The Origin of British Family Names - Part 2

From the year 1066 to about 1400, the period when British family names evolved, there were four basic ideas for how to create a name:

• The name related to a profession.


• The name described the person.


• The name explained a relationship to someone named, mostly “son of”.


• The name was derived from where a person lived.

There are several sub-categories in a couple of the main ones. Where a person lived could be explained in general terms like for example on a promontory or more specifically stating the name of a farm or some other place that was small enough to satisfy the demand for uniqueness. The name describing a person could aim for looks, character or where he came from. The profession names and the "son of" names are more difficult to see categories in, although the latter is disguised in different ways.
Apart from these main categories, we can see other principles at work. One example is names telling a story about what a person had done. There is a brilliant example of the latter that will be described in a post about British “colour names”, another in a post about an Estonian name.
According to Dunkling’s work, The Guinness book of names, the “where a person lived” names are by far the most common among British family names. This is so despite the fact that the most common names in England and Wales are Smith, Jones and Williams. The most common names in the USA are Smith, Johnson and Williams. Smith then is the only occupation name on the top list, the rest are “son of” names in various shapes.

PS Picture from Shutterpoint. The scene depicts a lavender farm in Cotswold. Plenty there to create a family name based on "where a person lived".

Fremantle and Freemantle - Odd Medieval Humour

After the utter confusion with "Black" in the previous post, I had to turn to Hank's and Hodges's A Dictionary of Surnames for something more straightforward. I finally found the English/Norman name Fremantle, also spellt Freemantle. I thought that I recognised the name, perhaps from some old novel, and I did not have I clue about its meaning.

The name originates from France, from one of the many small places called "Fromentel". This word then originates from the Old French "froid" - cold and "mantel" - coat. Then we have "cold mantel" which does not make sense. At least not until one is informed that the Old French used these words as a nickname for a forest. The logic is that the forest provided cover for the poor, that could not afford a real coat.

PS Picture from Shutterpoint.

Black or White? British Colour Names Part 1

There are several British “colour names”. Black, Brown, White and Green are the most common. This post deals with Black and White. Of these, White is the simplest. The name describes a person with white hair or a pale complexion. The Oxford Names Companion claims that an unnaturally pale complexion was required to get this name.
Pale people have got their name from it in many different languages. In Gaelic, white is “ban” and that has generated the family name Bain. “Fair” in Gaelic is “fionn”. This word has transformed into the name Finn. Many “White’s” have got their name as translation to English from these Gaelic names. Pale Germans are “Weiss”. In Spain and Portugal, people with at light complexion were considered pink and therefore got the family name Rosado, meaning pink.
With Black, it gets really complicated. In general, this would be a name for a person with very dark hair or dark complexion. This is, however, a rule with exceptions. The problems are threefold. The first case is most likely quite rare. A name researcher, Mr.Tengvik, found a man Wulfric that in 1080 won the name “The Black” by darkening his face with charcoal to go undetected among his enemies at night. This would be one of the few names generated by camouflage. The Oxford Names Companion does not rule out that there could have been other acts or circumstances that could have generated the name Black, although the editors obviously did not have any more at hand.
The second problem is generated by an un-practicality in Old English. The word for black and the word for pale or fair were basically the same, “blac”. They were distinguished by pronunciation only. Thus we are stuck with at situation where the name Black could have originated from Old English for “fair” or the Old English for black. In most cases the actual circumstances around each case will never be revealed.
The third problem was created by the Normans, arriving in great numbers in 1066. White in French is “blanc” when describing males. English people found it difficult to pronounce this word and simply dropped the “n”. Thus a pale person named Blanc in French rapidly became Blac in England. The name Blake is a version of Black and suffers from the same problems. Just about the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the name Black and its derivates is that the confusion is complete.
Two related names are Blacklock and Whitlock. These names refer to the colour of the hair. Here the Oxford Names Companion concludes that we are on a bit firmer ground. Although the “black” in Blacklock theoretically suffers from the problems mentioned above, the Companion thinks that it is more likely that a Blacklock really had dark hair since there is a contrasting name, the Whitlock. The discussion can of course go on for ever. In Old English, white was “hwit”. If a person in an Old English speaking society had hair that was fair but not white, he could, as far as I can understand, have become a Blacklock.
We can only conclude that it was a bad decision to have basically the same word for two different phenomena in Old English and that this leaves us for ever uncertain about the origins of most Black and Blake names. It is quite surprising that the Companion does not mention a lot other possible interpretations of the name White. One could have imagined that a symbolically strong word like that could have become a family name for other reasons than just paleness or white hair…

PS The picture comes from Shutterpoint, her name is Matilda.

The Origin of British Family Names

Just recently, I got my hands on Leslie Dunkling's The Guiness Book of Names. Both Dunkling and Guiness are interesting names that will be commented upon later in this blog. However, this post will be based on what Dunkling had to say about the origin of British family names.
Before the 11th century and the Norman conquest, the people living on the British Isles had one name. They made sure that the names were unique and since the communities they were living in were smallish, this was not so difficult. Hence, from the beginning, there was very little confusion.
The system was distorted by the invading Danes. The Vikings believed in the re-use of names and one name did then not suffice. The problem was solved with "bynames", sort of a nick-name added to the original name. This byname could be flattering but quite often Scandinavian bynames described a handicapp or something that the bearer would be less proud of. These names were not family names, but a stepping stone towards them.
When the Normans came in 1066, it got worse. They were even more proned to use the same names for different persons than the Scandinavians. To get legal documents useful they simply had to have another name to positively identify a person. The bynames got more and established and a process had started that by the beginning of the 15th century had culminated in most people having a family name that was inherited withing the family. Dunkling makes the remark that the details in this process are obscure and perhaps never will be sorted out.
Although the dynamics of creating family names to some extent still exists today, we can conclude that most of the development of British family names was concluded by the year 1400.

PS Picture from Shutterpoint. The motif is a half-timbered Celtic Pub, presumably in Normandy. Several family names were most likely created in houses like this.

English and French

The family names English and French are not uncommon. At a first glance, they are quite obvious. A person named French simply has ancestors coming from France. However, the Hank and Hodges A Dictionary of Surnames remarks that it in some cases, it might have originated as a nickname for person just behaving like a Frenchman. It also points out that Irish bearers of this name “are said” – hedging their bets there – to descend from the Norman Baron Theophilus de Frensche. If “de Frensche” is the same word as French or has another origin is not made completely clear. If it refers to the nation, it has a bit of a royal air. This might be something to return to in the future.
The English then. Having considered the name one more time, it seems odd that English is an English family name. The whole idea behind family names is to distinguish and English does not seem that distinguishing in England. Turning to Hank and Hodges again, they are not really sure although they offer possible explanations. The name could during the early Middle Ages have been used for English persons in areas where Englishness was not the rule. Examples are the parts where Danes were strong, in Scotland or in parts of Wales. After 1066 it could have been used for English people where the Normans had settled intensively. Thinking about it, Hank’s and Hodges’s explanations make a lot of sense and seem to settle the matter.

PS The City Hall in Calais was the best I could find at Shutterpoint to illustrate this post...

Theodore and Franklin Delano

I always liked the name Roosevelt, carried by two American Presidents, Theodore and Franklin Delano. However, I never could make real sense of it. The Oxford Names Companion offered the solution.
It is a Dutch name, built up by “roose” and “velt”. Roose is not that difficult and obviously has to do with roses. Velt is worse. It simply means “open country” in Dutch. The word seems to imply that the land is not cultivated. The name then describes a person that lives on uncultivated open land, overgrown with roses. Quite beautiful I’d say.

PS The picture depicts the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial and comes from Shutterpoint stockphoto.

Living High - Biles, Goya and de Vivenot

This is another case of three different names, but with basically the same meaning. There is a Peter Biles reporting from South Africa on BBC International and I got curious as his name does not immediately make sense in modern English. The Oxford Names Companion could immediately deliver an explanation. The name comes from Old English “bil” or “bile”, which means bill or beak of a bird. The word has then been used in a transferred sense for someone that lived on high ground or on a promontory.
Just a short while earlier, a member of the family “de Vivenot” had explained his name to me. The first part comes from French “vivre” – “to live” and the second from French “haut” – “high”. Here we then have another family living high. Since the first Vivenot’s were bishops, it is not completely clear if they were living high in a literal sense or more in a figurative.
Two is good but three is more of a collection. I then stumbled upon “Goya” in the Oxford Names Companion and was given the third. The famous painter had his name derived from the Basque word “goi”, meaning “top”, "a" is a definite article. Still according to the Companion, the name was used for people living at the top of a hill or just in the upper part of a community.
To add more cream to the custard, I also took a look for German high livers but failed to find any. The famous family “Hohenzollern” was an early candidate. “Hohen” definitively has to with something high. The name, however, seems so old that the meaning of the “zollern” part has been lost on the way.

Vietnamese names - Part one

Sometimes it seems like every other Vietnamese is named “Nguyen” and that is basically correct. Forty percent of the Vietnames population carries this family name. The Vietnamese normally have three names. The family name is placed first, followed by a middle name and then a Christian name. For example, the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s name is Nguyen Tan Dung. There are a lot of diacritics in Vietnamese, which gives a word a new meaning. These are crucial to the Vietnamese, but for technical reasons omitted here.
According to tradition, there are one hundred family names in Vietnam. In reality, there seems to be just over two hundred. Of these, Nguyen, Tran and Le have a reassuring majority with some 60 percent between them. The middle name is given by the parents and the use of it varies. Some families give the same middle name to all their children, boys and girls, to indicate generation. That is, however, not a rule. Vietnamese women retain their family name as they marry.
The ambition for this post was to disclose the meaning of Nguyen. This proved a bit difficult. The website yutoian.com tells us that the name is derived from Mandarin Chinese, in which it is “ruan”. The word represents a plucked string instrument. The man Ruan that so successfully spread his name was a governor in the latter part of the 6th century.
This is not much, but it is a start – to be continued. There are several Vietnamese names that could be interesting to understand. “Ho” is one and there also was one well know South Vietnamese person whose name broke the rules: Cao Ky. The next time I meet a Vietnamese person, I know what to ask about.

Blair

In Great Britain, we used to hear the name Blair quite often, of course mostly because of the Prime Minister. However, there ought to have been another well known Blair, the one giving his name to the city Port Blair in the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
Not having the foggiest idea about the origin of the name, I had to turn to The Oxford Names Companion. There a simple and straight forward explanation was offered. The name is Scottish or North Irish. It is a habitation name and derives from one of the many places called “blár”. Blár is a Gaelic word meaning plain or field, especially a battlefield.

The Bakers

Another name wise successful professional corps is the bakers. In English, we meet Baker’s quite often. Trying to recall some famous people carrying this name, Josephine Baker comes to ones mind. So does the notorious gangster “Ma” Baker and her equally notorious sons. Not only the regular Baker’s have their family name derived from the people making bread. Also the Bacon family can trace their name back to baking via the ancient Anglo-Saxon word “bacan”, to bake. Baxter too is a baking derivate, coming from the word “bagster”. The latter is obviously some older word for baking. Whitbread is baker making finer bread and pastries. Whit equals white and indicates more sophisticated products.
In Germany, the baker is called “Bäcker”. There are several “Bäcker’s” in Germany, many of them spelling their name “Baecker”, which in pronunciation gets the same effect. The well known tennis player Boris Becker is most likely also a baker related person, although with a slightly different spelling.
Turning to France and Spain, “Boulanger” and “Panadero” are the names we are looking for. There are several “Boulanger’s” living in French speaking countries. There are also “Panadero’s” in Spain. Neither of these families has, however, produced any members that instantly come to my mind.
I would be very little surprised if there are even more names in the English speaking world that somehow could be traced back to baking. If I come across any, this post will be updated.

PS This post was slighlty modified on Wednesday 16 July 2008.

The Succesful Smiths

No other profession has made their stamp on the family names like the smiths. It seems like working iron was an activity that immediately stuck when it comes to names. In the Anglo-Saxon world, only the Jones’s can compete with the Smith's. Every other German is named Schmidt. This name is derived from the word “schmeid”, meaning smith. The most common family name in Russia, Kuznets, means smith. There are certain hazards in the transformation of Russian letters to Latin ones and I hope that I got it right.
For some reason, the smiths were not that successful in the Latin nations. Spanish “Herrero’s” and French “Forgeron’s” do exist but are not exactly household names. The most well known is probably the singer Christina Forgeron. The Italian smiths, the "Ferrari's", has becomefamous through the brand name of car.
(This post was slightly modified on 20 July 2008)

Casanova, Newhouse and Neuhaus

Some names mean the same; they are only dressed in different languages. Most people have heard about the Italian Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, the famous seducer. I had a friend named Neuhaus, “new house” in German although he was not German. The name pops up once in a great while. The last time I saw it, it was as a brand name for chocolate. At some stage it suddenly struck me that this name means exactly the same as Casanova’s, although the latter literary is “House new”.
This is one of probably many examples of family names that are found in different nations. The name makes perfect sense. A long time ago it probably happened quite frequently that some family moved into a newly built house and soon was known as the “newhouses”. Time passed by and eventually it became a family name.
The word “house” can also have a broader meaning, referring to dynasty like the “House of Hanover”. My friend did not belong to a dynasty and I do not know if the chocolate maker did.
Are there more “new houses” in other languages? In English it would be “Newhouse” and there certainly are several Newhouse’s. Among these is Donald Edward Newhouse, ranking 38 on a list of the 400 richest Americans in the year 2006.
In French, the name is “Neuvemaison”. It exists as a suffix to a noble name, Polchet de Neuvemaison. It also exists as a normal family name. The Neuvemaison’s do, however, seem to be quite infrequent in France. For some reason, the most common historical occurrence is in the department of Doubs on the eastern boarder of France.
Does anybody have an idea about the background to the “newhouse” names? Does anybody know of “newhouses” in any other language? If you do, please drop a comment.

PS. I did not have a picture of a new house so the flooding had to suffice.