Processing Cloth

Fuller, Walker and Tucker are three names where a beer reminds us about the first and a blended Whiskey about the second. The Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames explains the connection. When people spoke Old English, cloth was manually processed in water to scour and thicken it.
From the beginning, the cloth was trampled on whilst in water. These activities created the family name Walker. The process was somewhat later known as "fulling" and there we have the Fuller. It was also called "tucking" after the Old English word "tucian" which meant to torment. This gave us the name Tucker.

Spain?

One would believe that a person named Spain actually has ancestors that came from Spain. This is, however, not always directly the case. According to Hanks and Hodges, the most likely explanation is that the acestors instead came from a place called Epaignes in Normandy. This place got its name from the fact that several Spanish people settled there during Roman days.
The second possibility is that the person's ancestors came from Espinay in Brittay. This place has nothing whatsoever to do with Spain. It has its name from the Old French word "espine" meaning thorn bush.
Hanks and Hodges concluded their article about Spain with the remark that a Spaniard could have been named Spain, but that this is quite rare.

Beaver

If your family name is Beaver and you don't know anything in particular about your name, you have three basic choices:

• You have a Norman ancestor that came from a place called Beauvoir, meaning "nice view".


• You have an acestor that was hard working and earned the nickname "the Beaver", "bevere" in Medieval Engligh.


• You have an acestor that people thought looked like a beaver and thus earned the nickname.

Well known variations on the theme are Beevor and Belvedere. All of this according to The Oxford Names Companion.

PS The picture is from Shutterpoint and named "Beaver Activity", taken by Lloyd Owen

Celtic Names

It has been a bad week for blogging, indeed. I did, however, find time for a quick look in Dunkling's The Guinness Book of Names. One heading said "Some Celtic names". It caught my eye. The explanaitions were brief, but interesting. Cameron means "crocked nose", Campbell "crocked mouth" and Kennedy "ugly head". These samples tells us one thing about the Celtic names tradition.
All Celtic names did not come from different problems in the looks though. Some of them, quite naturally had to with where people lived. Craig was a dweller by rocks, Burns a dweller by the stream and Innes on an island.

Freud

Freud is sort of a brand name in itself. I never thought much about what it means until I saw it in Hank's and Hodge's book. It comes from German "freud" which means joy and it was originally given as nickname for a cheerful person. I do not know if Freud was that cheerful, but one of his ancestors ought to have been.
The name seems to exist in various other Northern European nations. In Dutch, it is Vreugde and in Swedish Fröjd.

Doves

Today I walked into Foyle's and left with a copy of the 1997 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames. Leisurely browsing through the pages, the name Culver caught my eye. I was actually looking for some intreresting English occupation names and believed that I had found one. A few seconds later, I realised that Culver was derived from the Old English word "culfre", meaning dove. The word was used as term of endearment. This sounded good and I started to think.

The German word for dove is "taube" and there are several persons named Taube in this world. If they got their name as a result of deserving endearment remains to be investigated. There are also regular Dove's in England. The name can be traced back to Old English "dufe" or Old Norse "dufa". In Scandinavia, there is a family name Dufva. It means dove but the endearment part is more uncertain here too. In England, however, the name was used as a name for someone gentle as a dove.

In Spanish, the dove is a "paloma". Seemingly, it has not stuck as a family name there although it is a popular song. In France, a dove is a "pigeon" if male and a "colombe" if female. Neither in France it is popular as a family name.

PS The picture is taken by Tim Fulbright who sold it on Shutterpoint.

Russian Names - Part 2

For this post, I went looking for more Russian family names. My favourite Russian name is Besmertney, which I hopefully now spell correctly. It means immortal which I think is nice. Unfortunately, I do not know more about the background of the name. Eventually, I might find out.

My liking for Besmertney started me on "B" in Hank's and Hodge's book. I was soon rewarded. First there was Babin- derived from "Baba" - grandmother. It was explained that this name was given to the son of an old woman or to a fussy person. The next was Baibakov. It comes from the nick-name "Baibak", meaning marmot. Since the marmot was considered sluggish, the name was given to lazy people. Then came Baklanov, deduced from "Baklan" - Cormorant. The name indicates greed.

The last one, not to make this post to long, was Bakunin. The name is somehow well known in Russian history. It started as the nick-name "Bakuna", having its roots in "bakat", to chatter or to gossip. So, except for an immortal, we have a fussy person, a lazy, a greedy and a gossiping one. Quite colourful, I'd say.

PS Photo from Shutterpoint re-used.

Russian Names - Part 1

Russian names seems to quite interesting. The Russian language is supposed to be very rich and that should reflect on the names. A long time ago, I had a couple of names from a Russian novel translated and the results inspired me to look further into Russian names. However, certain things do not get done at once and it took until about now to do it. At a first glance, Russian names seems to follow about the same pattern as British. Occupation, habitation and descriptions of persons are popular sources of inspiration for names.
I started with the famous chessplayer Spasski and found it in Hank's and Hodges's Dictionary. There were two ways to get this name. Either you lived in one of the many places called Spasskoe. In the Spasskoe places, the church was dedicated to the Saviour. To "save" is "spasti" in Russian. The other way started with Orthodox priests adopting the name to show their dedication to Jesus Christ - the Saviour.
Religious connections to family names seems to be quite common in Russian. Another example comes from the Oxford Companion. They explain that the not so handy name Blagoveshchenski is derived from the Feast of the Annunciation, celebrated on 25 March. It works exactly the same way as Spasski. Either you came from a place called Blagoveshchensk or one of your ancestors was an Orthodox priest, having taken that name.

PS The picture of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow is from Shutterpoint.