total of 290 names.  Allen was another.  There are 250 “Allens” [29] in London, without adding other forms of the name.  There is no local name under “A” to compare with these.  Under “B” this position is reversed.  Of local names there are about 142 Barnes, 56 Bartons, 37 Becks, 85 Berrys, 55 Boltons, 44 Booths, 58 Bradleys, 120 Brooks, besides a large list of lesser but fairly proportionate names.  Baptismal names under “B” are not so fortunate.  ’Tis true there are 70 Barnards, 66 Balls (Baldwin), 83 Bartletts (Bartholomew), 52 Bates (Bartholomew), 199 Bennetts (Benedict and Benjamin), and 40 Batemans (an old English baptismal name), but with these the list is well-nigh exhausted.  Under “C” the occupative class is larger than the baptismal.  This would be unaccountable did we not remember that there are no less than 283 Cooks and Cookes, 265 Coopers, 221 Carters, 64 Chandlers, 51 Carpenters, and 35 Cartwrights in the Directory.  Under “C,” too, the official class is very strongly represented.  There are about 520 Clerks, Clarks, and Clarkes, not to mention 120 Cohens and Cohns (i.e., priest), which, though of Jewish origin, are not set down in the foreign list, inasmuch as the vast majority of them have sprung from Cohens settled in England for centuries; indeed, a large number of them pass for pure English blood.  Nicknames are best exhibited under “B,” for there are no less than 650 forms of Brown in the London Directory alone, not to mention 160 Bells and 120 Bishops—one hundred and twenty Bishops in London!  This beats all the episcopal conferences of modern times hollow.  By-and-by I shall explain why “Bishop,” and such names as “Pope,” “Cardinal,” “Prince,” and “King,” must be set in the nickname class.  I now may note the fact, and pass on.  With respect also to the 160 Bells, we must not forget that they have three distinct origins.  The following registered forms are found five hundred years ago:—“Peter le Bel” (i.e., the handsome), “Richard fil. Bell” (i.e., the son of Bell, i.e. Isabella), and “John atte Bell” (i.e., at the Bell, the sign-name at some country hostel).  Our friends the Bells may choose which they like.  I should select the first, I think, but tastes may differ.  Again, notice under “E” that the baptismal names far outnumber the aggregate of all other classes, the occupative being without a representative at all!  The popularity of Edward and Elias (always called Ellis) has done this.  There are about 330 Edwards in London; and adding together the different forms of Ellis, such as Elliot (the pet name of Ellis), Eliot, Elliotson, Ellice, Ellicot (the pet form of Ellice), Ellison, Elkins, Elkinson, Elcock, Ell, Else, Elson, and a dozen other dresses in which the name is arrayed, all of which I shall explain hereafter, we have no less than 370 representatives of Elias.  That the Crusades brought “John” and “Elias” into favour in England is easily proved, and I shall have a word to say about the matter in another chapter.  There are a hundred interesting remarks to make about such names as these, if one allowed oneself to be tempted out of the beaten track, but I control myself.  Notice lastly, that under “D” one-tenth of the names are foreign—that is, of recent importation from the Continent.  The explanation of such a large proportion is that very many foreign local surnames preserve the “de,” or “del,” or “de la,” as a prefix.  “De Jersey,” “De Grelle,” “Delattre,” “Delcroix,” “Delavanti;”so they run.

In concluding this chapter, the question may be asked—and a very important one it is—how many differently spelled names, counting a single spelling as one, are there in each class?  The answer to this will show the vast predominance of local names in our Directories.  If we exclude foreign (nearly all local) and doubtful (of which three-fifths must be looked upon as local), then the local class under A, B, C, D, and E, is double all the rest.  We may prejudge that this ratio applies to the whole alphabet.

Local.

Baptismal.

Occupation.

Official.

Nickname.

Foreign.

Doubtful.

Total.

A

153

120

9

8

4

101

41

436

B

917

158

86

43

120

307

176

1807

C

952

168

100

48

122

231

173

1794

D

310

174

17

6

40

336

75

958

E

255

149

0

2

13

92

29

540

Total

2587

769

212

107

299

1067

494

5535

Thus the total number of distinct surnames in the London Directory under the first five letters is 5535.  Omitting foreign and doubtful, the local class are double the rest.  Therefore the rhyme quoted by Camden is true, that

“In ‘ford,’ in ‘ham,’ in ‘ley,’ and ‘ton,’
The most of English surnames run.”

All names with this termination are local, and comprise a large proportion of our national nomenclature.

One word about the doubtful class, and I have done.  A hundred years ago even, as our registers show, there was no established orthography for surnames in the highest ranks of society.  How much less so, then, among the illiterate orders!  I find a clergyman’s name, Bann, spelled Bann, Ban, Banne, and Band between 1712 and 1736.  He was Rector of St. Ann’s, Manchester, during that period.  The spelling of Shakespear’s name at this moment is the subject of almost bitter conflict.  Being clearly of the nickname class, my view is that it must be written “Shakespear.”  Illiterate clerks have done much to obscure the meaning and origin of names.  I know a register where the clerk has written “Pickering” as “Pikrin,” and on the next page informs the reader that several names have been “rong placeed.”  “Pamela” he inscribes as “Permelea.”  Butcher is found in the London Directory in the following forms:—“Boucher,” “Bowcher,” “Bowker,” “Bosher,” “Bowsher,” “Bowser,” “Boutcher,” and “Botcher.”  The Norman “Chesney” (equivalent to English “Oakes”) is found as “Cheney,” “Chaney,” “Cheyney,” “Chesney;” and “Chesnil” as “Chisnall,” “Chisnell,” and “Channell.”  Thus, too, “Solomon” becomes “Slowman” and “Sloman.”  Sir William Dugdale found the Cheshire “Mainwarings” in no less than 131 forms; but this will not seem so strange when we consider that they include “Mainwayringe,” “Meinilwarin,” and “Mensilwaren”!

I could furnish endless instances of names that have undergone corruptions of this kind through defective spelling, and the lack of a standard orthography.  Few people would recognise Oursley as Ursula, but that is a common form in the seventeenth century, when that was one of our commonest girl names.  In Hokington Church, under date 1611, occurs the following entry:—

“George, sonne of Fenson Benet, and Jane, baptised.”

A previous Rector had been one Vincent Goodwin, and being popular, many of his parishioners had had children christened after him.  The form entered is invariably Fenson, and I dare say after a generation or two none of the less educated would know what the original name had been.  In the Calendar of Pleadings we find that one Quintin Snaneton, of Gringley Manor, made three several suits within ten years—all in the reign of Good Queen Bess.  He is thus entered on each occasion:—

1. (15th Eliz.) Quyntine Sneydon of Gringley Manor.

2. (20th Eliz.) Quintin Snaneton of Grinley Manor.

3. (25th Eliz.) Quyntin Sneyton of Grynley Manor.

Thus there are three distinct variations of Christian name, surname, and place of residence,—nine in all, when only nine were possible!  This, too, in a formal legal document.  Take another instance given to me by J. Paul Rylands, F.S.A.  In Edward the Third’s reign lived one Henry le Machun by name.  His son was Adam le Machoun.  Passing downwards, his descendants are found as Macound, Macount, Macont, till in 1584 they are Macon, a year later Maconde.  In 1592 they are Makant, and Makont, in 1609 Macante, in 1610 Makin, in 1620 Macond, in 1624 Meacon, in 1626 Meakin, in 1644 Macant, in 1650 Meakyn.  We are in a perfect wilderness by the time the last entry is reached,—and thus some of our present Makins, instead of deriving their surname from Makin, the once pet name of Matthew, may be descended from Mason, which, belonging to a totally different class, owes its existence to the occupation of its first bearer.  Thus, as we turn over the pages of the London Directory, we are being ever struck by the many guises under which one single name may appear.  It is palpable to the most uninitiated that Langwith, Langworth, and Langworthy are all the same, and that all may have had the same common ancestor.  The merest tyro in nomenclatural knowledge must recognise at a glance that Gibbins, Gibbings, and Gibbons are one and the same name, and that Smithers, Smithies, and Smithyes may have boasted a common progenitor.  There is no Raleigh in the London Directory.  Has, then, Sir Walter no representative?  Yes, for there are three Rawleys, who have learnt to spell their name as it was pronounced three centuries ago.  But how do we know Sir Walter’s name was pronounced like Rawley?  The following skit was written at the poet’s expense by a contemporary critic, who attacked his supposed atheistic notions.  We may premise that Walter was always pronounced Water then.

“Water thy plants with grace divine,
And hope to live for aye:
Then to thy Saviour Christ incline,
In Him make stedfast stay.
Raw is the reason that doth lie
Within an atheist’s head,
Which saith the soul of man doth die,
When that the body’s dead.
Now may you see the sudden fall
Of him that thought to climb full high;
A man well known unto you all,
Whose state, you see, doth stand Rawly.”

The last word is supposed to mean “rarely,” and thus a double pun is attempted, both proving the name to have been pronounced in a fashion not common now.

But while these names can be traced to their true source and meaning, it is not so with others.  Take the following from the London Directory:—“Six,” “Seven,” “Nine,” “Spon,” “Spitty,” “Kiss,” “Slape,” “Im,” “Ey,” “Tattoo,” “Tubby,” “Yewd,” “Zox,” “Toop,” “Kitcat,” “Sass,” “Knags,” “Neeb,” “Siggs,” “Saks,” “Toy,” “Stidd,” “Stap,” and “Shum,”—what do they mean?  Whence came they?  Ask the bearers, and they will say, no doubt, that they came over with William the Conqueror.  They are not the only people who have tried to come William the Conqueror over us.

In this last list we have mentioned “Kiss.”  This reminds me that there is one instance in the same tome much more demonstrative than that—namely, “Popkiss”!  But there is no difficulty in deciphering this, as it is a manifest corruption of Popkins, and that of Hopkins.  The Directory teems with examples of the termination kins being turned into kiss and again into ks.  Thus we have not merely Perkins, but Perkiss and Perks—not only Hodgkins, but Hotchkiss—not alone Wilkins, but Wilks; and so oh with many others.

While some surnames are hopelessly corrupted, and therefore incapable of interpretation, others are a stumbling-block because they seem so easily explainable.  Such are names like “Coward,” “Craven,” and “Charley.”  The “Coward,” or Cowherd, was a tender of kine; “Craven” is local; and “Charley” is the same.  “Deadman” and “Dedman” are, like “Debnam,” but corruptions of “Debenham,” and therefore local also.  “Tiddyman” looks as if its first bearer had been tidy in his habits; but it was once a Christian name, and therefore is a patronymic.  “Massinger” has been not uncommonly explained as Mass-singer.  Of course it is the early form of “Messenger.”  “Diamond” is a form of “Dumont,” and “Doggrell” of “Duckerell”—that is, little duck, a manifest nickname.  “Eatwell” and “Early” are also both of local origin.  “Portwine” is first found as “Poitevin,” the old name for an inhabitant of Poictiers; and “Coleman,” though apparently connected with the black diamond, is an early baptismal name.  There is a peculiar tendency to skip the natural solution, and go to the Continent, especially Normandy, for the origin.  Thus “Twopenny,” a palpable relic of the twopenny piece, and twopenny ale, is represented as hailing from Tupigny in Flanders.  “Death” is said to be from D’Aeth in the same; “Bridges” from Bruges; and “Morley” from Morlaix, where lived St. Bernard—regardless of the fact that there are a dozen hamlets styled “Morley” in England; indeed, wherever there is a moorland reach there is a village or farm styled “Morley.”

A lady wrote to me the other day to inform me that I had made a mistake in ascribing the name “Mason” to the craftsman of that name, for she was sure she was sprung from Mnason in the Acts of the Apostles, and that the family had worked its way through Phrygia, and Italy, and Germany, into England.  If she can prove her pedigree, she may boast a genealogy which the proudest monarch in Europe might envy.  The fact is, it is as true of a hundred reputed foreign names as of the rhyme of the three Devonshire families, which asserts that

“‘Croker,’ ‘Crewys,’ and ‘Coplestone,’
When the Conqueror came were at home.”

What a pleasant book to look upon would our Directory be if we had all had the selection of our own surnames!  There would have been no “Pennyfathers.”  This was an old English nickname for a miser.  An old couplet says,—

“The liberall doth spend his pelfe,
The pennyfather wastes himself.”

That such a disposition need not be hereditary is proved in the case of one of the most generous, earnest Christian ministers who ever worked for Christ in London.  Mr. Pennefather is dead; but who would think of connecting him with the characteristic his name implies?  Again, there would have been no “Piggs,” no “Rakestraws” (an old nickname for a dust-heap searcher), no “Milksops,” no “Buggs,” no “Rascals.”  But the fact is, the man who had most interest in the matter had least to do with it.  All he could do was to accept his sobriquet, if not with thanks, with such grace as he could muster.  If his children could shuffle it off, so much the better.  Our Directory proves that this was not always possible.  ’Tis true, we have got rid of “Alan Swet-in-bedde’s” nominal descendants, not to mention such cognomens as “Cheese-and-bread,” “Scutel-mouth” (what a great eater he must have been!) “Red-herring,” “Drink-dregs,” “Cat’s-nose,” “Pigg’s-flesh,” “Spickfat” (i.e. bacon-fat), “Burgulion” (a braggart), and “Rattlebag.”  But many of these names made a hard fight for it, and contrived to hold out till the seventeenth, or even eighteenth, century.  “Piggs-flesh,” I say, is gone; but “Hog’s-flesh” has been a name familiar to Brighton and its neighbourhood for six hundred years, and still lives.  Charles Lamb’s little comedy, called “Mr. H.—” (i.e., Hog’s-flesh), had for its hero’s sobriquet no fanciful title.  No doubt Mr. Lamb had seen the name in a Sussex Directory.  The story is a relation of Mr. H.’s troubles in polite society through the attempt to hide his name under the mere initial.  When it is discovered, everybody deserts him.  As he quits his hotel, his landlord says:—

“Hope your honour does not intend to quit the ‘Blue Boar.’  Sorry anything has happened.”

Mr. H. (to himself): “He has heard it all.”

Land.: “Your honour has had some mortification, to be sure, as a man may say.  You have brought your pigs to a fine market.”

Mr. H.: “Pigs!”

Land.: “What then?  Take old Pry’s advice, and never mind it.  Don’t scorch your crackling for ’em, sir.”

Mr. H.: “Scorch my crackling!  A queer phrase; but I suppose he don’t mean to affront me.”

Land.: “What is done can’t be undone; you can’t make a silken purse out of a sow’s ear.”

Mr. H.: “As you say, landlord, thinking of a thing does but augment it.”

Land.: “Does but hogment it, indeed, sir.”

Mr. H.: “Hogment it!  I said augment it.”

Land.: “Ah, sir, ’tis not everybody has such gift of fine phrases as your honour, that can lard his discourse.”

Mr. H.: “Lard!”

Land.: “Suppose they do smoke you—”

Mr. H.: “Smoke me!”

Land.: “Anon, anon.”

Mr. H.: “Oh, I wish I were anonymous!”

It is curious to notice that many objectionable names still exist, simply because the words themselves have become obsolete, and the meaning forgotten.  We will leave them in their obscurity.

CHAPTER III.
IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION.

I said in my last chapter that nearly half of the names in the London Directory are of local origin, and I proved my statement by an appeal to certain figures.  We have not all the brand of Cain on our brow, but certainly man has ever been “a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth.”  History, sacred and profane, teems with the records of the flights of nations from one land to another.  From the days of the Israelites’ escape from Egypt to the flight of the Huguenots from France, there have been emigrations which have been the direct results of persecution.  From the year that saw Babel erected and the language confounded, the races of mankind have struck out a path for themselves in one direction or another of the earth’s vast continent.  The curious feature is this,—It is to the dictionary we must go to discover whence each several horde set forth.  The language of every nation clearly tells where lies the cradle of its birth.

But emigration and immigration lie not alone with nationalities.  The world has not always been a vagabond en masse.  From the day that Jacob started for the East to find his uncle, from the morn that saw Ruth clinging to Naomi, while she said, “Whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge,” there has ever been going on a wondrous silent efflux or influx of individual wanderers.  Just as the mother-bird at the proper time, with seeming stern but true maternal instinct, pushes out her fledgling brood to seek a home and sustenance for themselves, so it has ever been with man.  To go forth and replenish the earth has been a Divine fiat which none could forego.  And what the dictionary is to the nation, the directory is to the individual.  In the name of each we know the land, the city, the hamlet, whence each set forward to battle with the world.  At any rate, this is strictly true of all local surnames.

In the course of the last six hundred years there has not been a single village or town in England that has not found its representative in London.  “All roads lead to the capital,” says an old proverb.  How true this is, the London Directory shows; for at this moment it would be hard to mention a place, big or small, from John o’ Groats to Land’s End,—the Dan and Beersheba of England,—whose name is not found therein as the title of some individual whose ancestor, long generations ago, left his native home to settle in what was, even then, the big city.  I was struck the other day by seeing two shops adjacent, the shopkeepers’ names on the doors being “Dearnally” and “Dennerley.”  Dearnally and Dennerley!  What a curious circumstance!  My mind went back six centuries, and I wove a little story.  Six hundred years ago, two brothers, or schoolfellows, or playmates, leave the little secluded hamlet of Dearnley. [43]  One is John, the other William.  John goes to Bristol.  “Whence come you?” say his Bristol associates.  “From Dearnley,” he replies.  Henceforward he is John o’ Dearnley, by-and-by to become simple John Dearnley.  “Whence come you?” says a Norwich artisan to William, who has turned his steps eastwards.  “From Dearnley: I wonder shall I see it again,” responds William, sadly, who is already home-sick,—for homes were homes then as well as now.  Henceforth he is William o’ Dearnley, or Will Dearnley.  Each marries, has children, dies.  His descendants, bearing his name, are scattered hither and thither over the broad land, like leaves before the cold keen blast of an October wind.  Corruptions of the name of course ensue.  The descendants of John are “Dearnally”; of William “Dennerley.”  Centuries after this, in the year of grace 1877, one of John’s generation, who has found his way to a big city, sees a new house, takes it, is a grocer, and inscribes his name Dearnally above.  In the meantime another stranger is eyeing a contiguous shop in the same block of buildings.  “Fine opening for a butcher here,” says he to himself: “I will take these premises.”  He does so.  Up goes his name.  What is it?  Dennerley!  Thus, after long years, nay, centuries, two descendants of the two playfellows, probably brothers, are to be seen dwelling together, each ignorant that when he wishes his neighbour good morning, he is rejoining links in a chain snapped, oh, so long ago!  The invisible destinies of God have recovered the lost associations of twenty generations!  Said I not, the London Directory is a romance?

I have selected this story for a purpose.  It explains the origin of every local surname in existence.  A man, in a new community to which he had joined himself, might go by the name of his occupation, as “Tinker,” or father’s Christian name, as “Peterson,” or by a nickname from his social habits, as “Good-fellow”; but in five cases out of ten he bore the title of the spot whence he issued forth.  Take a few instances of the mode and manner in which these local surnames were formed.  All my illustrations shall be from the London Directory.  For perspicuity’s sake I will separate them into classes.

(a)  Local names terminating in “er” and “man.”  “Churchman” would seem to bespeak the original possessor an Episcopalian.  But there was no dissent in the twelfth or thirteenth century.  It could give no individuality as such.  It was a local name, implying that John or Peter Churchman dwelt by the church.  Hence also “Churcher.”  In the north, “Church” was pronounced “Kirk.”  Therefore, in the north these two names are found as “Kirkman” and “Kirker,”—exactly as we find “Thacker” in Yorkshire to be “Thatcher” in Surrey.  Of this same class are Crosser and Crossman, reminding us that there was a time in pre-Reformation days when every village had its cross, which was as much a landmark as it was an object of reverence.  Bridger and Bridgman lived beside the wooden or stone structure that spanned the stream.

(b)  Some local names still preserve the affix or suffix corresponding to the French “del,” “de,” “du,” and “de la,” as Atwood, Atwater, and Atwell, once William at the wood, or at the water, or at the well.  By is found in Bywater, and Bythesea.  Sometimes the letter “n” got in for euphony’s sake, as in “Nash,” which is sprung from “atten-ash.”  “Thomas atte-n-ash” thus became Thomas Nash.  Hence Nolt for atte-n-holt (i.e. wood), or Nalder for “Alder.”  Townsend is from Town’s-end.  Thus Peter at the Town’s-end becomes Peter Townsend, or Townshend.  “Tash” is from “at the Ash”; and Thynne, a name belonging to one of our ennobled families, is said to be from one “John at the Inne.”

(c)  Most of these generic names have dropped all suffixes and affixes.  Here a hundred surnames present themselves to our eye.  Who does not know a Hill or Dale, a Field or Croft?  Who has not a friend called Craig or Cliff, or Dean or Hope?  Who has not met with a Grange or Moor, or Wood or Shaw?  Our “Streets” are as thick as Our “Lanes,” and in the busiest thoroughfares of London you may descry Barnes and Marshes and Parks and Forests and Warrens without end.  The village spring has given us our “Wells,” the village road our “Crosses,” and the village common has given us our “Greens.”  The following was addressed to a Miss Green on her fortieth birthday:—

“That evergreen thy graces show;
Some men say ‘Yes,’ and some say ‘No.’
Alas! that one and all agree
That ever-Green thy name shall be!”

Greener is common, being formed after the fashion of Knowler and Knowlman, and Streeter and Streetman, (vide under “a”).  A Mr. Greener being devoted admirer of a Miss Green, wrote as follows:—

“One dearest wish I fondly cherish,
My ever-Green so fair, yet lonely:
To make thee mine, and thus thou’lt flourish
Greener, and Greener only.”

To which she responded,—

“I’m Green indeed; but Greener thou,
To think by love declarative,
To make me change charms positive
For those at best comparative.”

Flood and Fell belong to this same class, except when Flood is Welsh, and then, like Floyd, it is the same as Lloyd.  A Mr. Isaac Fell is said to have had painted over his shop, in very legible characters, “I. Fell, from Ludgate Hill”; beneath which, one day, a Shakspearian wag wrote, “O what a fall was there, my countrymen!”  We have mentioned “Dean” above.  In composition it generally appears as “den,” and implies a sheltered and sunken glade closely surrounded with trees.  Hence it was a covert for cattle and wild beasts, and many of the names we now see bear out the fact.  Not merely do we talk of a “den of lions,” but we descry dens of “hogs,” “rams,” “oxen,” “kine,” and even “wolves,” in such surnames as Ogden, Ramsden, Oxenden, Cowden, and Wolvenden.  Other compounds of “den” are not so easily discernible.  What Heberden may mean I do not know.  There is still in the Directory one Heberden, a physician.  Probably it was his father, or grandfather, one of three great London doctors in George the Third’s reign, of whom the sixain got abroad:—

“You should send, if aught should ail ye,
For Willis, Heberden, or Baillie:
All exceeding skilful men,
Baillie, Willis, Heberden:
Uncertain which most sure to kill is,
Baillie, Heberden, or Willis.”

But Moore or “More,” or “Moor,” represented until late in London by George Moore, whose like we do not expect to see soon again, has been a butt for the shafts of wit for generations.  We could fill the remaining pages of this chapter with “torts and retorts” upon this sobriquet.  Lorenzo, in the Merchant of Venice, says, “It is much that the Moor should be more than reason; but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more than I took her for;” to which Launcelot replies irately, “How every fool can play upon the word!”  But some of these epigrams are not fools’ work, nevertheless.  When Sir Thomas More was Chancellor, his untiring devotion to his office brought a conclusion to all the Chancery cases in litigation.  The following got abroad:—

“When More some years had Chancellor been,
No more suits did remain;
The same shall never more be seen,
Till More be there again.”

When Dr. Manners-Sutton succeeded Archbishop Moore, this rhyme appeared:—

“What say you? the Archbishop’s dead?
A loss indeed!  Oh, on his head
May Heaven its blessings pour;
But if with such a heart and mind,
In Manners we his equal find,
Why should we wish for Moore?”

I might mention other similar attempts at rhymical puns on this name; but let this epitaph from St. Bennet’s Churchyard, Paul’s Wharf, London, suffice:—

“Here lies one More, and no more than he;
One More, and no more! how can that be?
Why, one More, and no more may well lie here alone,
But here lies one More, and that’s more than one!”

To this generic class belongs every name that suggests the familiar objects of the country.  Even the trees supply their quota.  Who is not aware of Mr. Harper Twelvetrees’ existence, and cannot see that his ancestor having made his abode beside some remarkable group of birch or oak or chestnut trees, has been styled by his neighbours “Peter atte Twelve-trees”?  Hence the French “Quatrefages,” and more English “Crabtree,” “Plumtree,” or “Plumptree,” “Rountree” (once written “Rowantree”), “Appletree,” and “Peartree.”  All these names still exist, and I find entries to prove they lived at least six hundred years ago.  To many of my readers it may seem somewhat strange that a single shrub should be pressed into the service of nomenclature in this manner.  But let him imagine himself without a surname, living in the country, in a lane, with no landmark adjacent but a stile, or an oak, or an ash.  How could he escape being called by his neighbours John Styles, or Oakes, or Ash?  If there were no trees, nor even a stile, how could he avoid being designated as John in the Lane, and finally John Lane?  Snooks might be set by “Twelvetrees,” for it is but a corruption of “Sennoks” and that of “Sevenoaks,” a well-known place in Kent.

(d)  The next division of local names is specific—viz. the names of towns or villages, such as Preston, Buxton, Oldham, Lancaster, Chester, York, and indeed all that class so multitudinous of which the old distich already quoted says,—

“In ford, in ham, in ley, in ton,
The most of English surnames run.”

Sometimes the “ley” gets corrupted.  There can be little doubt, for instance, that Hathaway is but a mispronunciation of Hatherley, and that Ann Hathaway’s progenitor hailed from Gloucestershire.  Was ever a more beautiful as well as clever punning rhyme made than that imputed to Shakespear?  One verse must suffice:

“Would ye be taught, ye feathered throng,
With Love’s sweet notes to grace your song,
To pierce the heart with thrilling lay?
Listen to mine Ann Hathaway!
She hath a way to sing so clear,
Phœbus might wondering stop to hear:
To melt the sad, make blithe the gay,
And Nature charm, Ann hath a way:
She hath a way,
Ann Hathaway,
To breathe delight, Ann hath a way.”

Five Hathaways and three Hathways still commemorate her in the Directory.  The termination “field” is corrupted into the form of “full” in several cases; thus Charles Hatfull’s name reads somewhat queerly.  Of course he belongs to the Hatfields who figure just above him.

See the tendency to migrate into, and not from London.  The name London is rare, as the Directory shows.  A man leaving Buxton for the capital, would be Walter-o’-Buxton; quitting the capital for the Peak of Derbyshire, he would be Walter-o’-London.  But the tendency being for a young aspirant after fame and wealth to go thither, and not thence, made the surname London of rare occurrence.  Perhaps there has been more than one Whittington who has fancied the bells have bid him stay and try his luck again in that big centre of life and industry, whose title is the most familiar place-name in the world.  Curious that the mightiest city of the mightiest empire should be so scantily represented in its own Directory.  The cause, as I have shown, is simple of explanation.  We may here set “New,” “Newman,” and “Strange.”  A new comer would easily get the sobriquet of “Matthew the New-man,” or “William the Strange,” or “Henry the New,” in the fresh community to which he had joined himself.  The sobriquet has stuck to his children, and still remains.

(e)  Names of foreign towns, the result of earlier or later immigration, come next: such as “Cullen” from Cologne, a name very familiar to English Roman Catholics; “Lyons” from the city devoted to the silk trade; “Bullen” or “Boleyn” from Boulogne; or “Janeway” or “Jannaway” from Genoa.

Many of these foreign town-names came into England through the fact that the towns they represented were celebrated for some particular production.  The “Challens” of our Directory all hail from Chalons, once so famous for its blankets that they were called “chalons” for several centuries.  The name still lingers in the woollen trade of Yorkshire as “shaloon cloth.”  Chaucer speaks both of “chalons” and “cloth of raines.”  This was made at Rennes in Brittany, and has furnished the London Directory with its various Rains, Rain, Raine, and Raines.  A writer in the “Book of Days” says the following was written upon a lady bearing the name of Rain:—

“Whilst shiv’ring beaux at weather rail,
Of frost, and snow, and wind, and hail,
And heat, and cold, complain,
My steadier mind is always bent
On one sole object of content,—
I ever wish for Rain!

“Hymen, thy votary’s praise attend,
His anxious hope and suit befriend,
Let him not ask in vain:
His thirsty soul, his parched estate,
His glowing breast commiserate—
In pity give him Rain!”

(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.

We might go on like Tennyson’s brook, “for ever,” in this chat over local names,—but enough.  We have only left ourselves space to remind the reader what vagrants we all are.  Like Dickens’ little street boy (in “Bleak House,” I think it is), there seems ever to be a shadowy policeman at our elbow bidding us to “move on.”  The Bible has foretold that this is to be our condition; and our names, at least those of local origin, have impressed on our very foreheads the truth of such a Divine prophecy.  ’Tis well it should be so.  Earth is not to be our dwelling-place for ever.  And though at times we may feel that we should like repose, it is in mercy that God applies the goad, for thus are we reminded that—

“Our rest is in Heaven, our rest is not here.”

The day will assuredly dawn for the Christian when he shall be enabled to take off his travel-worn shoes, when he shall enter into the home to which he has been making his way through so many weary stages, and from which there shall be no going forth, even for ever and for ever.  May every reader of this chapter be amongst that multitude of “vagabonds in the earth,” to use a Scripture phrase, who shall then “enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise.”

CHAPTER IV.
ROBIN HOOD AND THE LONDON DIRECTORY.

The largest class of surnames in the London Directory, we showed in our second chapter, after local names, were those of patronymic origin: baptismal surnames we called them.  If Richard has a son called Richard, it is easy to suppose that this child would go by the name of Richard Richard’s son, or Richard Dick’s son.  A third generation having appeared in the form of a grandson, called Richard, after father or grandfather, it will be readily supposed that, he being also Richard Richard’s son, or Dick’s son, the surname Richardson would now be sufficiently familiarised to become the hereditary cognomen of the descendants of this stock.  Thus Richardson and Dickson have sprung into being.  Thus every name of this class has originated.  Names like Johnson, Jackson, Timpson, Wilson, Harrison, or Stephenson, simply prove that the bearers of these several titles are descended from some particular John, Tim, Will, Harry, or Stephen, who when he died bequeathed his baptismal name as a piece of property to his immediate descendants—not deliberately, as he would his money and estates, but in the casual and accidental fashion recorded above.

We can understand that at first it would seem strange for a girl to go by a patronymic of this kind.  Imagine at this early stage of surname formation some village maid bearing the name of Mary Williamson (i.e., Mary, the son of William)!  To us, accustomed to these names, there seems nothing absurd in such a title as Matilda Johnson, or Margaret Davidson.  It never occurs to us to take the name to pieces, and see the incongruity of its several elements.  That this was a difficulty to our forefathers is evident from the fact that there are many entries like “Joan Willsdaughter,” or “Nan Tomsdaughter,” in the registers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.  Thus “Isabella Peersdoghter” lived near Durham four hundred years ago—i.e., Isabella, the daughter of Peers, i.e. Peter.  In the same way, “Avice Mattwife”—i.e., Avice, the wife of Matt (Matthew)—or “Cecilia Wilkin-wife,” is found at the same period.  The reason why surnames ending in daughter are not found now, is that if the girl with such a surname died unmarried, it died with her; if she married, she changed her name.  “Son,” as a termination having no difficulties of this kind to contend with, has left us a multitude of names.  Had it been otherwise, we should have had surnames like Steven-daughter, Dick-daughter, and Hopkin-daughter, contending for a place in our directories with “Stevenson,” “Dickson,” and “Hopkinson.”

It would seem as if the female sex, therefore, had been hardly treated in this matter of baptismal nomenclature.  Indeed, some of my readers might be tempted to ask me whether the gentler half of the community are represented at all in our directories.  I am happy to respond in the affirmative.  John and Margery might have a son, Robert by name.  Now, John is a timid, retiring kind of man; his wife being a bustling, active, assertive woman.  John sits in the chimney-corner, Margery does all the marketing, all the talking, possibly all the working also.  In a word, she rules the roost.  Naturally, the neighbours get into a way of calling the child “Robert Margerison,” rather than “Robert Johnson.”  Margerison, Margetson, and Margetts are all in the London Directory.  Take another instance: Hodge and Nell get married; Hodge dies, and a posthumous child is born.  Only the mother is living.  As a matter of course, the little one is styled Antony or Sarah Nelson, according to its sex.  A large number of metronymic surnames must be attributed to an accident of this kind.  All our “Ibbs,” “Ibbisons,” “Ibbsons,” “Ibbots,” and “Ibbotsons” are sprung from Isabella, a much more common and familiar name four or five hundred years ago than it is now.  Our “Emmetts,” “Emmotts,” “Emmotsons,” “Emms,” and “Empsons” are descendants of some “Emma,” or “Emmot,” as she was then styled.  Many people have refused to believe that there are any metronymic surnames, for fear that it would seem to imply illegitimate birth.  It is always silly to deny facts, and I have shown there is no reason to dread the charge in the great majority of these instances.

Every nation has its own peculiar way of forming the baptismal surname.  We have no less than five representing British as distinct from English nomenclature: Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh.  Each had his fashion of framing the patronymic, and all, I need not say, abound in the metropolis.  The Norman made fitz (French, fils) a prefix, and thus Gilbert, son of Hamon, became Gilbert Fitz-hamon.  The Saxon made son a desinence, and thus Ralph, son of Nichol, became Ralph Nicholson.  The Welshman put ap (i.e. son) in the forefront, like the Norman, and thus Owen ap-Richard became Owen Pritchard, or Griffin ap-Harry Griffin Parry, or Hugh ap-Rice Hugh Price.  The inhabitant of “Caledonia stern and wild” also set Mac at the beginning rather than the end, so that Andrew, son of Aulay, became Andrew Macaulay.  Lastly, our friends of the Emerald Isle prefixed Mac or O to the baptismal name, as their form of descent, and thus Patrick, son of Neale, became Patrick MacNeale, or Patrick O’Neale.  As the old rhyme has it:

“By Mac and O,
You all may know
True Irishmen, they say;
But if they lack
Both O and Mac,
No Irishmen are they.”

Thus within the boundary lines of our own Britannic realm we have “son,” “fitz,” “ap,” “Mac,” and “O” employed in the formation of one single class of surnames.  Sometimes the Welsh “ap” became “ab,” and thus ap-Evan has become “Bevan,” ap-Owen, Bowen, ap-Ethell, Bethell, and ap-Huggins, Buggins.  In the same way, ap-Lloyd is found in the London Directory as Bloyd.

There are about five thousand people in London bearing names of which “Robert” is the root and foundation.  I wonder if it has ever struck my reader that the nominal existence of four-fifths of this large population is the result of the life, adventures, and celebrity of that great outlaw Robin Hood.  To gather up the links of evidence would fill a volume.  I will occupy the remainder of this chapter by a brief resumé of the argument.  If I prove my assertion, this will be demonstrating the reality of my title, and show conclusively that the London Directory may be well styled a “romance.”

That Robin Hood was the fictitious name of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, has been proved an idle fable; but although there are serious doubts as to the existence of William Tell, there need be none as to the individuality of Robin Hood.  That a noted forester—an outlaw—of this name roved in the neighbourhood of Sherwood during the first four decades of the thirteenth century, is beyond dispute.

“In Locksley town, in merry Nottinghamshire,
In merry sweet Locksley town,
There bold Robin Hood was born and was bred,
Bold Robin of famous renown.”

He and his companions lived by spoil.  His popularity was twofold in origin.  He was credited with a spirit of liberty chafing against an oppressive and tyrannic rule.  He was equally credited, truly or the reverse, with unbounded kindness to the poor.  Camden styles him “prædonem mitissimum,” the gentlest of thieves.  Sir Walter Scott says of the spoil he heaped up, that he “shook the superflux to the poor,” and, in respect of government, “showed the heavens more just.”  Dying about the year 1247, it was not very long before he became an “institution”: every country ballad, every chapbook had its story of Robin Hood, his princely spirit, his skill in archery, his wondrous adventures, and his hair-breadth escapes.  The impression that he was of noble birth only added to his popularity.

This of course could not but have its effect upon the nomenclature of the time.  It is well known that when Thomas à Beckett was murdered, almost every child born immediately afterwards was, if a boy, christened Thomas.  To this tragedy myriads of Thompsons and Tomlinsons owe their surnames.  The dictionary and the directory are under equal obligations to Robin Hood.  There need be little doubt that Gough’s suggestion that his real name was “Robin o’ the Wood” (i.e. Sherwood) is true.  The corruption “Hood” is perfectly natural.

(1.)  Look at some of our place-names.  In 1730 there was a “Robin Hood’s Well,” about three miles north of Doncaster; and Leland, the great itinerary, visited “Robyn Hudd’s Bay,” under which antique dress we recognise the familiar village and coast “Robin Hood’s Bay,” betwixt Whitby and Scarborough.  Everybody has seen a Robin Hood’s oak, or a Robin Hood’s bower.  At this moment there are hundreds of country inns in the north, called “Robin Hood,” with a picture of the bold archer in dress proper, or intended to be so, to the period in which he is supposed to have lived.  His bow and arrow are of course always depicted, and occasionally a deer in the distance.

(2.)  Look at the old English proverbs; and we may premise that if a man has created a proverb he has made himself immortal.  “Good even, Robin Hood,” quoted by Skelton, poet-laureate to Henry VIII., implied “civility extorted by fear.”  Fuller quotes, “Many men talk of Robin Hood that neere shott in his bow.”  “To over-shoot Robin Hood,” is another proverbial saying.  This is quoted by Sir Philip Sidney.  “Tales of Robin Hood are good for fools,” is quoted by Camden.  The most familiar, however, was “to sell Robin Hood’s pennyworths.”  Fuller refers to this as of things half sold, half given; the great robber parting lightly with what he came by lightly.  “Robin’s choice,” this or nothing, would seem almost to have suggested “Hobson’s choice,” for Hobson is a patronymic of Robert, Hob being the old familiar pet name for the same.

(3.)  To Robin Hood, again, we doubtless owe the familiarity of several names applied to the spirit world.  Our forefathers were very superstitious, especially the country peasantry.  A belief in “brownies,” “dobbies,” “pixies,” and elves kindly or mischievous, still largely prevails in places removed from the busy towns.  Superstitions of this kind die where men are herded together.  It is only in dusky woodlands ghostly sights appear, or in the silences of the rural churchyard or forest avenue that voices are heard whose utterance is not from human throat!  Certainly Robin Hood must stand sponsor for much of the dread that nurses infused into naughty children’s breasts.  The pet names or nurses’ names of Robert were “Robin,” “Hob,” and “Dob.”  The ignis fatuus, to this day an object of apprehension, was associated early with the bold freebooter:—

“Some call him Robin Goodfellow,
Hob-goblin, or mad Crisp.
And some againe doe terme him oft,
By name of Will the Wispe.”

So says an old ballad.  Robin Goodfellow and Hob-goblin, it will be seen, represent the same name.  Another title for the same was “Hob-lanthorn” (i.e. Robin’s lanthorn).  Dr. Halliwell gives the term “Hob-thrush,” adding that it is always used in association with Robin Goodfellow.  In the “Two Lancashire Lovers” (1640) it is said, “If he be no hob-thrush, nor no Robin Goodfellow, I could finde with all my heart to sip up a sillybub with him.”  Here, then, are four names, “Robin Goodfellow,” “Hob-goblin,” “Hob-lanthorn,” “Hob-thrush;” all used to give personation to that curious light which occasionally may be seen in marshy and woody districts.  How natural that these should be associated with that mysterious denizen of the forest, whose name was in everybody’s mouth, and who came and went, who showed himself here, there, and everywhere, and yet could never be caught!

“From elves, hobs, and fairies,
Defend us, good Heaven,”

say Beaumont and Fletcher in one of their plays.  And every reader of Shakespear will remember how in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” the Fairy addresses Puck as—

“That shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow:”

while by-and-by she adds:—

“Those that Hob-goblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their worst, and they shall have good luck.”

In the extreme north of England the pet name for Robert was Dob, or “Dobbin.”  Curiously enough, to this day the term for Hob-goblin is there “Dobby.” [63]  I ask the reader, if this can be an accident?  Could it have been possible that five distinct names should be given to the ignis fatuus, or to such woodland elves as were supposed to reveal themselves under his frolicsome light, all having Robert as their chief component, had not the thousand and one stories about Robin Hood and his merry men and their nightly escapades been spread over the land by the ballad-mongers of the time that immediately followed his death?

(4.)  Once more: look at our general nomenclature of men, birds, beasts, and shrubs.  So common had “Hob” become in the northern and midland districts (for every man you might meet ’twixt York and Leicester was sure to be “Hob”), that it became a cant term for a country yokel.  Thomas Fuller in his “Lives” speaks of “country-hobs” where we should speak of “country-men.”  Thus, too, Coriolanus is made to say—

“Why in this wool-less toge should I stand here,
To beg of Hob and Dick?”

The jack-ass is just as often called “dobbin” in the north, and an ewe-lamb a hob-lamb.  The tame ruddock has become the “robin redbreast”; a chicken, a roblet (robelot, i.e., little robin); bindweed goes by the title of “Robin-run in the hedge”; the common club moss is “Robin Hood’s hatband”; while every child is familiar with “ragged robin,” and “herb-robert.”

Surely this is enough to testify to the popularity of Robert!  The fact is, that Robin Hood gave a start to his name similar in its effects to that of a snowball.  He has grasped all he has touched.  He has left his memory upon everything.  He has stamped his march upon things animate and inanimate.  So long as we have a language and a dictionary, a nomenclature, and a directory, we shall daily be reading and looking upon words and names which, however meaningless on the surface, are teeming with recollections of the bold outlaw, whose thrilling adventures, whose kindly bounties, whose supposed devotion to liberty, made him the idol of his own time, and an object of interest to his countrymen so long as England shall endure.

And now we may ask, what has Robin Hood done for English nomenclature, so far as surnames are concerned?  Well, in the first place, he made “Robert” the favourite name at the font for a century at least.  We even find Robin Hood itself appearing as a surname.  A tradesman bearing the sobriquet of Thomas Robyn-Hod, lived at Winchelsea in 1388.  At the very time that Robert was thus popular, baptismal surnames were being established.  As a consequence, Robert was no sooner a Christian name than it became a candidate for the place of a surname.  Remembering the different pet names in familiar use, it will not be so astonishing that I should be able to collect no fewer than forty-six separately-spelled surnames, all descended from this one single appellation! while London alone could gather into Hyde Park as many as five thousand souls whose individuality is recognised by their associates through the medium of this famous title.

(a)  Robert has given us Robert, Roberts, Robart, Robarts, Robertson, Roberson, and Roberton.

(b)  Robin has bequeathed Robin, Robins, Robbins, Roblin, Robinson, and Robison.

(c)  Rob has left us Robb, Robbs, Robbie, Robson Robkins, Ropkins, and Ropes.

(d)  Dob has handed down to us Dobb, Dobbs, Dobbie, Dobson, Dobbins, Dobbing, Dobinson, and Dobison.

(e)  Hob has transmitted Hobb, Hobbs, Hobbes, Hobbiss, Hobson, Hobbins, Hoblyn, Hopkins, Hopkinson, Hopps, and Hopson.

(f)  Besides these there were once such familiar French diminutives as Robinet, Dobinet, Robelôt, and Robertôt.  These did not come directly from France or Normandy.  They were forms adopted by the country people from the habit, common then as now, of copying the fashions of the more noble families.  Elizabeth Robinett will be found in the London Directory.  Hers is the only instance that I can find still existing.  The rest were all surnames in the fourteenth century. [66]

(g)  The Welsh, seizing upon the name, turned ap-Robert and ap-Robyn into Probert and Probyn, respectively.

Can I add anything to prove the popularity of Robin Hood?  It is possible that we could not have spoken of Hobbism, or of a Hobbist, for the founder of that system of philosophy might have borne some other name.  It is possible that there might have been no “Hobson’s choice,” for that worthy liveryman at Cambridge might, under some other sobriquet, have compelled the young collegian to take the next horse on the list, or none.  Certainly our old friend Punch would have been unable to poke fun at Cockneydom under at least one name of the famous company of “Brown, Jones, Smith, and Robinson.”  It is possible, too, that “before you could say Jack Robinson” would never have become an English commonplace.  How the phrase originated I cannot say, but it is a very old one, if the couplet quoted from an old play by Dr. Halliwell be genuine:—

“A warke it ys as easie to be doone,
As tys to saye ‘Jacke Robyson.’”

CHAPTER V.
EARLY PET NAMES.

The present and following chapter I purpose devoting to the further consideration of the subject of baptismal names.  There are distinct epochs in the history of names, as in the history of everything else.  One great crisis in our national nomenclature was the Norman Conquest.  With the exception of Alfred, Arthur, Edwin, Edward, Ethel, and say a dozen other agnomens which were preserved through various accidents, all English names of the pre-Norman period disappeared before the end of the twelfth century.  They were literally submerged beneath the advancing tide of Norman titles and usages.  All the great popular sobriquets so familiar to us to-day, such as William, Henry, Ralph, Richard, Gerald, Robert, and even Scripture and Saint’s-day names like John, Ellis (Elias), Stephen, and Matthew, belong to the later epoch.

But an equally grave crisis in English nomenclature was the publication of an English Bible, and the Reformation of Religion that followed.  From that day all our common and familiar Bible names came into use.  Till then the only Scripture names in vogue were those set down in the Calendar of the Saints, or such names as were employed in the “Mysteries,” or “Plays” taken from Scripture stories, performed at festivals for the amusement and instruction of the peasantry and tradespeople.  From the day of the Reformation the out-of-the-way sobriquets of the Bible came into favour.  As these increased, what we may call the pagan names decreased.  The popularity of Harry, Dick, Robert, and Walter began to fade.  Some, like Hamond, Avice, Drew, Payn, and Warin, altogether disappeared, while Guy, Baldwin, and Edward held but a most precarious existence.

Here then are two epochs—the Norman, and the Puritan.  Let us confine ourselves in this chapter to the first.

“Pagan” and “Christian” were both favourite baptismal names in the Norman epoch.  The former was registered as “Payn” or “Paine.”  Chaucer says,—

“The constable and Dame Hermigold, his wife,
Were payens, and that country everywhere.”

All our “Pagans,” “Payns,” “Paines,” and “Pinsons” are from this old-fashioned sobriquet.  A century ago, the Hon. Thomas Erskine having been seized with a serious illness, and kindly tended at Lady Payne’s house in London, wrote,—

“’Tis true I am ill; but I need not complain,
For he never knew pleasure who never knew Payne.”

Christian has never been popular in England, but Christopher has; and besides the long “Christophers” and “Christopherson,” has left us Kitts and Kitson.

Another name, a Scripture name too, is now all but wholly disused—that of Samson.  I daresay many of my readers have thought that our many Sampsons are all but entirely descended from Sam-son, i.e., the son of Samuel.  I have no hesitation in claiming a full half for the son of Manoah, the Danite.  The old registers teem with entries like “Samson de Battisford” or “Sampson Dernebrough.”  Shallow says (2 Hen. IV.), “And the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer behind Gray’s Inn.”

“I am not Samson, nor Sir Guy, nor Colbrand,
To mow ’em down before me,”

says the porter’s assistant in Henry VIII.  The fact is, the story of Samson was a favourite one with our forefathers, and often performed at the miracle-plays.  There are nearly fifty Sampsons and Samsons in the London Directory, some of them being of purely Jewish descent.  “Elegant Extracts,” a favourite storehouse of good, bad, and indifferent (very) poetry for the youth of our country in the last century, has the following, anent this name:—

“Jack, eating rotten cheese, did say,
‘Like Samson, I my thousands slay.’
‘I vow,’ quoth Roger, ‘so you do,
And with the self-same weapon too.’”

Speaking of Roger, we may note that he is fast going out of fashion.  There was a day when “Hodge” was as familiar as Hob, Dicon, or Harry.  A single glance at our Directory will prove this, for to him we owe all our Hodges, Hodgsons, Hodgkins, Hodgkinsons, Hodsons, Hotchkiss’s, etc.  Just as Hob, from Robert, became Dob in North England, so Hodge, from Roger, became Dodge.  From Dodge we get our Dodgshons, and Dodgesons.  Just as, also, Hodgson became Hodson, so Dodgson has become Dodson.  The Welsh turned Ap-Roger into Prodger.  All this proves a popularity for Roger utterly beyond its present modest pretensions.

A great deal of nonsense has been written upon one of the noblest family names in England—Howard.  It is constantly said, and as constantly reiterated, that the sobriquet is one of occupation, being nothing more nor less than Hog-ward, or hog-herd, corresponding to Swinnart from swine-herd, Coward from cow-herd, Shepherd from sheep-herd, Calvert from calve-herd, and Stoddart and Stottard from stot-herd (i.e., stot, bullock).  All these latter are without doubt what they seem to be, for old registers give them in their more manifest dress.  But Howard is only another form of Harvard, or Hereward, or Heoruvard.  Thus we find such an early entry as John Fitz-howard (that is, John, the son of Howard), clearly a baptismal surname.  When Byron wished to hurl an invective at the head of his relative, the Earl of Carlisle, he quoted Pope,—

“What can ennoble knaves, or fools, or cowards?
Alas! not all the blood of all the Howards.”

The italics are Byron’s, and every one knows the family name of the Lords of Carlisle.  As a quotation, it was apt; as applicable to the Earl, it was the opposite; but Byron in a rage meant Byron ungovernable either by courtesy or truth.  However, my point is, that the ancestral house of the Howards are not descended from a hog-herd,—though it would be no disgrace if they were, for a shepherd once became a king and a poet,—but from one of those grand personal names which existed in England before the Norman Conquest was dreamt of.  “Hereward, the Saxon” has been made familiar within the last few years by Charles Kingsley.  This is but the same name in an earlier dress.  It might have been considered a happy thought, if the author had dedicated his book to one of the Howards, and stereotyped their identity.

In my work on “English Surnames” I have given a somewhat exhaustive list of the various appellations formed from English baptismal names.  So I will merely hint at a few and pass on.  Walter, as Wat, gave us Watkins, Watts, Watson, and Watkinson.  The old familiar form for Walter was Water, which explains Shakespear’s play upon the name in Henry VI.:—

“My name is Walter Whitmore.
How now! why start’st thou?  What, doth death affright?

Suffolk.  Thy name affrights me, in whose sound is death.
A cunning man did calculate my birth,
And told me that by water I should die.”

Our Waters and Watersons are thus explained.  Antony has bequeathed us Tonkin, Tonson, and Tounson; Philip, Phipps, Phillips, and Philpotts (i.e. Philipot, that is, little Philip, a pet name).  A curious form of Philpot may be seen in the Directory in the shape of Fillpot.  This reminds us that many a play has been made on the name.  It was not so very long ago that Punch facetiously remarked upon the fact that the newly elected Bishop of Worcester was Philpott, the then Bishop of Exeter being the celebrated Philpotts,—

“‘A good appointment?  No, it’s not,’
Said old beer-drinking Peter Watts;
‘At Worcester one but hears “Philpott,”
At generous Exeter “Philpotts.”’”

A large number of patronymics are to be seen in the surnames that come under the division “N” in the Directory.  In the old song “Joan to the Maypole” it is said,—

“Nan, Noll, Kate, Moll,
Brave lasses, have lads to attend ’em:
Hodge, Nick, Tom, Dick,
Brave country dancers, who can amend ’em?”

“Nan” stands for Anna or Hannah, Noll for Olive or Oliver, in this case Olive, a girl’s name.  In fact, every name that began with a vowel was turned into a pet form beginning with “N.”  Edward became Ned, and Emma Nem.  Thus in St. Peter’s, Cornhill, the register says,—

“Sept. 20, 1577.  Fryday, buryed, Nem Carye, daughter of Harry Carye.”

Humphrey became Nump, and Abel, Nāb.  In Ben Jonson’s “Alchemist,” the tobacco man Abel addresses Face,—

“Yes, sir; I have another thing I would impart,”

to which Face replies,—

“Out with it, Nāb.”

Again, Isabella became Nib.  The result of this is, that such surnames as Nibbs, Nabbs, and Nemms or Neams, are common.  Even Nance, which figures twice in the Postal Directory, is just as likely to be the old “Nans,” from Anna, as from the town of Nantes.  The owner can take his choice, however, and probably will prefer the local origin.

Talking of girls’ names, we may notice how many surnames owe their origin to Matilda, Emma, Isabella, and Petronilla.  There are pages of Tillotsons, Tillots, Tilletts, Tilts, and Tills, all from the old pet form Till.  Emma, too, is commemorated in little companies of Emms, Emps, Emsons, Empsons, Emmotts, Emmetts, and Emmotsons; while Isabella is not far behind with the retinue of Ibbs, Nibbs, Ibbotts, Ibbetts, and Ibbotsons.  Petronilla, the feminine form of Peter, was always known as Parnel, and is thus found in St. Peter’s, Cornhill:—

“1586, Aprill 17.  Sonday, christening of Parnell, daughter of William Averell, merchaunt tailor.”

Hence our many Parnells and Parnalls.  Mary has left us Mollison and Marriott (i.e. little Mary), but was never popular in England during the days of surname formation.  Maria was practically unknown till the seventeenth century.  As Charles Lamb says,—

“Maria asks a statelier pace,—
‘Ave, Maria, full of grace!’
Romish rites before me rise,
Image worship, sacrifice,
And well-meant but mistaken pieties.”

It is a proof that even in days long anterior to the Reformation the English peasantry had an inrooted objection to a foreign religious yoke, in the shape of Popery, that such names as Peter and Mary should be so scantily represented.  ’Tis true that Peter has left his mark upon the Directory.  There are shoals of Peters, Petersons, Perkins, Pearces, Piers, Pierces, and Pearsons, but their origin belongs to an earlier day.  Certain it is, that at least a century before the reign of Mary, the name was growing into disrepute with the English people, and no doubt the obnoxious tax of Peter’s-pence was at the root of it.

Guy was turned in Norman nurseries into Guiot (i.e., little Guy); this in English was transformed into Wyatt.  How popular this name was four hundred years ago, is proved by the fact that there are nearly sixty Wyatts set down in the London Directory alone.  William, Walter, Warin, and Wyatt all testify to the change of French G into English W.  In the French Directories they will still be found as Guillaume, Gualter, Guarin, and Guiot.  And as Guillaume became William, so Guillemot (little William) became Williamot, and then Wilmot.  The French, however, unlike the English, were very fond of adding two diminutives to the name.  Thus, Guillot (little Will) became Guillotin (little wee Will).  This reminds us of Dr. Guillotin, who invented that terrible instrument which played such a horrible part in the French Revolution.  In the same way, Hugh (always spelt “Hew” in mediæval records) became English Hewet (little Hugh), and French Hugot.  But our neighbours, inserting another diminutive, turned it into Hugenot (little wee Hugh).  This at once explains a matter of much contention.  There has been much strife as to the origin of the word Huguenot.  Had our friends only been aware of the fondness of the French some centuries ago for double diminutives, they would have seen at once that the sect sprang from some individual bearing that name, the origin of which is perfectly simple.  It may be of interest to add, that we in England have never used double diminutives.  In France it was the rule rather than the exception, as their Directories fully prove.  Introduced by the Normans, we have both “in” and “ot” or “et,” as in “Colin” and “Hewet,” from Nicholas and Hugh; but we never conjoin them to one name.  A Frenchman four hundred years ago would have turned them into “Col-in-et,” “Col-ot-in,” “Hugu-in-ot,” or “Hug-ot-in.”  ’Tis true, we in England called children “Rob-in-et,” as I have shown in a previous chapter; but it was a mere passing fancy.  I was wrong, however, in stating that the surname “Robinet” is practically obsolete, for Mr. Hutton, the Rector of Stilton, writes to inform me that in a village adjacent there are several families of this name.

Thomas owed its great popularity to Thomas à Becket, who for a time at least was a popular idol.  Few baptismal names have laid their impress on the London Directory as this has done.  Rows of Thomas’s appear, many hailing from the Welsh border.  These are flanked by columns of Thompsons with a “p,” and Thomsons without a “p.”  Dancing attendance on these more important members of the Thomas family, are scattered up and down a few Thomassets, and Thomsetts, memorials of the old pet name “Thomaset” (i.e. little Thomas).  But Thomas seemed to imagine that the “h” in his side ought to be got rid of, so he appears in shoals as Tompkins, with a “p” again, and again as Tomkins without a “p.”  Poor relations do not like to make their connection too prominent, for fear of giving offence, so in the background, but close enough to be ready to make good their claim, appear several Toms, Thoms, Tomes, and Tombs.  This last looks very funereal indeed, and would seem to be a local name taken from one who has had his dwelling amid the tombs, but “b” was often put at the end in that way.  Thus Timbs is from Tims, that is, Timothy.  A string of Tomlins and Tomlinsons completes the list.  Many will remember the rhyme about Thomas the footman, whom his lady married:—

“Dear lady, think it no reproach,
It showed a generous mind,
To take poor Thomas in the coach,
Who rode before behind.

“Dear lady, think it no reproach,
It show’d you loved the more,
To take poor Thomas in the coach,
Who rode behind before.’”

There are a fair number of Guns, Gunns, and Gunsons, in our Directory.  There is a slang phrase about being the “son of a gun.”  This was a common occurrence in old days when such entries as “Richard filius Gunne” were frequently made.  The fact is, “Gun” was a baptismal name, and the surnames mentioned above are but sprung from it.  It is not many years since Mr. Gunson preached the assize sermon at Cambridge before Mr. Baron Alderson and Mr. Justice Patteson.  The following rhyme got abroad:—

“A Baron, a Justice, a Preacher,—sons three:
The Preacher, the son of a Gun is he;
The Baron, he is the son of a tree;
Whose son is the Justice I can’t well see,
But read him Paterson, and all will agree
That the son of his father the Justice must be.”

Alderson is but a form of Aldrichson, Aldrich being once a common baptismal name; while Patterson, Paterson, Pattison, and Patteson, are all commemorative of Patrick, who, strange to say, was scarcely remembered at the font at all in Ireland at a time when he was very popular in England.

Every country has a sobriquet which stands as a kind of baptismal name for the nation, as distinct from the individual.  England is represented by John, or John Bull; Scotland by Alexander, as Sawney or Sandy; Ireland by Patrick, as Pat; and Wales by David, in the dress of Taffy.  Let us trace their origin very briefly, and see their effect upon our nomenclature.  In 1385 the Guild of St. George, at Norwich, contained 376 names; of these 128 were John!  This extraordinary proportion was the direct result of the Crusades.  From the Jordan, in which Christ had been baptized, every crusader brought home in his bottle water for baptismal purposes.  He could not christen his child by the name of Jesus, the Baptized—this would be blasphemy; but he could give it the name of the baptizer, John.  Remember, too, that John the Baptist was “Elias.”  Hence Baptist, John, Ellis, and Jordan, became the favourite baptismal names for several generations.  Our Jordans, Jordansons, Jordsons, Judds, Judsons, and Judkins are all memorials of this, for Judd did not become the pet name of George till the seventeenth century.  In early days it was the nickname of Jordan.  The other day I saw a register of a child christened “River,” his surname being Jordan.  Thus both names have the same origin.  This kind of thing is common.  I know registers where may be seen three “River Jordans.”  “Windsor Castle” occurs in a Derbyshire church record.  But John took the lead.

One of the most curious freaks in the history of nomenclature is that which made Jack the nickname for “John.”  The French for James was Jaques (Jacobus).  This being the then favourite name in France, got popularized in England, with this difference, that the common folk took it and made it the pet name of their own favourite name “John.”  Thus our Jacks, Jacksons, Jacklins, are all reminiscences of John rather than James.  It is so still.  No one ever dreams of styling a boy called James, Jack.  To this day, John and Jack are synonymous.  The Flemings brought in “Hans” (i.e. Johannes).  These have originated our Hankins, Hankinsons, Hancocks, Handcocks, Hanks, and Hands.  Further distinction was obtained by nicknaming some boys as “Little-John,” “Proper-John” (i.e., handsome: in country parts, they still say of a young man, “He’s a proper young fellow”).  The French introduced Gros-Jean (Big-John) and Bon-Jean (Good-John), and the latter got corrupted into Bunyan.  To John we owe our Johnsons, Jones, Jennings, Jenkinsons, Jenkins, and Jenks.  No doubt, when Mr. Jenkins wrote “Ginx’s Baby,” he was aware that both author and hero bore the same name, for “Ginx” is simply “Jinks” or “Jenks” caricatured.

Miss Yonge thinks that Margaret Atheling introduced Alexander into Scotland from the Hungarian Court.  Her third son was Alexander, and under him and the other two Alexanders Scotia was prosperous.  Hence its great popularity.  Sawney and Sandy are the pet forms, and the surnames Alister, McAlister in the Highlands, and Sanders or Saunders in the Lowlands, will for ever prevent the name being forgotten.

Patrick, the patron saint of Irishmen, whose festival is kept wherever Irishmen may be, has, strange to say, left scarcely a single surname.  There is “Kil-patrick,” and “Gos-patrick”—i.e., servant of Patrick (Gos = gossoon, i.e. garçon), but no real patronymic.  How is this?  One single reason will suffice.  At the time of surname formation “Patrick” was scarcely ever used at the font.  “Teague” was the popular name till the end of the seventeenth century.  Under 150 years ago, Englishmen spoke of an Irishman, not as “Pat,” but as “Teague.”  I could prove this equally from registers and ballads.

“Taffy,” of course, was and is the Welsh national name, and owes his origin to St. David, who lived in the sixth century, and through his sanctity caused his bishop’s see to be changed from Menevia into St. David’s.  Davy, Davis, and Davies are therefore common enough in the Principality.  From our childhood we have heard that—

“Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief;”

but we trust, for the credit of our friends across the Severn, that this refers to a particular Taffy, and not to the national Taffy.  Black sheep are to be found in every flock.  That Taffy can be a hero, Happy Dodd and his compatriots can prove; and never was the Albert Medal more richly deserved or more bravely won, than on the morning that witnessed the rescue of the imprisoned miners in the Welsh coal-pit.  All honour to Taffy!

CHAPTER VI.
THE BIBLE AND NOMENCLATURE.

I said in my last chapter that I should devote the present one to a relation of the causes that led to a complete revolution in our English baptismal nomenclature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  During this comparatively brief period, most of the popular mediæval names lapsed, not merely from favour, but into total oblivion.  ’Tis true, this does not properly appertain to the subject of surnames, because, having now become an established system, it was impossible for the Reformation to affect them to any appreciable extent.  That is, the Reformation could revolutionize our baptismal names, but not our surnames.  Had the Reformation occurred three or even two centuries earlier, the London Directory of 1877 would have presented a totally different appearance to that which it does.  Instead of half a thousand Harrisons and Harrises, we should have had, may be, a hundred “Calebsons,” and “Abnersons,” and “Joshuasons,” and “Jaelsons.”  Why?  Because surnames were undergoing their hereditary formation then.

Nevertheless, our subject is quite apropos to the Directory, for Christian names abound there as well as surnames.  If the pages of that great tome do not show that our surnames were visibly affected by an open Bible, a Reformation of Religion, and a Puritan Commonwealth, it is not so with the baptismal names.  Every page bears strong evidence of a wondrous and stirring revolution.

Let us first clear the ground.  In what relation did the Bible stand to English nomenclature in pre-Reformation days?  The Scripture names in use during that period were fourfold in origin.

(a)  Names so prominent in Scripture that none could be ignorant of them, such as Adam and Eve.  All our Atkins, Atkinsons, Adams, Adamsons, Adkins, Adkinsons, and Addisons come from Adam; all our Eves, Evisons, Evetts, Evitts, Evotts, and Evesons, from Eve.  An old will, dated 1391, speaks of the same individual as Eve and Evot (i.e. little Eve).  Adam and Eve, four hundred years ago, were two of our commonest personal names.

(b)  Names of Bible heroes, whose story was wont to be dramatized on religious festivals, and thus made familiar to the peasantry.  The offering of Isaac, and Daniel in the den of lions, were two favourite plays.  Thus, Isaac as Higg or Hick, and Daniel as Dan, were popular everywhere.  Thus we got as surnames, Higgins (i.e. little Isaac), Higginson, Hicks, Hickson, Higgott and Higgs, from the one, and Daniels, Danson, Dankins, Dannett (i.e. little Daniel), and Dann from the other.  Higgonet,—a double diminutive (treated of in our last chapter),—became Hignett; and even non-smokers must have seen the virtues of Hignett’s “mixture” glowingly described in the daily advertisements!  Imagine Higgins or Hignett as derived from Isaac!  Nevertheless, such is the undoubted fact.

(c)  Ecclesiastic names, or names taken from the calendar of the saints, such as Bartholomew, Nicholas, or Peter.  The reader would be indeed amazed if I were to furnish him with a list of all the surnames founded upon these three once familiar names.  Bate, Bartle, and Bartelot were the pet forms of Bartholomew, whence our Bates, Battys, Batsons, Bartles, and Bartletts.  St. Nicholas gave us Nicholls and Nicholson, Nix, Nicks, Nixon, and Nickson.  Cole (whence our Coles) was the most favoured pet form, however, of Nicholas; and this, with the popular Norman-French diminutives “in” and “et” appended, made Colin and Colet.  Hence our many Collins, Collinsons, Colsons, Colletts and Colets, not to mention the double diminutive Colinet.  As for Peter, I have already reminded the reader of the pages of names that the London Directory contains, all originated by that agnomen upon which Rome has founded her most pretentious and arrogant claims.  When we reflect that previous to the incoming of the Normans there were no Scripture names in use in England, saving in the case of a few ecclesiastics, who had adopted them at ordination, we can in some little degree realize the great revolution our national nomenclature had undergone in respect of the three classes I have here summarised.

(d)  Festival names, such as Christmas or Pascal.  The other day I was passing through a street in Kensington, and saw “Pentecost” over a door.  It is a curious surname, and yet not uncommon.  The reader perhaps wonders how such a term got into our Directory.  Its origin is perfectly simple.  Like John, or Thomas, it was but a baptismal name, and having become so used, it inevitably came to the honours of a surname.  How? says a reader.  This way,—John, the son of Pentecost, five hundred years ago, becomes John Pentecost, and the thing is done.  Pentecost is no exceptional instance.  The London Directory contains many a Christmas, or Midwinter, or Paschal, or Pask, or Nowell, or Noel.  All these mediæval terms for religious seasons were used as baptismal names, (being given to children born on these festivals,) and then became surnames.  The Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel got his surname in such a manner.  Noel was quite a familiar term in England and France for Christmas Day; and a child born on that eventful morn would naturally receive as his font-name that which gave title to the day, especially when we consider that Noel is nothing more than “Natalis,” the “natal day.”  As time passed on, and the meaning of Noel became obscure, the Christmas waits pronounced it “Now well!  Now well;” as they sang their midnight carol.  It was a pretty and significant mistake.  Surely, as Noel comes round, many a believer can catch the strain of angelic “glad tidings” of a Saviour born, and say, “Now well, indeed, for me and all mankind.”  “Nowell” is the commonest form of the surname.  In France, all children born on Easter Day were christened “Pascal.”  This, becoming a surname, was handed down to Blaise Pascal, one of the most brilliant and most pious men that that great country has ever produced.  In the north of England Easter was always known as “Pace,” or “Pask.”  These of course are common surnames.  “To go a pace-egging” is still a familiar phrase in Lancashire and Yorkshire; and the prettily ornamented eggs are still sold in the shops as Easter comes round.  By a happy conceit, they are often called “Peace-eggs”; and certainly “Pace” has proved “Peace” to myriads of souls.  The Registrar-General, in one of his reports, came across a Christmas Day—i.e., the child’s surname being “Day,” the parents had it christened “Christmas.”  “Pentecost,” for a child born on Whit-Sunday, was once extremely popular. [86]

But these quaint customs have come to an end.  To baptize an infant by the name of “Pentecost” or “Paschal” would now be considered a piece of eccentricity, not to say irreverence.  The Reformed Church of England has sufficiently emphasized these festivals in her Services, without laying too great stress upon them.  The superstitions and follies that gave over-prominence to such seasons in mediæval days ceased with an open English Bible and a purer and simpler Christianity.  The danger now is a rush to the other end of the tether.  I believe there are thousands of living Nonconformists who regret that they have allowed such services as would have commemorated the events of Easter Day, Good Friday, and Ascension Day to fall into desuetude.  The neglect of Ascension Day, even among Churchmen, is, I think, much to be deplored.

But if the Reformation threw one class of names into the cold shadow of neglect and oblivion, it took care to fill up the gap with an assortment of its own selection.  We may set down the interval between 1580 and 1720 as the most curious era in the history of personal names, whether of this or any other country.  The more I have studied our English baptismal registers of the seventeenth century,—and I may say, without boasting, few have studied them more frequently than I,—the more profoundly am I convinced that no other revolution of a religious or social character in the annals of nations can present claims to eccentricity equal to that which, beginning with the Reformation, found its climax in the Puritan Commonwealth.  Alas! I can only touch upon the subject here, but I could easily fill a book with instances gleaned by myself in a not very long life.  Friends interested in the same pursuit, I must add, have also helped me; not to mention Notes and Queries, that storehouse of treasures to antiquaries of every bent.

The first signs of serious change betrayed themselves at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.  The English Bible rested in English hands.  But it was a new book.  Names familiar enough in 1877, but probably heard of for the first time in 1577, were drawn forth from their concealment, and made to subserve the new impulse of the nation.  It was then that the minister at the font had to begin registering such names as “Abacucke Harman,” “Sydrach Sympson,” “Phenenna Salmon,” “Gamaliel Capell,” “Archelaus Gifford,” “Melchizedek Payne,” “Dyna Bocher,” or “Zebulon Clerke.”  It was as if the Bible were a new country full of verdant tracks, and as they passed through each plucked the flower that pleased him most.  By the time King James came to the throne, “Phineas,” “Philemon,” “Uriah,” “Aquila,” “Priscilla,” and “Hilkiah” had become the rage.  Before he died, Harry had fallen into neglect, Ralph and Guy were utterly despised, and names like Hamlet, or Hamnet (Shakespear’s son was Hamnet), or Avice, or Douce, or Warin, or Drew, or Fulke, had gone down like sodden logs in a stagnant pool.  Whether they will ever come into use again is very doubtful.  Only national caprice can do it; but that, we know, can do anything.  That Avice, so pretty and simple as it is, should have disappeared, I cannot but think a national loss.

By the time of Charles the First, the national taste had gone a degree further.  It becomes positively amusing to study the registers of this period.  It had evidently become a point of respectability among certain classes of the community to select for their children the rarest names of Scripture.  John, Nicholas, Bartholomew, Thomas, and Peter, though Scriptural, were tabooed; a stain rested on them, as having been in the Calendar during centuries of popish superstition.  In fact, the Apostles were turned out for having kept bad company.  Many seemed to have rested their claim to thorough knowledge of the Bible upon the rarity of the name they had discovered in its pages.  Thus I find “Ebedmeleck Gastrell,” whose Christian name only occurs once in the Scriptures (Jer. xxxviii. 8).  “Epaphroditus Houghton,” “Othniell Haggat,” “Apphia Scott,” “Tryphena Gode,” “Bezaliel Peachie,” are cases in point.  If a child were styled by a new, quaint, unheard-of title, as a matter of course it was assumed to be from the Bible.  From the appearance of such a name as “Michellaliell,” I fancy tricks of this kind were common.

A further stage of eccentricity was reached when it became fashionable to emphasize the doctrine of original sin by affixing to the new-born child a Scripture name of ill-repute.  The reader can have no conception how far this was carried.  In the street Dinahs and Absaloms walked hand-in-hand to school; Ananiases and Sapphiras grovelled in the dirty courts and alleys; and Cains took Abels to pluck flowers in the rural lanes and meadows, without thoughts of fratricide.  Archbishop Leighton, son of a much persecuted Presbyterian minister, had a sister Sapphira.  The acme of eccentricity was reached in the case of Milcom Groat, whose Christian (!) name was “The abomination of the children of Ammon.”  It may be seen in the State Papers (Domestic).  I am furnishing all these names hap-hazard from my notebooks.  In the dame’s school the twelve patriarchs could all have answered to their names through their little red-cheeked representatives who lined the wall, unless, maybe, Simeon or Reuben stood on a separate seat with the dunce’s cap on!  But the strangest freak of all is still to be recorded.  We have all heard of Praise-God Barebones.  Hume, in his History of England, asserts that his brother bore the long name of “If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-condemned Barebones.”  What the historian adds to this I will not repeat, for fear of seeming irreverent.  Many have supposed this to have been a case of mere exceptional eccentricity.  Nothing of the kind.  It was not an uncommon custom for a man or woman after conversion to reject with horror the pagan name of “Harry” or “Dick,” which their god-parents had imposed upon them, and be known henceforth as “Replenish,” or “Increase,” or “Abstinence,” or “Live-well.”  Of course, if they married after this, they spared their children the necessity of any such alteration by furnishing them with personal appellations of this character at the outset.

The earliest specimens of this peculiar spirit will be found in the reign of Elizabeth—that is, within a score of years or so of the Reformation and the gift of an open English Bible; so we must not suppose it was wholly an institution of what we may term the Cromwellian period.  It reached its climax then, nothing more.  In the Elizabethan “Proceedings in Chancery” may be seen such names as Virtue Hunt, Temperance Dowlande,—Temperance was one of our most popular names for a hundred and fifty years,—Charitie Bowes, and Lamentation Chapman.  Lamentation would easily be affixed to a child whose mother had died in childbirth.  Ichabod has often been given for a like reason.  On the contrary, “Comfort” would be readily seized upon under circumstances of Christian or parental joy.  The other day I was in Tewkesbury Abbey, now undergoing restoration, and, as is my wont, I began ferreting for peculiar names.  In a churchyard I instinctively walk like a dog with my nose to the ground.  Almost immediately, I came across two “Comforts,”—“Comfort, wife of Abram Farren, died Aug. 24th, 1720,” and “Comfort Pearce, died Nov. 17th, 1715;” the latter was granddaughter of the former.  Miss Holt, whose “Mistress Margery” and other sound and thoroughly well-written stories will have been read by most of my readers, told me not long ago that she had seen in the register of St. James’s, Piccadilly, the following entries:—“Repentance Tompson,” “Loving Bell,” “Obedience Clark,” and “Unity Thornton”; “Nazareth Rudde,” also, was contained in the same record.  This reminds me of “Jerrico Segrave” in a Derbyshire record.  In that county it was very possible for Bible place-names to be thus incorporated into personal nomenclature.  Among the ruder peasantry it was a common custom,—a custom dating from the Reformation,—to have their child baptized by the first name the eye lighted on after the parent had let the family Bible fall open upon the table.  A clergyman not long ago, asking in the Baptismal Service “What name?” received the whispered rejoinder, “Ramoth Gilead.”  Naturally enough, he inquired, sotto voce, “A boy or a girl?”  A curious instance of this general class is to be found in the case of Frewen, Archbishop of York, who died in 1664.  He was son of a Puritan minister in Sussex; his Christian name was “Accepted,” and his younger brother was “Thankfull.”  It is from this epoch that we must date the origin of some of our prettiest, if not now most popular, names for girls: “Grace,” “Faith,” “Hope,” “Charity,” “Truth,” and “Prudence.”  All these have survived the era in which they, and a hundred longer and less simple terms, were introduced; and if they are now getting out of favour, it is only one more proof that the fashions in detail, as well as the fashions generally, of this world, undergo silent, it may be, but inevitable change.

We must not suppose, however, that there was no spirit of antagonism to this remarkable practice, so new in origin, and yet so deeply established.  I have carefully avoided any reference to the disagreements that led to the execution of Charles the First, and the Commonwealth.  If this era was socially vicious, it was also religiously hypocritical.  Both sides had good and bad men in their midst.  A poem written in 1660, styled a “Psalm of Mercy,” is an evident “skit” by some Royalist upon the new taste in nomenclature.  It is too long for quotation, and though not actually ribald, is better left in its obscurity.  It pokes fun at the following names:—Rachel, Abigaile, Faith, Charity, Pru (Prudence), Ruth, Temperance, Grace, Bathsheba, Clemence, Jude, Pris (Priscilla), Aquila, Mercy, Thank, Dorcas, Chloe, Phœbe.  It is curious to note, that while none of these names could be found in an English register prior to 1560, in 1660, when this satirical ballad was indited, there was not one which was not more or less popular, not one of which I myself have not found several instances in contemporary records.  We have only to add, that after the recital of all these names, the poet concludes with a couplet which we cannot insert here, but which indicates very clearly that the writer was not very much drawn to this new phase of feeling.  However, if we are to thank the Roundheads for the introduction of many really pretty names,—names, too, awakening sweet Biblical and religious associations in our hearts,—we must not forget that it was owing to the antagonistic spirit of the Cavaliers that we are still in possession of not a few old names, which, though pagan in origin, are rendered dear by their antiquity and their relations to English life and character generations ere the Reformation was dreamt of.  Above all, we must never forget, that whether the name be in the Bible or out of it, whether it be given at the font or even in the registrar’s office, it is the man that sanctifies the name, not the name the man.  It was not their names that made Venn, and Simeon, and Wilberforce venerated; but Venn, and Simeon, and Wilberforce, by their earnest devotion and stable piety, made themselves so revered by Christian Englishmen that their names are still uttered with that hushed and bated breath that is the deepest demonstration of regard that human heart can express.  Let us not then regret, that if by one band of men the treasury house of the Scriptures was ransacked for a new vocabulary of nomenclature, to another band we owe the preservation from the death they were threatened with, of Ralph, Walter, Dick, Harry, Cecilia, Lucy, Beatrice, Julia, Robert, Humphry, and Edward.  Again do you say, “But they are pagan!”  Prythee, friend, will you say that because Latimer bore the pagan name of Hugh, he died “without hope,” as a dog dieth; or that she who permitted his body to be burned, because she bore the name of Mary, could assert with her nominal prototype that “All generations shall call me blessed”?  Her name is written in blood; and “Bloody Mary” she will be styled from English lips, till the Reformation be branded as a mistake, and its heroes as fools.

I have laid stress,—nay, I have dwelt lingeringly,—on these now quaint and old-mannered names for a particular reason.  How many of my readers there must be who, without realizing the causes, are conscious of the fact that the Christian names of our cousins across the Atlantic, and those of ourselves, are marked by a certain divergence.  When the Pilgrim Fathers set forth from Plymouth and Bristol, they bore with them their Puritan cognomens; and there, in Virginia and all the east border of the great States, they are established nearly as firmly to-day as they were in England two hundred years ago.  Take up an American story, and in the names of its heroines you can tell, not only their nationality, but the writer’s also.  “Faith,” and “Hope,” and “Patience,” and “Grace” are still their favourite titles.  Nor is this a mere accident.  If we turn to Mr. Hottens’ list of emigrants between 1600 and 1700, we find such names to have been of everyday occurrence.  In the same family we find such trios as “Love Brewster,” “Fear Brewster,” and “Patience Brewster” quitting our shores.  We find a brother and sister registered as “Hopestill Foster” and “Patience Foster;” while such entries as “Perseverance Green,” “Desire Minter,” “Revolt Vincent,” “Joye Spark,” “Remember Allerton,” and “Remembrance Tibbott” greet one at every turn.  In such titles as these—“Hope-still,” “Remember,” “Remembrance,” “Desire,” “Patience,” and “Perseverance”—our minds are inevitably thrown back to those days of religious persecution, while we seem to be bidding these travellers God-speed on their distant and uncertain journey from the pierhead as the good ship lifts her anchor; and we can detect in the heart of the emigrant that mingled tide of hope and fear, trust and regret, confidence in the future united with a fond and lingering looking back, which still abides unbanished,—in spite of occasional tall talk,—from the American’s heart.  He is proud of his land, but he does not forget the old country.  No man so proud of making a name for himself as he; and yet no man so proud of tracing his pedigree back to a name that has been already made for him generations ago on England’s soil!  In the twofold title of “Hopestill” and “Remembrance” still lives all that speaks of reverence in America’s past and expectation for America’s future.

If it were necessary, we could easily show how the same thing has happened to the vocabularies of the two countries that has befallen the two nomenclatures.  We smile when a Yankee says, “I guess,” “I calculate,” and “I reckon;” but when we read in the Epistle of St. Paul the sentence “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” do we always reflect, as we might do, that our translators and revisers of 1611 were simply putting into the mouth of the apostle a phrase which was then colloquial English, but now survives, in all its familiarity, only in the United States, whither the Puritan Fathers had carried it?  This comparison we might easily extend, but it is not our subject.

As for American baptismal nomenclature in general, it is all but entirely Biblical.  The only book the refugee took with him was his English Bible.  His piety was fed from its pages, his life was likened to its histories, his surroundings had the same cast of primeval simplicity; he discovered a resemblance between his own new life and that of the patriarchs, and it pleased him to stereotype the resemblance by the adoption of their names.  From out that Book alone he named his offspring, and thus to this day,—such is the power of tradition,—“Brother Jonathan” and “Uncle Sam” are but representatives of a class of names which well-nigh engrosses every other.  A single instance will suffice to show how this great mass of Biblical nomenclature arose.  Charles Chauncy died in New England, 1671.  He emigrated from Hertfordshire, where the family had been settled for centuries.  His children were Isaac, Ichabod, Sarah, Barnabas, Elnathan, Nathaniel, and Israel.  All these grew up and settled in New England.

It has been well said, that were it not for our English Bible the two languages of the United States and England would slowly but surely separate themselves into two distinct dialects, possibly tongues.  Certainly it is to that book which Wycliffe,—whom we commemorated in 1877,—wrote into English, we owe the fact that in no respect is there a closer bond and deeper sympathy betwixt England and America than in that which concerns the nomenclature of the two countries.  In what respect they differ I have shown.  While we have dropped some names that marked eccentricity, and restored some of the older and more pagan cognomens from the oblivion that seemed so certainly to await them, they have clung tenaciously to that more quaint and large class of names of Scriptural origin, which their forefathers of Puritan stock bore with them across the ocean in days when America was as yet a portion of the British dominions.

May the twofold offspring of one stock hold fast still, as in days of yore, to that One Name in the Bible which is above every name!  Then shall the two great branches of the Anglo-Norman race continue to multiply and be strong, and all the continents of the world shall be blessed through their means.

CHAPTER VII.
OFFICERSHIP.

I set out with the intention of writing six chapters on the “London Directory;” and, lo! I have reached the mystic seven.  The worst of it is, that at the present rate of progress I shall have to transgress the editorial licence by at least four more before I can possibly bring my remarks to a close, consistent with the demands of my subject.  Nevertheless, the Editor has only to say the word, and I will wipe,—not my tearful eye, but my goose quill, and bid my courteous reader adieu!

The other day I met a friend, and he greeted me with the remark, “Awfully dry.”  Thinking he referred to the weather—it was the end of June—and feeling decidedly warm, I assented cordially, when I discovered that the statement was intended to be a less polite than concise criticism upon one or two of my later instalments to The Fireside, on the subject that heads these pages.  My friend made several other remarks founded on the first, and went so far as to offer me some advice—a very dangerous thing, as everybody knows.  It was to this effect: “Stick to your text.”  What is my text?  I asked, thinking to take him off his guard.  “The London Directory,” he replied promptly.

Well, I must admit that in the last two papers I slightly wandered from my text.  My excuse is this: baptismal names are in the London Directory as well as surnames; and the baptismal names of to-day are as different from the baptismal names of five hundred years ago as were the baptismal names of five hundred years ago from those in vogue five hundred years before that.  This curious fact I wished to bring out and develop.  At the same time I wanted to show that it was the English Bible that had caused the change.  Whether I succeeded in so doing, I must leave to the reader to decide.  At any rate, I can now turn, with such cheerfulness as my stern critic has left me, to the next class of English Surnames represented in the London Directory—that originated by Office, whether ecclesiastical or civil.  I have got the Directory itself at my left elbow, not merely as a monitor to warn me, but also as a reference to support me.  Looking to this mighty tome, then, for inspiration as well as illustration, I at once begin.

The Directory teems with relics of the feudal system.  There is not a single office belonging to that formal and ceremonious age which is not commemorated within its pages.  Whether it were service within the baronial hall or tenure without, all was held by a retinue who thought no office too mean or servile for acceptance.  The feudatory, in fact, could seemingly do nothing; everything was done for him.  He could eat and drink, ’tis true, and he did both to the great admiration of all beholders; but he had an officer to carve his meat for him; another to change his plate; a third to crack jokes for him, to aid his digestion; a fourth to extend a bowl to wash his fingers; a fifth to hand him a napkin to wipe them; a sixth to hold his wine-cup for him; and a seventh to taste each fresh dish set before him, so that in case poison had been put in the food, his taster might drop down dead instead of himself.  Why the baron hadn’t an officer to wipe his nose for him, I can’t say; it has always been a mystery to me.  One thing, however, is certain.  As he sat and ate and drank, he had a little crowd of officers who thought it only too high a distinction to perform duties so menial, that a scullion in the present day, if asked to undertake some of them, would probably reply, “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?”  At any rate, he would give you a month’s notice, to a certainty.

That all these officerships existed, the Directory still shows; for I have no hesitation in saying that the finest and most trustworthy records of the feudal age are to be found, not in the British Museum in Great Russell Street, nor the Bodleian Library at Oxford, but in that great red-backed tome which lies on the shelf in every London warehouse.  Imagine our going to these dry and prosaic emporiums of merchandise for an account of a long past state of life, which, with all its barbarism, is well-nigh the most poetical era of English history.  I mentioned seven officers who tended the baron at his meals.  Taking the Directory, I find twelve Carvers, two Sewers, eleven Napiers and Nappers, six Ewers, one hundred and twenty-five Pages, not to mention our various “Cuppages” (i.e. Cup-page), Smallpages, and Littlepages, six “Says,” and twenty-four “Sayers.”  ’Tis true there are no “Fools” in the Directory, though there may be plenty out of it; but once it was a very common name indeed, and denoted the officer, if I may use the term, whose duty it was to convulse the table with laughter by making the most ludicrous jokes he could invent, backing them up with all sorts of grimaces and contortions.  He was a professed punster, too, and had free licence to make them at the expense even of his lord.  Indeed, the fool could make a joke with impunity, which would have cost any other man his head.  Of course he wore a fool’s-cap as the insignia of his office.  The Napier, or Napper, set the napkins, once called “napes.”  A curious and silly story has got abroad, that the Scotch Napiers got their surname from one Donald, whose prowess was so great in a certain battle, that the king said he had “na peer,” that is, no equal.  His friends,—so the tale goes,—from henceforth styled him Donald Na-pier.  The Scotch Napiers are, as Mr. Lower shows, of the house of Lennox, and owed their cognomen to the office I have described, held by their ancestors in the royal household.  The Ewer carried the ewer of water in front of the Napier; and as they had no forks in those days, and used their left hand in a manner which would be now considered the reverse of polite, no wonder that between every course the napier and ewer would be busy indeed.  Even the carver had no fork, and had to use his fingers very freely with the joints.  In the “Boke of Kervynge,” an old manual of etiquette for young squires, there is a strict order to this effect:—“Sett never on fyshe, flesche, beest, nor fowle, more than two fyngers and a thumbe”!  The young squire had early to learn this accomplishment; and therefore Chaucer, describing his Squire, made a point of saying in his favour,—

“Courteous he was, lowly and servisable,
And carf before his fader at the table.”

The Sewer brought in the viands; we still use the root in such compounds as en-sue and pur-sue.  A sewe was any cooked dish or course of meat.  Hence Chaucer, describing the rich feasts of Cambuscan, says, time would fail him to tell—

“Of their strange sewes.”

The Queen’s household still boasts, I believe, its six Gentlemen Sewers.  The “Page,” of course, was a familiar spectacle, for he was here, there, and everywhere, at the beck and call of his lord.  No wonder, therefore, he has so many representatives in our Directory.  It is said that an elderly bachelor, bearing this name, became deeply attached to a young lady.  Being bashful by nature, and unacquainted with the arts of courtship, he hung about the damsel for a long time, seeking vainly for courage and opportunity to declare the state of his mind.  The golden chance came at last.  At a party one night the fair lady dropped her glove.  He rushed to pick it up, and presenting it to her, said,—

“If from that glove you take the letter ‘G,’
Then glove is love, and that I give to thee.”

She at once responded,—

“If you from Page should take the letter ‘P,’
Then Page is age,—and that won’t do for me.”

I believe he was taken ill and went home.

Knight, like Squire and Bachelor,—all relics of feudal days,—is largely represented in London.  A would-be reader of the poets, it is said, went into a shop and asked to see a copy of “Young Knight’s Thoughts.”  He was somewhat astonished to find that “Young” was not an adjective, but a surname.  This reminds one of Southey’s story of the lady who, seeing a book advertised bearing the title “An Essay on Burns,” ordered a copy, thinking it treated of scalds, and might contain some remedies.  Say, Sayer, Guster, and Taster—the last alone being now obsolete—all refer to the office mentioned above; the duty of the first bearers of these several names being to hazard their own lives for the preservation of their masters’.  In a word, they stood behind their lord’s chair, and as every dish of meat or cup of wine was brought in, they assayed it (i.e., they took the first bite or sup); so that if either had been “drugged” by some conspirator in the kitchen, the baron might escape.  It is right to add, to prevent misconception, that in some cases our Sayers owe their origin, like “Tester,” to another officership—that of examining money, to see whether it was full weight and of genuine metal.  There are four or five “Testers” in the London Directory.

We may close this list with the mention of such surnames as Spencer or “Spenser”; Marshall, Chamberlain or Chamberlin, Warder, and Butler.  All these represented important officerships.

We may here take the opportunity of referring to the condition of the lower classes.  In the country there was no middle class, such as we know by the term, excepting those who are represented in the Directory under the sobriquet of Yeoman, Yeomans, and Yeomanson.  The peasantry were oftentimes little more than goods and chattels of their masters.  We must not exaggerate, however, for although there are sixty-four “Bonds” in the London Directory, who represent such old entries as “William le Bonde,” the progenitors of this name were in no such abject servitude as is now understood by the word.  That they were hard worked there can be no doubt:

“Of alle men in londe
Most toileth the bonde,”—

and how much freedom was valued may be guessed from the number of Franks, Franklins, Frees, Freebodys, Freemans, Freeds, and Freeborns, in the big tome we are discussing.  We find even Free-wife and Free-woman in the older registers, but they are now obsolete—in the Directory, I mean, not in actual life, for very often the wife not merely “rules her house,” but her husband too, and a good thing for him if he only knew it!  There are fifty-three “Frys” to be added to this list, the old form of “free.”  How curious that the lady who so distinguished herself in toiling for the abolition of slavery should have borne the name of Elizabeth Fry!  Who strove more earnestly to make the bond free than she?  Truly Tom Hood meant jest for earnest when he wrote his ode to Dr. Kitchener:—

“What baron, or squire, or knight of the shire
Lives half so well as a holy Fry-er?
In doing well thou must be reckoned
The first—and Mrs. Fry the second.”

Again he says in jest and rhyme, with a sly hit in the last line at her Quaker garments:—

“I like you, Mrs. Fry!  I like your name!
It speaks the very warmth you feel in pressing
In daily act round Charity’s great flame—
I like the crisp Browne way you have of dressing.”

If Hood had known the meaning of Mrs. Fry’s name, he could have made a better play than this upon it.  The forms in the old rolls are Walter le Frie, or Roger le Frye.

The country police were represented by various terms, and as I turn the page of my book of modern reference I am reminded of them all.  The Hayward guarded the fences; the Forester or Forster or Foster, the Woodward, the Parker, the Warrener or Warner, the Woodreeve, now found as Woodruff or Woodroff, all protected the covers wherein the beasts of the chase found harbourage.  The Pinder, or Pounder, was engaged in locking up strayed cattle.  Every village had its pound, and no doubt in a day when hedges and dikes and fences were less familiar sights than now, his office would be an important one.

It may be asked, Have we any relic in our Directories of any office in the large towns answering to our modern policeman, or “peeler,” as our street gamins so disrespectfully style him?  We answer in the affirmative.  Our somewhat common surname of Catchpoll, Catchpole, Catchpool, and Catchpoole are his representatives.  They were so called because, as they walked their beat, they carried a somewhat formidable weapon, very like a pitchfork, the two prongs of which slipped round the neck, and formed a steel collar.  The officer then had the criminal entirely at his mercy, and could either drag him, or shove him by the pole attached, which was from six to seven feet, in length.  He was called a Catchpoll, because he caught his victim by the head or poll.  We still talk of a poll-tax, or “going to the poll,” showing how familiar the word was in those days.  The Malvern Dreamer, in his poem entitled “The Vision of Piers Plowman,” says of the two thieves crucified with our Saviour, that,—

“A cachepol cam forth,
And cracked both their legges.”

Another form, Catcherell, lingered on for a time in our nomenclature, but it is now gone, unless Cattrall be but a corruption.  An old sermon of the fourteenth century speaks of the “devil and his angels” as the “devil and his cachereles”!  Our “Waites” and “Waits” represent the night watchmen.  As they both sounded the watches and gave the alarm with a trumpet or horn, it came to pass that any band of night serenaders acquired the name.  We are all familiar with the Christmas “waits”!  I see there are two “Wakemans” in the Directory.  The wakeman was the North English form of “watchman,” just as kirk is North English for church, or dike for ditch, or thack for thatch.  Thus, Wycliffe translates Mark xii. 37, “Forsooth, that that I say to you, I say to all, Wake ye,” where our modern translators have “Watch.”  Strangely enough, in Psalm cxxvii. 1 they have employed both forms.  “The watchman waketh but in vain,” should have been either “The wakeman waketh but in vain,” or “The watchman watcheth but in vain.”  As it stands it is incongruous, for it gives the modern reader the idea that the watchman had been asleep, implying that he had been negligent, which, of course, is not in the original.  When we remember, as I have shown, that “wake” and “watch” were but the same word with two pronunciations, one North English and the other South English, the difficulty is explained. [107]  A north countryman, if he wants to say that his neighbour is a shrewd fellow, says, “Eh, but he’s a wak’ un.”  I don’t know whether a Lancashireman or a Yorkshireman is the most “wak’;” but an old saying gives the preference to the County Palatine.  If a Lancashireman wish to be ahead of a Yorkshireman, it says, he must be up at two o’clock in the morning; but if a Yorkshireman wish to be ahead of a Lancashireman, he mustn’t go to bed at all.  We may surmise that a Lancashireman originated the saying.  Both “Wake” and “Sleep” are in the London Directory.  Brook, in his “History of the Puritans,” relates a story concerning these two names.  It seems, by a curious coincidence, that Isaac Wake was University Orator at Oxford, in 1607, Dr. Sleep being a well-known Cambridge preacher at the same time.  James the First, who not merely liked his joke, but was fond of listening to sermons,—both characteristic of a Scotchman,—used to say, “he always felt inclined to Wake when he heard Sleep, and to Sleep when he heard Wake”—i.e., he could not decide on the relative merits of the two.  Wake and Sleep will both be nicknames—the ancestor of the one doubtless being a sharp shrewd fellow; the progenitor of the other, I daresay, being thought somewhat dull and stupid by his neighbours.

Speaking about “Sleep” and “Wake” reminds us of a name which has been a puzzle to many—that of “Gotobed.”  The last time I was in the metropolis, I saw it over a door in Great Portland Street.  The name has acquired additional interest since Mr. Trollope introduced it in one of his most able stories, “The American Senator.”  One of our humorous poets had already played upon it in the lines,—

“Mr. Barker’s as mute as a fish in the sea,
Mr. Miles never moves on a journey,
Mr. Gotobed sits up till half after three,
Mr. Makepeace was bred an attorney.”

It is just possible it is a nickname, for it occurs in registers as Gotobedde since the days of Elizabeth.  Besides, there is a like nickname in the Hundred Rolls in the case of “Serl Gotokirk,” a sobriquet given to the owner on account of his regular and frequent attendance at worship.  Nevertheless, I believe it to be a baptismal surname.  I doubt not it is a mere corruption of Godbert, once a favourite child’s name.  When I add that I find it five hundred years ago entered as “Godeberd,” a little later as “Gotebedde,” and more recently “Gotobedd,” I think the question may be looked upon as settled.

But I am falling into a snare.  Methinks I hear my stern critic saying, “What has Gotobed to do with official surnames?—stick, Sir, to your text.”  Well, the connection does certainly seem somewhat vague; but Wakeman was official, and it led me to Wake, and from Wake it was not very odd that I should pitch upon Sleep, and after all you can never sleep comfortably unless you go to bed.  Still, to soothe my friend, I will hark back, and conclude this chapter by a reference to a few ecclesiastic surnames.

’Tis true that Henry the Eighth and others demolished our abbeys, monkeries—as Latimer styles them—priories, and other Romish institutions that had become objectionable to English morals.  But one thing they could not do—uproot them from our registers.  In the London Directory, if nomenclature goes for anything, they never flourished so vigorously as in the reign of Protestant Victoria!  Apart from Westminster Abbey, there are at least five Abbeys in other quarters of the Metropolis, while no less than seventy-three Abbots reside in the same neighbourhood.  Nor is this all.  There are still left in London over fifty “Priors,” “Pryers,” and “Pryors,” over twenty “Fryers,” over thirty “Monks,” and nearly forty “Nunns.”  Talk of the Papal aggression!  Why, Mr. Newdegate should call the attention of the House of Commons, and through them that of the whole country, to the fact immediately.  It is awful to contemplate what is thus going on under our very noses.  It was only the other day that a Nunn appeared in a small house out of the Strand not more than a day old, if the register of births be correct.  Talk of boy-bishops, this is simply intolerable!

It is almost as bad when we turn to names that are less Romishly suggestive.  How can it be consistent with his more orthodox duties, for an Archdeacon to be a furniture-broker, a Dean to be a rag and bottle merchant, or a Bishop to be a tobacco and snuff manufacturer!  If my stern critic doubts my word, I can only refer him to the London Directory.  There, sir, I’m sticking to my text this time, surely!  I know a “Priest,” too, who keeps a chandler’s shop Marylebone way, and a “Deacon” who employs his leisure hours in the delightful occupation of chimney-sweeping; he resides in the vicinity of Edgeware Road.  Not that I blame them; for what better can you expect from either Priests or Deacons, so long as Bishops, Deans, and Archdeacons are guilty of such vagaries as I have stated?

There was a time,—now a long while ago,—when two personages contended for the honours of the Papal chair.  There are no less than thirty-six Popes in London at this present moment; one is a greengrocer, by the way.  I have not heard of their quarrelling; and so far, at least, this must be considered satisfactory.  A good deal of blood was shed over the rival claims of the first two.  When James the First came on a visit to Sir Thomas Pope, near Oxford, the Knight’s little daughter was introduced to his Majesty with these lines,—

“See! this little mistress here
Did never sit in Peter’s chair,
Neither a triple crown did wear,
And yet she is a Pope!

“No benefice she ever sold,
Nor did dispense with sin for gold;
She hardly is a fortnight old,
And yet she is a Pope!

“A female Pope, you’ll say, ‘a second Joan?’
No, sure, she is Pope Innocent, or none.”

An epigram, or a bit of wit, always pleased James the First, who was no mean punster himself; and no doubt this little entertainment at the entrance of the knight’s mansion helped materially to make his Majesty enjoy the hospitalities lavished upon him within.

One name I have never yet seen in the London Directory, which occurs in the old parliamentary writs—that of “Hugh Holy-water-clerk.”  He dwelt at Lincoln, and was doubtless connected with the cathedral body.  But the old “Paternoster” still exists hale and hearty, as anybody may see who will take the trouble to inspect the big book of reference which gives title to my pages.  How many thousands there are who daily pass Paternoster Row, and never reflect that it derived its name from the fact that several tradesmen who strung beads dwelt there.  They were called “Paternosters,” and found ample occupation and profit, no doubt, in selling their religious ware to the people as they entered the old cathedral to patter aves.  That they bore this name Mr. Riley has shown in his “Memorials of London,” wherein not merely is “William le Paternoster” mentioned as dwelling there, but a Robert Ornel is described as following the trade of “paternoster.”  What a history there is conveyed in such a registered name as “Sarah Paternoster, fishmonger, 336, Hackney Road”!  For centuries, as the name has passed on from one generation to another, there has been handed down with it a memorial of a time which can never return,—at least, I believe it can never return,—a time when our more superstitious forefathers and foremothers thought they could win the favour of Heaven and the grace of God by a glib and unmeaning reiteration of a prayer carefully and solemnly framed by Christ Himself to express and comprehend all the needs of the human heart.  It is neither the length of our prayers nor the number of our invocations that will save us.  It is the peculiarity of the Gospel narrative, that those who received benefit at Christ’s hands were they who uttered very short prayers; but then they knew what were asking for, and from whom they were making request.  Why, if grace depended on the quantity of prayer, then we could reduce the holiness of believers to a mere arithmetical ratio, and by the amount of their petitions demonstrate to so many fractions how much more saintly one Christian was than another.

But I had better stop, or my reader will think I am preaching a sermon.  Wouldn’t my stern critic come down heavily on me then?  And I should not know what to say in self-defence!

CHAPTER VIII.
THE EMPLOYMENTS OF OUR FOREFATHERS.

Nothing would be easier than to occupy a half-dozen chapters with a relation of the mode in which our forefathers led their lives.  It is one peculiarity of nomenclature, that it reaches into every nook and crevice of English customs.  What our ancestors specially favoured in the way of meat and drink, is set down with the utmost particularity in the London Directory of to-day, while, on the other hand, it is by the absence of certain names therein that we can form a safe judgment of what delicacies they lacked.  No one would expect to see the potato commemorated in the Directory, for the simple reason that it was introduced into England after surnames had become established on a solid basis.  There are no “Tatermans” or “Taterers.”  But such names as Appletree, Appleyard, Plumtree, Pearman, and Peascod, exist.  Why?  Because apples, pears, plums, and peas, have been familiar to Englishmen for a dozen centuries.  “Photographer” is not in the Directory for the same reason, but “Limner” is, the old “illuminator.”  “Cabman” is also conspicuous by its absence, but “Carman” and “Wagner” (i.e. Wagoner) exist.  Had tea, or umbrellas, or broughams, or balloons, or carpets, or potatoes, or croquet balls, or telegraph wires, or tinned meats, or steam engines, or churchwarden pipes, or Indian pickles, been introduced about five hundred years ago, every one of these would have left its mark on our personal nomenclature.  Each would have found itself commemorated in our directories as well as our dictionaries.  It is true the railway engine might seem to have been referred to in such fourteenth-century registrations as Richard le Engineur or William le Genour, but these men only wielded the great battering-rams, or catapults, or engines for hurling stones.  Very destructive they were, of course, and so important a profession that no wonder there are thirteen “Jenners” in the London Directory alone.  Sir William Jenner can satisfy himself with the reflection that if his progenitor was distinguished for the number of England’s adversaries he placed hors de combat, he and his father have been equally remarkable for the number of lives they have saved.

Let us spend a few moments in a consideration of this great matter of eating and drinking.  And we will begin with drinking first.  It is curious how easily misled we might be by the corruptions that have taken place in our nomenclature.  The following surnames are in the London Directory (1870): Brandy, Sherry, Gin, Port, Beer, Porter, Stout, Claret, Portwine, Tee, and Coffee.  Not one of these is what it seems to be.  Not one of these has anything to do with the beverage each severally represents.  “Portwine” is a mere modernisation of “Potewyne,” which in the fourteenth century denoted the Poict tevine settler in England.  “Claret” was the pet name of “Clare.”  “Stout” is of the nickname class, “Porter” occupative, and “Port” is found originally as “Charles le Port,” or “Oliver le Port,” showing that it was a sobriquet having reference to the portly bearing of the progenitor.  Tennyson speaks of

“A modern gentleman
Of stateliest port.”

It is the same with “Aleman.”  This has no connection with the public-house, but like “Almaine” and “D’Almaine” represents the old German trader.  The word was once in most familiar use.  Coverdale’s exposition of the twenty-fifth Psalm has on the title page, “Translated out of hye Almayne (High Dutch) in to Englyshe, by Myles Coverdale, 1537.”  No one will require me to prove that James Tee and Peter Coffee do not represent our modern and favoured national breakfast beverages.  At least the first, if he did, must have sprung from some “heathen Chinee,” who has immigrated to our shores.  Such an elucidation, however, would neither satisfy myself, my reader, nor James Tee himself, I imagine.

But we have quite sufficient relics of the drinking propensities of the English people in bygone days without seeking for them in their corrupted forms.  “Inman” and “Taverner” both represent the old keeper of houses of entertainment.  Tavern is going out of fashion: Public-house is a modern term.  Porson, the great Greek scholar, was unhappily given to drink; but drunk or sober he had ever a Greek or Latin quotation at the tip of his tongue.  Reeling in the streets of Cambridge, he one day tumbled down a flight of steps into a cellar-tavern.  As they picked him up, he was heard to mutter,

“Facilis est descensus t-averni.”

Our Church of England temperance lecturers could not take a better text than this clever pun; for, unlike most puns, it contains a most admonitory truth.  An old tavern-sign in Cheshire, in the last century, bore the following inscription:

“Good bear sold here, our own bruin.”

This in the days of bear-baiting, for which Cheshire was famous, would be very misleading to those of the country bumpkins who could read.  Brewer and Brewster need no explanation.  Malter and Malster both exist, but I do not see them in the London Directory.  There is Malthouse, however, and that is sometimes found as “Malthus”; just as loft-house, and kirk-house, and bake-house or back-house have become Loftus, Kirkus, and Bacchus.  Viner and Vinter also stand in no fear of being misunderstood; but Tunman, Tonman, Tunner, and Tonner, who casked and bottled the wine that came from the Continent, would be less likely to be recognised.  In the “Confessio Amantis” it is said of Jupiter that he

“Hath in his cellar, as men say,
Two townès full of love-drink,”—

where we must not suppose that the Thunderer had so capacious a cellar that it would contain all the liquor that two whole towns might possess, but that he had two tuns or barrels of love potions.  In fact, “tun” was the universal term in use then, though barrel or cask has superseded it in common parlance.  We still talk of “tunnels” or “tun-dishes,” the vessels used for transferring wine from barrel to bottle.  “Beer-brewer” was once a familiar surname, but it has become obsolete.  We all remember the old couplet—

“Hops, Reformation, baize, and beer,
Came into England all in one year.”

To make the bitter taste, wormwood had been the chief ingredient in earlier days.

While on this subject, it is worth while inquiring whether or no we possess in our directories any record of the drinking propensities of our forefathers.  That they were ever great “skinkers” everybody knows who has studied the past with any degree of care.  What the Water-poet said somewhat coarsely of one may well be said of the many:—

“Untill hee falls asleepe,
He skinks and drinkes;
And then like to a bore,
He winkes and stinkes.”

Even the “Friar,” according to Chaucer,

“strong was as a champioun,
And knew wel the tavernes in every toun,
And every hosteler and gay tapstere,
Better than a lazar or a beggere.”

In spite of these acknowledged facts, however, I am happy to say there is not a single “Drunkard” in the London Directory.  Nevertheless, in our older registers the tale is not so assuring.  There has been a tendency during the last two hundred years to shuffle off certain objectionable names, which our earlier forefathers did not seem to be ashamed of.  Who of my readers would like to have been officially registered as “Maurice Druncard,” or “Jakes Drynk-ale,” or worse still, “Geoffrey Dringke-dregges”?  Who of my readers would like to sign himself in a marriage record as “Robert le Sot,” or as “Thomas Sour-ale”?  Even “John Swete-ale” would scarcely have relished the sobriquet if he had lived in this more punctilious age of ours.  Where could the young lady be found who would forego the charms of spinsterhood to be wedded to an “Arnold Scutel-mouth”—(what a capacious mouth it must have been!)  “Alice Gude-ale-house” may have been a thoroughly honest and respectable landlady, but I don’t think she would have said “no,” if some smart and worthy younker had offered her the refusal of his name.

Every one of these entries I have myself copied from authentic registers.  Curious, and yet not curious, is it that not one of them has survived.  So far as the Directory shows, we are the soberest and most temperate nation on the face of the earth.  Thus do we throw a mantle over our great national vice.  Even when we cannot get rid of the fact, we manage to smooth it over with a sesquipedalian gloss.  A woman in the middle and higher ranks never gets drunk now-a-days.  She is a suffering martyr to dipsomania!  How thankful we should be for a Bible that says “Be not drunk.”

Who was the first English teetotaler?  If we could find him, I suspect our temperance friends would erect a monument to him.  There are seven “Drinkwaters” in the Metropolitan register; and I am glad to say that Camden’s statement is wrong—it was only a guess—that Drinkwater is a corruption of “Derwentwater.”  In the first place it is an impossible corruption; for the corruptive changes that pass over words and names are not accidental, but follow fixed rules, so to say.  In the second place, I have been able to discover the name in its present guise up to the very time when hereditary surnames were established.  “John Drinkwater” occurs in the Hundred Rolls, and “Richard Drynkwatere” in the Parliamentary Writs. [120]  No wonder their posterity has survived, no wonder their name endures, for they can boast that in their sobriquet lies the record of the first English temperance movement.  In a word, Mr. Drinkwater number one must have been the forerunner of total abstinence.  None of his neighbours could have pointed to him as a man who habitually, or occasionally upon days of festival, “got tight”; his name, whereby they had nicknamed him, was in itself a safeguard.  His very title pledged him to the principles it professed.  No, he never “got tight,” or if he did, like a good sailing craft, he was watertight.  Some day I hope there will be a monument erected to “Drinkwater Number One.”  It might be in the shape of a drinking fountain.  What a heap of people there are buried in state in Westminster Abbey who ought to give place to “Drinkwater Number One”!  But, alas! we don’t all get our deserts.

But enough of this.  We have reminiscences in our directories of meat as well as drink.  Chaucer, speaking of the “Franklein,” says,—

“Withoute bake mete never was his house,
Of fish, and flesh, and that so plenteous,
It snowèd in his hous of mete and drink,
Of allè deintiès that men coud thinke.

* * * * *

Wo was his cook, but if his saucè were
Poignant and sharpe, and redy all his gear.”

This short and piquant description is important because of the language used.  We still use the word flesh in the alliterative phrase, “fish, flesh, and fowl;” but we should never ask for a “pound of flesh” in a butcher’s shop now, any more than we should talk of the importation of “American flesh.”  We should say “meat.”  The distinction, however, is preserved in this account, and we are reminded that before the Norman “Butcher” or “Boucher,” and French “Labouchere” came in, the seller of flesh-meat was called a “Fleshmonger” or “Flesher.”  So late as 1528, William Fleshmonger, D.C.L., was Dean of Chichester.  I fear the name is now obsolete.  Our “Fleshers” still exist, but most of them have become absorbed in “Fletcher,” which represented the trade of feathering arrows: we still employ the word “fledge.”  The Bowyers and Fletchers and Arrowsmiths always marched abreast in the old trades’ processions of London, or York, or Norwich.  Harking back to Fletcher, however, I may add, that in Scotland a butcher is still a flesher.

So far for the butcher.  But the old rhyme speaks of—

“The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker.”

We next turn, therefore, to the bread and biscuit department.  We have all heard how that foolish and imprudent

“Miss Baxter,
Refused a man before he axed her,”

but few of us, possibly, are aware that “Baker” and “Baxter” and “Bagster,” all represent the same occupation, and that Baxter is only the old “bakester,” the feminine of Baker, just as Webster is the feminine of Webber, or Brewster of Brewer, or Blaxter (i.e. “Bleachster”) of Bleacher, or Tapster of Tapper. [122]  Langland, in his poem entitled “The Vision of Piers Plowman,” speaks of

“Baksteres and brewesteres,
And bochiers manye.”

It will not be irreverent to note the coincidence, that no firm in England have more closely associated their name with the printing of the Bible, “The Bread of Life,” than the Bagsters.  It reminds us of that which was no accidental coincidence at all—namely, that Christ Himself, “that true Bread which came down from Heaven,” appeared first at Bethlehem, which literally means “house of bread,” i.e. “bread-shop,” or “bake-house.”  “Bacchus,” as already noted, is a corruption of “bake-house,” while our Bullingers, Ballingers, Bollengers, and Furners, and “Pesters,” represent the Norman-French bakers.  Our “Cokes” and “Cooks” represent the old public pie-shop, as well as the private cuisine, and this explains the large number of the fraternity immortalised in our directories.  An old poem speaks of

“Drovers, cokes, and poulters,
Yermongers, pybakers, and waferers.”

There has ever been a great race in this matter between our “Bakers” and “Cooks” or “Cookes.”  Nearly thirty years ago Mr. Lowe, in his Tables of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, gave the following analysis for one year in England and Wales:—

Births.

Deaths.

Marriages.

Baker

1033

839

513

Cook

910

742

483

In the London Directory for 1871, there appeared 277 Bakers, 56 Baxters, and 2 Bagsters, as against 194 Cooks, 89 Cookes, 1 Coke, 2 Cookmans, and 9 Cooksons.  This preserves the same proportion.

In the couplet quoted above occurs the trade name of “Waferer.”  This may possibly sound an obsoletism to the reader.  But if as a distinct occupation the making of bread wafers is gone, or has fallen into the hands of Messrs. Peek, Frean & Co., and other of our biscuit manufacturers, it has left many memorials behind.  Our “Wafers” have fossilised its story in the Directory, and even in our Authorized Version of the Bible (Lev. ii. 4).  I have known one or two sturdy Protestants who have objected to the translation: “And if thou bring an oblation of a meat offering baken in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mingled with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil.”  There can be no doubt this is one more relic of Papal days in England.  I have seen an old will of the thirteenth century, in which the then Archbishop of York made a small bequest to two “waferers,” who for many years had honestly plied their trade of selling wafers at the Minster gate.  Not that the “waferer” confined himself to these.  The author of Piers Plowman, not to mention Chaucer himself, puts him among certain disreputable street hawkers, who sold small spiced cakes; but then we must remember that the “Malvern Dreamer” wrote his poem against the lewdness of the priesthood—in fact, he was a trumpeter of the Reformation to come—and he would not object to set down the humblest servitor of the papal establishment, even a waferer, in as low a scale as he could.  It is this that to my mind makes the history of English surnames so interesting.  If we visit Pompeii we see in the streets and chambers that have been cleared of débris the very accidents of life and thought well-nigh 2000 years ago.  We have but to clear away the little corruptions of spelling or pronunciation which have befallen these old-fashioned names, and spell-bound we are gazing into the life—the every-day religious and social life—of our English forefathers four hundred years ago.  The antiquary and the philologist alike may take up the London Directory with reverence, for therein lies a fund of information to his hand, which it might occupy months of pain and trouble otherwise to accumulate.

Having dealt with “the butcher” and “the baker,” there is yet the “candlestick-maker” to be considered.  Our “Chandlers” and “Candlers” explain themselves.  Our “Turners” turned out all manner of wooden gear, and doubtless candlesticks were amongst them.  There are plenty of “Bowlers” in the Directory, men who made bowls or dishes of wood.  The twenty-four “Spooners” [126] set down in the same record, fashioned spoons.  Forks being a modern invention, there are no “Forkers”; but “Cutler” abounds on every side in the metropolis, not to mention the “Cutlers’ Alms-houses,” and the “Cutlers’ Hall.”  “Ironmonger” also is well represented.  Those who manufactured crocks—that is, any glazed vessel of earthenware (whence our modern term “crockery”)—were called “Crockers,” or “Crokers.”  There are over thirty Crockers in the Directory, and six Crokers.  A hundred “Potters” figure in the same list.

Some reader may inquire, “Have we any relics of the medical practitioner in the Directory?  Was there any one who was professionally employed to see children through the measles, to extract an obnoxious tooth, to lay a plaister, to open a vein, to mix a potion, or to generally repair a debilitated system?”  The London Directory replies unhesitatingly in the affirmative; and yet look out Doctor, or Surgeon, or Physician, and all are conspicuous by their absence: although, to do the last justice, he has bequeathed us four Physicks.  The reason of this is simple.  These are new terms.  The old practitioner went generally by the name of “Leech.”  There are forty-seven Leaches, one Leachman, and eleven Leeches in the Directory.  Bleeding with leeches was evidently no unfamiliar spectacle in old days, especially when we recall that our forefathers were wont to be very energetic with the knife and fork—or spoon, I should say, for they had no forks.  “Chemist,” too, is a new sobriquet,—therefore he is unrepresented; but there is one “Pothecary,” and Potticary is fairly common in other parts of England.  As for the Barber, the surgeon and dentist of former times, no wonder there is a whole column of his descendants.  His custom was to hang a basin at the end of his pole, with a string of teeth, the longer the better, to show what a roaring trade he drove,—for he could not advertise his business in the newspaper as people do in these remarkable days.  In the window were ranged cups or goblets with a few leeches in.  These

“Did well his threefold trade explain,
Who shaved, drew teeth, and breathed a vein.”

In the latter decades of last century there was a celebrated surgeon in Manchester of the name of “Killer,” which is a corruption of “Kilner,” just as Miller and Milner are identical.  But if this was an unfortunate name for a surgeon, what shall we say of “Kilmister” and “Kilmaster,” which may be found in and about the county of Gloucester!  How bloodthirsty they look!—and yet the truer form Kilminster, in the London Directory, strips them, by the addition of but one letter, of their terrors, and shows them to be of local origin.  In one of the earliest metropolitan directories appears a Mr. Toothaker!  It was not an uncommon name, for in 1635 there embarked in the Hopewell for New England, Roger Toothaker and Margaret Toothaker!  I do not think the name to be of German origin, as Mr. Lower supposes, but one of those local English surnames ending in “acre,” like Whittaker or Oldacre.  The sobriquet, however, reads oddly enough, and looks as if the services of the barber were much required.

Turning to dress for a moment, we may notice that there are nearly 300 Walkers in the London Directory, almost 100 Tuckers, 80 Fullers, and 20 Tozers.  All were concerned once with the combing, fulling, dyeing, and thickening of woollen goods.  In Piers Plowman mention is made of “fulling under foot.”  This refers to the practice of treading the cloth, before machinery was introduced.  He who did this was a walker.  Wycliffe, speaking of Christ’s transfiguration, describes Christ’s dress as shining, so as “no fullers or walkers of cloth” could whiten them.  The “tozer” or “toser,” or “touser,” toused or teased the fabric, so as to raise a nap on it.  We talk of teasing now in the sense of worrying people with attentions.  This is the secondary meaning that has grown upon the other.  “Tozer” and “Toser” are the favourite spellings of this occupation in the Directory.  We are still fond of calling a pugnacious dog “Towser.”  Tucker was a Flemish introduced term for a “dyer.”  Many of the words connected with the manufacture of cloth came in with the Flemish artisans.

I will only mention one article of dress, and conclude.  There is no “Cobler,” or “Cobbler,” in the Directory, but there used to be.  As a mere patchwork business it has got into disrepute; so it has been got rid of by its owners.  Christopher Shoomaker was burnt at Newbury during the days of persecution, and Foxe tells his story in his customary quaint fashion; but it has ever been a rare name in England, though common enough in Germany as Schumacher, or Schumann.  The last form will be familiar to all musicians.  Camden, in a list of occupations, inserts “Chaucer,” appending by way of definition, “id est, Hosier.”  The chaucer or hosier of those days fitted to the leg from the knee downwards the strong leather legging.  This was called a chaussure.  Chaucer is obsolete in England, though not in France.  Hosier and Hozier still exist.  Every Londoner knows of the “Cordwainers’ Hall,” though perhaps he has never seen it.  It is not more than forty years ago that you might not uncommonly see “cordwainer” over a shop door instead of the strictly modern “shoemaker”; while in our directories “Cordwainer,” or “Cordiner,” or “Codner,” is a customary name.  Sir Thopas is described thus:—

“His hair, his beard was like safroun,
That to his girdle raught (reached) adown,
His shoon of cordewane.”

We have only to turn cordwain into cordovan, to see that this was a specially excellent leather, imported in early times from Cordova, in Spain, to make “kid-boots.”  In fact, the cordwainer was the West-end boot-maker.  But this is not all.  In the Directory for 1871 there appear twelve Suters, three Sowters, six Soutters, seven Souters, one Soutar, and three Soustars.  I need not tell any Scotchman what this means, because every shoemaker or cobbler on the other side of the Tweed, except in very fashionable quarters, is still a “souter.”  Souster is but one more instance of the feminine (?) termination.

I might prolong this chapter to any extent, but I must refrain.  I might have called attention to our many “Glovers” and “Ganters,” who sold gloves, or our Gantletts and Gauntletts, who were in the same business, but were known best by the gauntlet that hung as a sign over the door.  I might have pointed to our Girdlers and Bracegirdles, who were busy enough when the modern suspender was unknown; or to our many Pointers, who manufactured the points or tags by which hose and doublet were protected from divorcement.  I might have asked the reader to survey with me the rows of Cheesemans, Cheesmans, Cheesewrights, Cheeswrights, and Firmingers, reminiscences of the good old farmers’ produce, which was the first, second and third course of every peasant’s dinner.  I might have shown that our Challeners and Challoners manufactured or sold blankets, made at first in Chalons; or that our Helliers, or Hilliers, or Hillyers, were thatchers or tylers; that our Shoosmiths forged shoes for horses; that our Wrights worked chiefly in wood, our Smiths in iron.  I might have run through a list of rural occupations, such as Coward for cow-herd, Calvert for calve-herd, Shepherd for sheep-herd, or “Herd” or “Heard” or “Hurd” itself for the tender of cattle in general.  From all temptations of this kind I must stay myself.  I will only say that if my reader should be interested enough to wish to carry on such investigation, he can do so in my book of “English Surnames,” which I think I can truly say is quite exhaustive of those now forgotten and obsolete titles of mediæval occupation.  I have mentioned Wright: let me quote a rhyming pun on his good old title:

“At a tavern one night,
Messrs. More, Strange, and Wright,
Met to drink, and their good thoughts exchange;
Says More, ‘Of us three,’
The whole will agree,
There’s only one Knave, and that’s Strange.’

“‘Yes,’ says Strange, rather sore,
‘I’m sure there’s one More,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister, and brother.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied More, ‘that is Wright.’”

On the whole, Mr. More got the best of the argument.

CHAPTER IX.
NICKNAMES.

We have now reached the last class of surnames—that which we have called Nicknames.  We have dealt with local names, baptismal names, official names, and occupative names.  With Nicknames we conclude our list.  John At-wood, John Thomson, John Chamberlain, and John Baker, would respectively represent the classes already discussed.  John Fox might as fitly act as the representative of our nicknames.

If Nickname be but prosthetically put for an ekename—that is, an added name, a, name appended to the Christian name to eke out or complete a man’s identity—then all surnames are nicknames and all nicknames are surnames.  It is better, therefore, that I should state at the outset what I mean by a chapter on Nicknames.

I intend to take in only such sobriquets as were affixed upon individuals by their neighbours to express some physical or mental peculiarity, complimentary or the reverse, whether given in jest or earnest.

This is a very nondescript class, and is therefore much better illustrated than explained.  If a man developed some grotesque or pitiful characteristic, either in his bodily shape or his mental attributes, it was just as easy to nickname him by the English term that most plainly described it, or to style him by some name of the lower creation that was supposed to represent that particular characteristic.  Thus if Thomas were of crafty disposition, it would be as easy to nickname him Thomas Sly as Thomas Fox.  Thus both Sly and Fox are nicknames.  There is scarcely a moral attribute that is not found in our directories.  In the same receptacle almost every name of every living creature in earth, sea, and air, is to be seen.  Indeed, with respect to this latter class, we find in later days a reversal of the statement met with in Genesis ii. 19.  There it is said, “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.  And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.”  I say this statement was reversed four or five hundred years ago by our English forefathers.  They gave the cattle, the fish, and the birds, men’s names, and gave to men the names of the cattle, the fish, and the birds.  There is not a single domestic animal which was not familiarly known to our ancestors by a nickname taken from our baptismal nomenclature, while, on the other hand, there is not a single domestic animal whose proper name was not affixed as a nickname upon some member of the rational community.

I will give an illustration or two of what I mean.  They shall be taken from the London Directory.  Spenser says,—

“The ruddock warbles soft.”

Many of my readers will not know what a ruddock is.  It was the old proper name for the robin-redbreast.  Chaucer has the name in “The Assembly of Fowls.”  But our forefathers nicknamed this homely bird robin.  Every family then had a “Robin” in the household.  Out of fondness for the bird that did not desert them when the winter snow enveloped the trees with a white mantle, but came hopping to the doorstep for a crumb, they styled it by the familiar term of robin.  This nickname became so popular that it all but pushed out the more orthodox term of ruddock.  But there are three Ruddicks and five Ruddocks in the London Directory!  What does this show?  Why, that as the man’s name of Robin was given to the bird, so the bird’s name of ruddock was given to the man.  We find a Ralph Ruddoc registered so early as the Hundred Rolls.  No doubt he got the nickname from some peculiar redness of the chin or throat, or because of some peculiarity in his habits or demeanour, which struck his neighbours with a fancied similarity to the bird.  A sparrow was always called “Phip,” from Philip.  On the other hand, I find no less than twenty Sparrows in the London Directory.  Thus a pye became a Mag-pie, from Margaret, and we still chant in nursery song,—

“See-saw,
Margery Daw.”

Having given them Margaret, they have presented us with many of our Daws, all our Pyes, and the one Pie of the London Directory.  How odd that while, as I have shown, there are so many hundred Cooks in the metropolis, they can only turn out one Pie!  There is a large assortment of Cockerells, Cockrells, and Cockrills in the Directory.  Young cocks still go by this name in Cumberland.  Driving in my dogcart to visit a sick woman on the hill-side the other day, I went by a barn-door on which I saw a placard advertising the sale of fine healthy “cockerels.”  But I may not linger.  We may see in this same metropolitan record Swans, Finches, Herons, Cootes, Ducks, Drakes, Woodcocks, Partridges, Goslings, and Gosses, by the dozen.  Gosling is often but a corruption of Joscelyn, and so is not of the nickname class.  Goss is but the old spelling of “goose.”  In our older records we find it registered as Peter le Goos, Amicia le Gos, or John le Gos.  All our Pinnicks and Pinnocks are from the old pinnock or pinnick, the hedge-sparrow:—

“Thus in the pinnick’s nest the cuckoo lays,
Then, easy as a Frenchman, takes her flight.”

There are eleven Wrens hopping about our London streets, and I daresay they often stand—not on one leg, of course—to stare at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and to think with pride on Christopher Wren, and his epitaph, “Si monumentum quæris, circumspice.”  There are fifteen Nightingales, too, but whether or no they can all sing sweetly I cannot say.  One of the happiest anagrams ever written was that upon “Florence Nightingale,” which by a transposition of letters makes, “Flit on, cheering angel.”  It is as good as “Horatio Nelson,” which can be turned into “Honor est a Nilo.”

Many of these nicknames we see for ourselves could not have been intended to be very complimentary.  A single quotation will prove this.  We know that every great personage up to the middle of the sixteenth century had his or her professional fool, or joker.  The “privy expenses” of Elizabeth of Yorke for March, 1502, have this entry:—“Item: delivered to John Goose, my Lord of Yorke’s fole (fool), in rewarde for bringing a carppe (carp) to the Quene, 12d.”  Here is a palpable nickname for the office, the term itself being taken from that bird which was popularly supposed to reign supreme over simpletondom.  “You goose” is still commonly applied to a child that has done something silly.  That our “Gosses” should retain a forgotten and obsolete spelling is very natural.  There are three Patches in the Directory.  I crave their pardon for reminding them that their progenitor held the honourable office of “fool” to some English king or baron.  We are all familiar with

“The king of shreds and patches.”

It was through this peculiarity in his dress the official fool got the sobriquet of “Patch.”  Henry the Eighth’s fool bore this name: “Item: paied to the same Pyne for 2 payr of hosen for Patche—xs.,” says an old book of “Privy Purse Expenses” belonging to that king.

Speaking of birds, we may mention the name of Spark, or Sparke.  Few of my readers probably are aware that this is but a corruption of Sparrowhawk.  Sparhawk was the intermediate form, and was once very common.  It was a Mr. Sparrowhawk to whom the great Thomas Fuller jocularly put the question, “What is the difference between an owl and a sparrowhawk?”  His companion at once retorted with the reply, “An owl is fuller in the head, fuller in the face, and Fuller all over!”  This was but repaying the historian in his own coin, for no one has made so many puns and plays on names and words as Fuller.  He carried it to an extent which in our day would be considered profane.  Many will recall his prayer in rhyme—

“My soul is stainèd with a dusty colour,—
Let Thy Son be the sope, I’ll be the Fuller.”

Again, in a spirit of devout meekness, he writes, “As for other stains and spots upon my soul, I hope that He (be it spoken without the least verbal reflection) who is the Fuller’s sope, will scour them forth with His merit, that I may appear clean by God’s mercy.”  It was but natural, that when this great religious punster died, a suggestion should have been made that his epitaph should run thus: “Here lies Fuller’s earth.” [138]  This was not done, and just as well it was not; for if puns are ever objectionable, it is when they appear in epitaphs.  Nevertheless, one of the finest instances of paranomasia on record is to be found on the tablet to Foote’s memory in Westminster Abbey:—

“Here lies one Foote, whose death may thousands save;
For now Death hath one Foote within the grave.”

A similar interchange of nominal courtesies is observable in the names of cattle and wild beasts.  Pigg, Hogg, Stott, Colt, Bullock, Duncalf, Wolf, Lamb, Kidd, Bacon, Grice, and Wildbore all speak for themselves; while in our North English Oliphants and Olivants we recognize the old spelling of “elephant.”  No doubt the original bearer of the nickname was of unusually large proportions even for the border country of England and Scotland.  Speaking of Lamb, we are reminded that a brother-in-law of John Wesley bore the name of Whitelamb, and therefore could scarcely be called, under any circumstances, a black sheep!  There are six Bears and eighty Bulls in the Directory.  The Gentleman’s Magazine for 1807 records the death of “Savage Bear, Esquire,” who was a resident in Kent.  In the same article mention is made of a Mr. Mould, cheesemonger, in Newgate Street.  But we have Bearmans, Bullards (that is, Bullwards), Bulmans, and Bullpitts in our Directory, too.  It was not till 1835 bear-baiting and bull-baiting were forbidden by Act of Parliament.  It had reigned at the head of English pastimes for six centuries.  Hence it was a common inn-sign.  The oldest hostel in London was supposed to be the “Bear,” on the Southwark side of old London Bridge.  Hence an old poem says,—

“We came to the Bear, which we soon understood
Was the first house in Southwark built after the flood.”

Every rich man had his bearward, and the royal houses had their “master of the king’s bears.”  Both Mary and Elizabeth enjoyed a good baiting, whether of bulls or bears.  The Puritans of course were against it, and so far were in advance of the times, but it is a peculiar feature of their opposition that they scarcely ever refer to the cruelty of the sport.  Orthodox and somewhat dull Pepys describes in 1666 how he saw some good sports of the bulls tossing the dogs—one into the very boxes.  A leading Puritan minister not twenty years later is always found, by his own published diary, to have sent his children to the cock-pit on Shrove-Tuesday to witness the “throwing-at-the-cock,” and he piously prays they may be preserved from harm while away (“Newcome’s Diary,” Cheetham Society’s Publications).  Thus it is we find so many “Cockers” and “Cockmans” in the Directory.  As for our “Cocks” or “Coxes,” every young gallant who showed determined pluck, or strutted in his gait, or gave himself airs, was nicknamed from the cockpit or barn-door dictionary.  No wonder our Directory teems with them, for it would be looked upon in bygone days as a pretty compliment.  This is the origin of “cock” in such mediæval pet names as Wilcock, Jeffcock, Batcock and Badcock (Bartholomew), Simcock, Hancock and Handcock (Hans, i.e. Johannes), Bawcock (Baldwin), Pidcock and Peacock (Peter), Philcock, now Philcox, and Adcock or Atcock (Adam).  To give my readers a list of the views propounded as to the meaning of this desinence would take too much space.  Suffice it to say that nothing has seemed too absurd for those who love “guesses at truth,” without ever guessing right, to advance.  Every rustic lusty lad was “Cock,” especially if he had a perky cocky way of his own.  And in these names of Philcock or Jeffcock, we simply see the old-fashioned way of hailing Philip or Jeffery as, “Well, Jeff-cock, lad, how art thou?”  “Pretty well, Phil-cock, thank’ee.”  In the old play, Gammer Gurton’s Needle, Gammer’s servant lad is called simply “Cock,” without the baptismal name being appended at all.  It is so in the mediæval poem entitled “Cocke Lorell’s Bote.”

But we have got among the birds again.  We must hark back to our four-footed friends.  There are no “Donkeys” in the London Directory—probably the only place in the world where they are not to be found.  But this may be accounted for, perhaps, because there are no Thistles there either.  Nevertheless, had there been an English Directory in the year when Domesday Book was compiled, it would have been otherwise; for, thistles or no thistles, “Roger the Ass” is among the list of tenants under the crown.  Here we have been liberal: for we have presented our good thistle-loving friend with no less than three of our baptismal names.  In the north of England, where Cuthbert was the favourite appellation for three centuries at least, he is called a Cuddy, that being the pet form of the saintly sobriquet. [141]  In more southern regions he is known as Ned or Neddy, from Edward.  And north and south alike, Jack-ass is familiar to all.  It is curious to notice how a name that has become opprobrious can be dropped.  “Rascal” was one of our commonest surnames while the term only meant a lean, ragged deer; but when it was passed on to a herd of worthless folk the surname disappeared.  One of the latest was Robert Rascal, who, according to Foxe, was persecuted for his religion in 1517.

I must not omit the mention of one or two of our household favourites.  There are five Catts in our London Directory, entered in old days as Adam le Kat, or Milo le Chat.  In the reign of Richard the Third, there was a rhyme to this effect:—

“The Rat, the Cat, and Lovel the Dog,
Rule all England under the Hog.”

The Hog was the king, Rat was Ratcliffe, and Cat, Catesby.  It is not often we hear of cat, dog, and rat, uniting together to worry others, and not one another!  If I recal my history correctly, however, they did fall out in the end.

There must have been something sleek and smooth, if not stealthy, about the progenitor of our friends the Catts, I fear.  But if our mouse-loving friends gave us their appellation, we were bountiful in return.  For three hundred years the most familiar term for a cat was “Gib,” from Gilbert.  Hamlet says:—

“For who that’s but a queen, fair, sober, wise,
Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib,
Such dear concernings hide?”

And in Peele’s “Edward the First,” the Novice says to the Friar:—

“Now, master, as I am true wag,
I will be neither late nor lag,
But go and come with gossip’s cheer
Ere Gib, our cat, can lick her ear.”

That Gib was short for Gilbert, our Gibbs, Gibsons, Gibbins, and Gibbons can prove.  But “Gib” for a cat is obsolete, I fear; and now we speak of a Tom-cat.  A female cat was called a Tib-cat, or Tibert, from Tibb, or Tibot, pet forms of Theobalda, which at one period as Tibota was our commonest girl’s name.  In “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” one of our very earliest dramatic plays, Dicon (Richard) says:—

“To brawle with you about her cocke,
For well I heard Tyb say,
The cocke was roasted in your house,
To breakfast yesterday.”

Tyb was Gammer Gurton’s “mayde.”  In the same play the cat is “Gib.”  The maid says of Gammer while stitching with her needle,—

“Gyb, our cat, in the milke-pan,
She spied over head and ears.”

The Kitcat Club took its name from one Christopher Cat, who kept an eating-house in London, where the club members met.  The pet name of Christopher was Kit (whence our Kitts, and Kitsons, and the island of St. Kitts, i.e. St. Christopher): a conjunction of the Christian and surname formed the term.  I may here add that Bishop Ken represents the Norman word for the dog, an old form being Eborard le Ken, or Thomas le Chene.  We still employ the term Kennel, which is from the same root.

This interchange of civilities has not been so largely cultivated between mankind and the finny tribe—at least, not in England.  Boys talk, ’tis true, of a Jack-sharp, and fishermen of a Jack-pike or a John Dory; but there we end our distribution of nominal courtesies.  But the denizens of our streams and becks and estuaries, whether in fresh water or salt, have turned the tables on us with a vengeance.  No doubt, as the penalty of possessing certain peculiarities in gait, or habit, or complexion, many of our forefathers got nicknamed Grayling, Tench, Pike, Herring, Pilchard, or Sturgeon.  Whale would be a nickname for a man of huge bulk.  Thomas Spratt was Bishop of Rochester in 1688.  We are all familiar with Chubb, on account of his patent locks.  A Mr. Codde married a Miss Salt, and their first child bore the name of Salt Codde. [144a]  This is not more remarkable than “Preserved Fish,” which figured for some years in the New York Directory, and may be there now for what I know to the contrary.  A Mrs. Salmon is said to have presented her husband with three children at one birth, and to commemorate such an auspicious event, he had them christened by the names of Pickled, Potted, and Fresh.  I do not vouch for the truth of this story! [144b]  I may observe here that it is somewhat remarkable that quaint Isaac Walton, the great master, rather than “disciple of the rod,” wrote the life of the “judicious Hooker.”  Most anglers are disposed to think that Walton himself was the most “judicious hook-er” that England has ever seen.  At least, his success with the fish-basket was so great, and his meditations while occupied with his favourite pastime were so wise, that cynical Samuel Johnson could not say of his fishing rod, that there was a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

Talking about fish, what an odd thing it seems that there should be 181 Fishers and Fischers in the London Directory, only eight Rivers to fish in, and only sixteen Fish to catch!  Nor is this all: they have only three Rodds amongst them, thirty Lines or Lynes, thirty Hooks and Hookes, six Worms, nine Grubbs, and not a single “Fly.”  Nor do I see what they can want with three Basketts; surely one would be enough for but sixteen Fish.  Speaking, too, of Fish and Worms, we must not forget the old epitaph on Mr. Fish:—

“Worm’s bait for fish,
But here’s a sudden change,
Fish’s bait for worms,—
Is not that passing strange?”

The reptile and insect world is not without traces of representation in the London Directory.  There is no Alligator or Crocodile there, ’tis true; but there might have been, had the following story occurred a few generations earlier than it did.  Not very long ago, in a northern town, there was a town councillor who delighted in the use of sesquipedalian English.  He would never employ a short word if he could lay hands on a long one.  He was rather of a positive turn, too.  One day a fellow officer made a certain statement before the Council.  Up jumps our friend, and cries out, “That allegation is false, and—and the allegator knows it.”  He has been styled “Alligator” ever since.  Fly, Wasp, Bee, Gnat, and Bugg once existed, but only Bee and Bugg remain.  Black-adder was formerly common, and still lingers in the Metropolitan Directory as Blackadar.  Bugg, however, can claim a local origin, for there can be little or no doubt that it is but one of the endless forms of Borough, found as Brough, Bury, Burgh, Burge, and Burke.  Nevertheless Thomas Hood did not seem to like it:—

“A name—if the party had a voice—
What mortal would be a Bugg by choice,
As a Hogg, a Grubb, or a Chubb rejoice,
Or any such nauseous blazon?
Not to mention many a vulgar name,
That would make a doorplate blush for shame,
If doorplates were not so brazen.”

“John Frog” occurs in the Hundred Rolls, but he jumped out of our Directories several centuries ago: and, possibly because his company did not please him, has never jumped in again.  Tadpole, ’tis true, exists: but as Tadpoles in our Directories never manifest any further stage of development, the Frogs have never received any increase from them!

But these are not the only names we owe to the animal creation.  Our forefathers loved descriptive compounds.  After all, there is nothing very terrible in being nicknamed a “wolf,” or a “stott,” or a “peacock,” or a “buzzard,” or a “salmon,” or a “fly.”  Our national nickname is “John Bull,” and who ever got into a state of virtuous indignation about that?  Yet “bull” is not, taken all round, a very complimentary sobriquet.  He’s a stubborn, bellicose, lumbersome kind of creature; and it’s wonderful what a little matter, such as a red rag, will set him into a fury!  How frequently we term a man a pig-headed fellow.  That was a favourite kind of nickname in old days, and our registers are not without traces of this.  We have still Colfox, that is, sly fox.  Herring is common; but once we had Freshherring, Goodherring, Badherring, and Rottenherring in our Directories.  Pigg, Grice, and Hogg are still to the fore; but Cleanhog, Cleangrice, and Pigsflesh are all gone.  Hogsflesh, as stated before, still exists in the South of England; and a rhyme says that—

“Worthing is a pretty place,
And if I’m not mistaken,
If you can’t get any butchers’ meat,
There’s Hogsflesh and Bacon.”

Other compound nicknames of the same class are Poorfish, Catsnose, Cocksbrain, Buckskin, Goosebeak, Bullhead, and Calvesmaw; but they have all been shuffled out of our Directories, to give place to sobriquets more pleasant of origin, and more euphonious in sound.

In my next chapter I shall proceed with this subject, and, if I can retain my readers’ attention, we shall discuss Nicknames taken from moral and mental and physical characteristics—not affixed through the agency of typical animal names, but by the ordinary and more direct phraseology.

CHAPTER X.
NICKNAMES (continued).

Our last chapter was devoted to the consideration of nicknames of a particular class—viz., animal names.  We said that, to all intents and purposes, Sly and Fox were the same—one representing a term for cunning, the other a type.  But while re-asserting this statement, we are met by a difficulty.  Many generations have elapsed since such a nickname as Sly was fixed upon its original bearer.  Did the word “sly” then mean what it now means?  Was the name “Sly” given as a disparaging sobriquet, or a compliment?  Most probably the latter.  Sly, or Sleigh, implied honest dexterity long before the juggler with his sleight-of-hand tricks ruined its verbal reputation.  Even two hundred years ago only, when a well-known poet spoke of a good man as one whom—

“Graver age had made wise and sly,”

he was not misunderstood.

It is so with many other nicknames; and this explains the fact of their existence.  Had Sly or Sleigh or Slee been confined to its present meaning three hundred years ago, we should not have found it in our directories in 1878.  Our Seeleys and Selymans, our Sillys and Sillymans would probably have become nominally defunct, if silly had conveyed its modern meaning to the ears of our forefathers.  “Silly,” in former days, implied guilelessness; we still use it in this sense in the phrase “silly lamb.”  An old proverb says:—

“Whylst grasse doth growe,
Oft starves the seely steede.”

The best instance, however, I know of this use of the word is in Foxe’s Martyrology, where, describing the martyrdom of a young child not seven years old, he says: “The captain, perceiving the child invincible, and himself vanquished, committed the silly soul, the blessed babe, the child uncherished, to the stinking prison.”  Here, of course, silly is the equivalent of innocent, or inoffensive.  Our Sillymans and Sillys and Seeleys may fairly claim that theirs was a complimentary nickname.  I mention these as instances only of a large class.

When we come to bonâ-fide cases, we shall discover, not with any surprise, that almost all our nicknames are complimentary!  Our forefathers must have been a most highly respectable set of fellows, judging by this famous Directory.  They never got drunk, for who can find a man who but rarely transgressed the limit of sobriety in our directories?  There is not a trace of meanness or cowardice about them.  ’Tis true Coward is a common name, but then, as already shown, it is not a nickname at all, but an occupation, being none other than our old friend the cow-herd.  On the other hand, see what a large number of Doughtys there are, and Bolds, and Gallants, and Prews, all backed up by Hardy, who worthily sits in the Cabinet.  We meet with courtesy in our Curtis’s and Curteis’s; with nobility in our Goodharts and Trumans; with humility in our Humbles and Meeks; with kindliness in our Gentles and Sweets; with firmness in our Steadys and Graves; and with liveliness in our Sharps, Quicks, and Wittys.  Nor are more abstract charms wanting.  It can be truly said that there are plenty of Graces, for at least twelve appear.  Faith and Hope are there,—only Charity is wanting.  Honour, Virtue, and Wisdom, however, make up in some degree for the absence of that gentle quality.  Some people are “Good,” but to be “Goodenough” and “Thorowgood” or “Thoroughgood,” let alone “Toogood,” seems only possible in our nomenclature.  Many people, too, are “Perfect” in it, and “Sin” is not there, though “Want” is.  Some cynic may say that Truth is conspicuous by its absence, but how can that be in the presence of five “Veritys”?  Not merely are we in the atmosphere of constant Spring, and Blossoms, and Budds, but twenty-five Summers appear in the same year, and Rosinbloom blows the twelve months round!  The “Tabernacle,” the “Temple,” and endless Churches for Churchfolk, Kirks for Scotch people, and Chapells for Nonconformists, are to be descried on every hand.  Service is carried on from year to year, to suit all tastes; there are seven Creeds; Heaven and Paradise, with their attendant Bliss, complete the picture.  Oh, what a wonderful community we seem to be in this directory of ours!  Human nature would appear to have overridden and crushed all its weaker infirmities, and issued forth into something like what its poets have loved to depicture it.  The London Directory is the great parish register of Utopia.

That some sad infirmities did once really exist our olden records show, if our directories of to-day do not.  Who could conceive, after this last picture, that Bustler and Meddler once loved to make their objectionable presence felt; that Foolhardy and Giddyhead won for themselves a vain notoriety; that Cruel and Fierce delighted to display their unbridled passions; that Wilful and Sullen fed their hidden and unconsumed fires; and that Milksop and Sparewater had the impudence to show their faces in polite society?  Yet such was the case!  If there had been a directory of London published by authority under the reign of Henry the Seventh, all these names, and a hundred others of a similar kind, would have found habitation in its pages.

We may here notice that two modern instances of nicknames occupied public attention a few months ago.  They are of advantage as showing how easily and even naturally sobriquets of this class fix themselves upon the bearers, and how readily they are accepted by the same.  They are the more worthy of attention because they are borne by men of high estate.  It was less than a year ago that the English papers announced the death of a well-known native Indian merchant who had been knighted by Her Majesty.  What was his surname?  Nothing more nor less than Readymoney!  The worthy merchant commonly signed himself as such.  He was notorious for his princely generosity, and one of his peculiarities was to pay down at once whatever sums he devoted to the different charities he patronised.  So well-known was he for this practice, that he acquired the nickname of Readymoney.  The other instance is that of the King of Bonny.  He was brought up in England, and is one of the first African potentates who has embraced and been trained, in the religion of Jesus Christ.  A large amount of pepper has come to England every year from his dominions, so the traders got into the way of styling him King Pepper.  The natives being more accustomed to liquid letters, turned it into Pepple.  What is the consequence?  The king has taken it for his surname; and when he appeared two years ago at St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the service held by the Pan-Anglican Synod, the newspapers did not fail to note the fact, and without any thought of depreciation of his high position as an African potentate, gravely announced that in the vast congregation that swelled 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.”

Look at bodily peculiarities.  There is not a shape man can assume, but is described in the Directory.  There is not an accident that can befall him but it is there recorded, just as if it were the entry book of cases for a London hospital.  There is not a peculiarity in his style of dress, or management of his limbs, or complexion of his skin, or colour of his hair, that is not set down with as great a care as if he were a suspected character in a detective’s notebook.  Nevertheless, let us be careful not to fall into a trap.  A hundred local names look very like nicknames.  Tallboy occurs twice in our Directory.  These gentlemen represent the Norman Talboys frequently found in Domesday Book.  Longness, Thickness, and Redness, may not mean Longnose, Thicknose, and Rednose, although nose was “ness” in the days when these surnames arose.  Thickness is known to be local.  Any sharp promontory on the coast is a Naze or Ness (i.e. a Nose).  Hence such a name as Dengeness in Kent.  A Miss Charlotte Ness inquired the meaning of the logical terms abstract and concrete.  The answer was given in verse:

“Say what is abstract, what concrete?
Their difference define.”
“They both in one fair person meet,
And that, dear maid, is thine.”

“How so?  The riddle pray undo.”
“I thus your wish express:
For when I lovely Charlotte view,
I then view loveli-Ness.”

Still we may safely assume of the great majority that they are what they seem to be.  We will at once proceed to inspect some of them.

Let us begin with the head, keeping our eye meantime on the pages of the Directory for evidence.

We have Heads (often local) and Tates many; indeed, they are truly tête-à-tête in the Directory, for of the latter no less than eleven are in immediate proximity.  We have Silverlock, Whitelock, or Whitlock, Blacklock, and the remains of an old fashion common to mediæval beaux in Lovelock.  Redhead, and Whitehead, and Hoar or Hoare, and White and Brown, and Rouse, and Sangwine, and Black, and Blund or Blunt, are an innumerable force.  Beard and Blackbeard are to the fore still, though Brownbeard is gone, and probably Bluebeard never was there.  The Directory can show its Cheek, like any other fellow of forward disposition, and Joule is not far off.  And although it has no Mouth, it possesses at least one Gumm, one Tooth, and two Tongues.  “Tooth,” by the way, has been refusing some ecclesiastic dentistry lately; but it will need a good deal of tugging to get him out of the Directory.  There is no Gumboil, I am glad to say, at present, but he may make his appearance any day, as he is known in other parts of England.  There are eleven Notts to be seen, and two Notmans, whose progenitors were remarkable for their shorn heads.  A man was said to have a not-head who presented this appearance, and in the old rolls was set down as Peter le Not, or William le Not.  So although Must, and Cant, and Shall, and Will, look as if the Directory (they are all in it) had a strong will of its own, we must not argue the matter so far as Nott is concerned.

Looking at man’s extremities the feet, we again find that it is hard to decide whether the termination “foot” is of local or nickname origin.  The Directory has all manner of feet: a Brownfoot, a Whitefoot, a Crowfoot, a Barefoot, a Proudfoot, a Lightfoot, and a Harefoot.  Lightfoot has just footed it all the way to the episcopal palace of Durham.  We may all, in congratulating the learned Professor, pray that by God’s aid he may be a light unto the feet of his clergy, and guide them in true and safe paths.  Remembering too, his predecessor, the firm, yet “kindly Baring,” we might concoct an epigram of our own, and say, with many apologies to the coachman for the liberty we take,—

Come, Lightfoot, mount, the ribbons take,
When roads are downward on the brake
Set not thy foot too lightly,
And though the reign of Baring’s o’er,
Hold bearing-rein as tightly.

Or we might put another play on the name:—

Lightfoot has gone to Durham’s see:
If name and mind in him agree,
Of foes he’ll have not any;
For then a lantern he will be
To light the feet of many.

Bishop Baring was so staunch a churchman as to put his foot on Ritualism.  Hence a young curate in his diocese said, with more wit than warrant, that the difference betwixt him and his bishop was that he was under Baring, while the other was over-bearing.  Speaking of Lightfoot, however, I have heard my father tell of a minister appointed many years ago somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ashton-under-Lyne, whose name was Light.  Coming unexpectedly into a room where a prayer-meeting was being held that a good pastor might be sent to them, he heard them singing the two lines well known to most of my readers,—

“Sometimes a Light surprises
The Christian while he sings.”

It is said he was inclined to look upon it as an augury that he had done rightly in accepting the post.  Foot we have already said is very common, but there is only one Toe, and, as is but proper, only one Nail.  An old epigram says:

“’Twixt Footman Sam and Doctor Toe
A controversy fell,
Which should prevail against his foe
And bear away the belle;
The lady chose the footman’s heart:
Say, who can wonder?  No man:
The whole prevailed above the part—
’Twas Footman versus Toe, man.

Rawbones is not a pleasant name, and would be by no means suggestive of agreeable associations to its possessor.  Some will recall Praise God Barebones, as he has been wrongly styled, for his name was Barebone, and it was never otherwise called till about a hundred years ago.  There is all the difference in the world between Barebone and Barebones, and a good deal of point is lost, therefore, in the elder Disraeli’s remark, “There are some names which are very injurious to the cause in which they are engaged; for instance, the long parliament in Cromwell’s time, called by derision the Rump, was headed by one Barebones, a leather-seller.”  The reason of the change is simple enough.  That assembly went by the style of Barebone’s parliament, and thus people forgot that the “s” did not belong to the name.  The name is found in James’ reign as Barbon, and stripped of the two “e’s” ceases to be ludicrous in any sense whatever.

One of the earliest ways of forming a surname of the nickname class was to compound with the baptismal name an adjective of size, age, relationship, or condition.  We are all familiar with such a name as Little-john, which may well stand as a typical illustration, for I see in my London Directory nine instances occur.  The father of the original bearer was doubtless John, and the son being baptized by the same agnomen, the neighbours would readily get into the way of styling him Little John.  The grandson would accept this as his surname, and thus the sobriquet would become a permanency.  These compounds of John are not uncommon, for that was the commonest baptismal name in those days, save William.  Thus we have Mickle-john, i.e. big John; Brown-john; Hob-john, i.e. clownish John; and Young-john, an instance of which I saw in Kidderminster not long ago.  By means of French importation, or through our Norman forefathers, we have also Pru-jean, Gros-jean, and Petit-jean.  Proper-john, though not in the London Directory, is very common in some parts of the country, and implied that the original bearer was a well-formed, shapely youth.  This old use of the term is preserved in our Authorized Version, where St. Paul is made to speak of Moses as “a proper child.”  Our Properjohns need not be ashamed of their designation.  Speaking of Youngjohn, I may state that in one of our Yorkshire local directories may be seen John Berry, and immediately below Young John Berry.  Doubtless the son was baptized “Young John,” to distinguish him from his father; and thus an old custom was but restored in a more formal manner at the font.  As Young John Berry has now grown to man’s estate, as is proved by the fact that he occupies a place of his own in the aforementioned directory, we may, perhaps, some day see in a future issue of that same public register, “Still Younger John Berry” as the title of the representative of the third generation!  The most interesting name in its associations, however, is that of Bon-jean or Bon-john, i.e. Good John, corrupted into Bunyan.  So early as the year 1310 there dwelt in London a householder of the name of Jon Bonjon.  My readers will deem it, I doubt not, a happy coincidence that when we speak of the author of the immortal “Pilgrim’s Progress” as “Good John Bunyan,” we are simply saying twice over “Good John”: once in English, and once in French.  Probably the ancestor of the dreamer of Bedford was a Norman tradesman, who had come over to London to better himself.

Speaking of these Norman-French names ending in Jean, such as Gros-Jean, Petit-Jean, or Bon-Jean, we are reminded that this mode of forming surnames was much more common in France than in England.  A single glance at the Paris Directory will amply demonstrate this.  We find Grand-jean (Big-John), Grand-perret and Grand-pierre (Big-Peter), Grand-collet (Big-Nicholas), and Grand-Guillot (Big-William).  Of an opposite character we light upon Petit-collin (Little Nicholas), Petit-guillaume (Little-William), Petit-perrin and Petit-pierre (Little-Peter), and Petit-jeannin, corresponding to our English Little-john already alluded to.  These instances, which might be amplified to any extent, will suffice to prove that nicknames of this class are far more prevalent with our French neighbours than ourselves.

But while such qualificatory terms as “good,” “long,” “young,” and “proper,” were freely applied to baptismal names, they were not limited to such.  Long-skinner used to exist as a surname, also Young-smith and Good-groom.  One of our most aristocratic names is Beau-clerk; and its opposite, Mau-clerk, once familiar enough to our ears, still exists in the corrupted form of Manclerk.  Talking, however, of ears, the name that sounds most curious upon the modern tympanum is that of Good-Knave.  This is no corruption, and meant exactly what it seems to mean—that the original bearer was a good honest knave!  But then, as many of my readers are aware, there was a time when a knave was nothing more than a servant or page.  Shakespear speaks of one who is but

“Fortune’s knave,
A minister of her will.”

Young-husband, of which there are four representatives in our London Directory, is a very familiar instance of this class, although husband had no doubt a much wider significance in the day that the surname arose.  Goodfellow is also well known; and, above all, one of our American cousins has made Longfellow famous to all time.  If you come to analyse the name of the author of “Evangeline,” it has not a very attractive origin.  The earliest instances I can find are in our Yorkshire records, and there it is set down Long-fellay.  Even now in Lancashire and Yorkshire a fellow is always a “felley.”  I wonder if Henry Longfellow ever heard of Thomas Longfellow, landlord of the Golden Lion Inn at Brecon, who must have made a somewhat long face when he saw the following lines inscribed upon a panel of his coffee-room:—

“Tom Longfellow’s name is most justly his due:
Long his neck, long his bill, which is very long, too;
Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led;
Long before he’s rubbed down, and much longer till fed;
Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room
Till from kitchen long dirty your dinner shall come;
Long the oft-told tale that your host will relate;
Long his face while complaining how long people eat;
Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again:
Long ’twill be ere I long for Tom Longfellow’s Inn.”

The well-known publishers, Messrs. Longman, represent, of course, but another form of the same name.  Indeed, as will be seen at a glance, this class could be extended indefinitely; so indefinitely that, were I to set all the instances down one by one, I should have to write a big book instead of a small one.  This is exactly what the Editor does not desire; for which reason—not to hint that the reader might be weary—I withhold my hand: and indeed it is time.

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FOOTNOTES

[12]  Legge or Leg is Leigh, a meadow, and therefore local.  John de Leg is found in the Hundred Rolls.

[25]  The pedigree is shown in graphical format in the book.  In text it is: Starting at Richard of Colton there are three descendents: Richard the Little, William atte Pound and Henry Whitehead.  From William atte Pound there are two descendents: Bartholomew the Page and John Williamson.  From Bartholomew the Page is descended Richard the Baker.  From Henry Whitehead is descended Adam Hawkins and from him James Bentham and Alice Adams.—DP.

[26]  Again, the pedigree is shown in the book in graphical format.  In text it starts at William Belward of Malpas with descendents David le Clerke and Richard de Belward.  From David le Clerke are descended William de Malpas, Philip Gough and David Golborne.  From Richard de Belward are descended Thomas de Cotgrave, William de Overton and Richard Little.  From Richard Little is descended John Richardson.—DP.

[29]  I say there are 250 Aliens in London.  But the Directory only gives the name of the head of the family.  Hence in the aggregate there may be 2,000 Aliens dwelling in the metropolis.

[43]  Dearn means secluded.  Chaucer speaks of “derne love,” i.e. hidden, secret love.

[63]  Since this appeared in The Fireside, I became vicar of a church on the borders of Cumberland.  I find that there is an old hall with a celebrated “dobby” in it, within a few stones cast of my vicarage!  It (i.e. the ghost) is always called the “dobby” here.

[66]  After the appearance of this chapter as an article in The Fireside, I received several letters from the counties of Cambridge, Stafford, and Devon, testifying to the existence of the surname “Robinet” in several secluded villages.

[86]  A servant of King Henry III. was called by the simple and only name of “Pentecostes” (Inquis., 13 Edit., No. 13).

[107]  A curious instance in point will be found in the marginal reading of Malachi ii. 12, where “master, and scholar,” in the text, is marginally translated, “him that waketh, and him that answereth.”  Now, we know the corresponding duties of master and scholar.  The master asks his question, and then watches for the reply.  “Him that watcheth, and him that replieth,” would be understood by all readers.  “Him that waketh, and him that answereth,” will probably seem unmeaning to nineteen out of twenty average students.

[120]  In this last record there is also a “Thomas le Sober.”

[122]  I must not let this statement pass without saying that the termination “ster” is not admitted to be feminine by all philologists; in fact, it is the subject of much contention.  It will be quite sufficient for my purpose simply to draw attention to the existence of this twofold desinence in “er” and “ster,” because it occurs more frequently in the directory than the dictionary.  I have had the opportunity of proving this in “English Surnames” (2nd edition, p. 380 and elsewhere), so I will only add that very often where the dictionary has dropped one form the directory has preserved it, and vice versâ.  For instance, there are five Treachers and two Trickers in the London Directory.  We do not now speak of a tricker but a “trickster.”  Of course the meaning of a “treacher” or “tricker” has become forgotten or confused, otherwise our friends bearing that name would long ago have shuffled it off.  Webster still has the word, but he adds that it is an obsoletism.  We only talk of a beggar now, but “Joan Beggister” occurs in an old roll.  It is curious to note how the weaving and dyeing of cloth have left the double forms.  We only speak of a dyer now, but “Dyer” and “Dyster” figure in the London Directory.  On the other hand, the dictionary has both “whiter” and “whitster,” and “thrower” and “throwster,” the directory only “Whiter” and “Thrower.”  Again, the directory alone contains “Blaxter” (bleachster), the dictionary alone bleacher.  A litter of cloth (i.e. dyer), or a kemper of wool seems never to have existed, for only “Lister” is a surname—once written “Litster”—and “Kempster.”  I have already mentioned Webber and Webster.  We should think it odd to hear people talk of a “bellringster,” or a “breadmongster,” or a “washster,” but so they did some generations ago.  “Spinner” has never been a surname, nor “spinster,” but the latter had no chance on account of the secondary sense that so quickly attached to it.  I cannot end this note without once more drawing the attention of philologists to the advantages of using the directory as a complement to the dictionary.

[126]  We can readily understand why “Spooner” should be so common a name, when we reflect that not only were there no forks in use, but our forefathers were particularly fond of sauces and thick soups.  The spoon was much more used than the knife at dinner.  Our “Pottingers” are relics of the old potager, or pottinger, who made pottage—that is, soup well thickened with vegetables.  Porridge is but a corruption of pottage.  In all this the spoon played an important part.  I see four Pottingers in the Directory.

[138]  The same kind of wit was exercised on Camden and his book called “Remains,” and Walker, of Dictionary reputation.  It was suggested that the epitaph of the one should be “Camden’s Remains,” and of the other “Walker’s Particles.”

[141]  Another pet form of Cuthbert was “Crud,” or “Crowd,” and hence about Kendal and the Furness district of North Lancashire a familiar surname is Crewdson, and Croudson.  It is a proof of the peculiar tenacity with which some names cling to the place of their origin, that there is no instance of this surname in the London Directory.

[144a]  The mother of Thomas Moore, the poet, bore the name of Anastasia Codd.  I never see this conjunction of Christian name and surname without thinking of a very little man with a very big hat on.

[144b]  A much prettier selection of names, after a triple birth, is recorded by Mr. Lower in his “English Surnames,” where the three Christian graces of “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Charity,” were chosen.  This is a bonâ-fide instance: and I may observe here that I have among my manuscript copies of curious registrations, met with by myself, at least a dozen instances where either Faith, or Hope, or Charity have been imposed upon infants at baptism.

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Table of Contents

- THE ROMANCE OF THE LONDON DIRECTORY.

- PREFACE.

- CONTENTS.

- CHAPTER I. INDIVIDUALIZATION AND LOCALIZATION.

- CHAPTER II. THE DIVISIONS OF LONDON SURNAMES.

- CHAPTER III. IMMIGRATION AND EMIGRATION.

- CHAPTER IV. ROBIN HOOD AND THE LONDON DIRECTORY.

- CHAPTER V. EARLY PET NAMES.

- CHAPTER VI. THE BIBLE AND NOMENCLATURE.

- CHAPTER VII. OFFICERSHIP.

- CHAPTER VIII. THE EMPLOYMENTS OF OUR FOREFATHERS.

- CHAPTER IX. NICKNAMES.

- CHAPTER X. NICKNAMES (continued).

- PUBLISHER’S ADVERTISEMENT.

- “Hand and Heart” Library; A SERIES OF NEW BOOKS FOR POPULAR READING.

- BOOKS AT MAGAZINE PRICES.

- BOOKS AT MAGAZINE PRICES.

- Her Majesty the Queen.

- For CHRISTMAS, 1879—The NEW ANNUALS

- FOOTNOTES

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE