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…
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.
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