From the Edinburgh Review.

ENGLISH SURNAMES.'

"WHEN Adam delved and Eve span,' there were not only no gentlemen in the world, but everybody was contented with a single name; and the good old rule, one person one name," sufficed among all the children of men long after their language had been confounded at the Tower of Babel, and their races scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. In the early state of society, Abraham and Moses among the Jews, Achilles and Ulysses among the Greeks, were known to their respective contemporaries by the single names by which they are mentioned in Holy Writ, and in the poetry of Homer.

A later and higher state of civilization was accompanied, both in Greece and Rome, by the use of surnames. Distinctive additions, patronymical or local, added to the single name, will be familiar to most of our readers. Hecatæus of Miletus, Herodotus of Halicarnassus, Thucydides the son of Olorus, Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, Demosthenes the son of Demosthenes, were such. Of the three names which it became usual for Romans to bear, the first, or prænomen, corresponded to our baptismal name; the second indicated the gens; and the third, or cognomen, may be considered as corresponding to our hereditary family name. Marcus Tullius Cicero makes it known by his name that he is a member of the Cicero family, and that that family belonged to the gens Tullia.

If we pass from the Roman world to that

* 1. Essai Historique et Philosophique sur les Noms d'Hommes, de Peuples, et de Lieux. Par

EUSEBE SALVERTE. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris.

which arose on its ruins, we shall find the earlier practice restored. Neither the Germanic hero Arminius, nor the Celtic Caractacus, was distinguished by any additional epithet. The same simple practice prevailed generally throughout England during the whole of the Saxon period; and on the Continent under Charlemagne and many of those who followed him. The learning of antiquaries has discovered numerous instances of a surname or nickname being given in Saxon times, in addition to the ordinary name. Mucel (big), from which our modern name Mitchell is derived, is one of them. The names used by our Saxon population before the conquest may, from the time of their conversion to Christianity, be called names of baptism, but are not derived from the names of Christian saints, as John and James, Gregory and Lawrence, and so many other names introduced after the Conquest were.* Each of the ordinary Saxon names had its well-known meaning, as Edward (Truth-keeper), Wulfhelm (Wolfhead).

2. On the Names, Surnames. and Nicknames of the Anglo-Saxons. By J. M. KEMBLE, Esq. 8vo.

London: 1846.

3. An Essay on Family Nomenclature. By MARK ANTHONY LOWER. 3d edition, 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1846.

4. Die Personennamen insbesondere die Familiennamen und ihre Entstehungsarten auch unter Berücksichtigung der Ortsnamen. Von AUGUST FRIEDRICH POTT, Professor der allgemeinen Sprach wissenschaft an der Universität zu Halle. 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 721. Leipzig, Brockhaus: 1853.

In the present day, the name of baptism is but seldom heard in England, except from master to servant, in conversation between persons who are extremely intimate, and on the celebration of ceremonies, such as those of baptism and marriage. But in some parts of the continent the Christian name is, in the main, alone used; and we have ourselves known cases in which English gentlemen have spent much time in Calabria and La Puglia, and other parts of Italy, in daily intercourse with natives, by whom they were severally addressed as Signor Cristoforo or Don Roberto, and by whom the surname of either gentleman was never pronounced. In England, under Queen Elizabeth and James I., "special heed was taken to the name of baptism," because, as Lord Coke

lays it down, "a man cannot have two names of baptism, as he may have divers surnames." The name of baptism could be changed at confirmation only. "And thus," says the same great lawyer, "was the case of Sir Francis Gawdie, late Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, whose name of baptism was Thomas, and his name of confirmation Francis; and that name of Francis, by the advice of all the Judges in anno 36 Hen. 8, he did beare, and after used in all his purchases and grants." Such change must, however, have been known to, and sanctioned by, the Bishop in confirmation. The importance of the origin and meaning of the names of persons is great, both in historical and in antiquarian investigations. Instances of this are unnecessary. The origin of the greater part of our existing surnames is to be sought for in many distinct sources. Such surnames mainly consist of the following classes: 1st. Norman names dating from the Conquest. 2d. Local English names. 3d. Names of occupation. 4th. Derivatives from the Christian names of father or mother. 5th. Names given on account of personal peculiarities. 6th. Names derived from the animal, mineral, and vegetable kingdoms. 7th. Names derived from the celestial hierarchy. 8th. Irish, Scotch, French, Flemish, Dutch, German, Spanish, and other continental names, mainly imported within the last two centuries.

ranged under three heads. First, those which have de prefixed, and which were derived chiefly from places in Normandy: 2d, those which, not being local, had le prefixed, as Le Marshall, Le Latimer, Le Mesurier, Le Bastard, Le Despencer, Le Strange. 3d, those with which neither de nor le was used, and which were probably all significative: Basset, Howard, Talbot, Bellew, Bigod, Fortescue, and many others belong to this third division. Camden has observed that the distinction of these three classes was religiously kept in records in respect of adding de or le, or writing the word simply, till about the time of King Edward the Fourth. Fitz is a common prefix to Norman patronymics, just as son is the Saxon termination to express the same idea. Fitzwilliam is the Norman form, Williamson the Saxon. We have read of an ancient Fitz-Swain; but it is in recent times only that a Saxon Harris, equivalent to Harrison (i. e. Harry's son) has been converted into the etymological mongrel of Fitz-Harris, which is almost as startling as Fitz-Harrison or Fitz-Thompson would be. We shall have occasion again to advert, in the course of our observations, to some of the Norman names still existing in England, and they are still common in Jersey and Guernsey.

II. The second and most numerous division of English surnames comprehends all those which have a local English origin. A I. The first and smallest class consists of vast number of places in England have conthe Norman names brought into England attributed to form this class of surnames, the Conquest. Domesday Book is the only accurate and trustworthy authority, showing the names of those Normans among whom the length and breadth of the land of England was then divided. It is these names alone which became hereditary as early as the eleventh century. Some of the names of landowners recorded in that great survey have been inherited by their descendants down to the present day. The interpolated untrustworthy Roll of Battle Abbey, as Camden has justly observed, is not to be compared with Domesday Book as an authority on this subject.

These ancient Norman names may be ar

* In 1515, one Agnes Sharpe was sentenced by the Consistorial Court of the Bishop of Rochester to do penance, for having voluntarily changed at confirmation the name of her infant son to Edward, who, when baptized, was named Henry. Her sentence was to make a pilgrimage to the Rood at Boxley, and to carry in procession, on five Lord's days, a lighted taper, which she was to offer to the image of the Blessed Virgin.

which may be looked at as consisting of two subdivisions. The first is that of generic names, such as Bridge and Brook, Church and Chapel, Knoll and Kay, Hill and Dale, Mountain, Vale, and Vaulx, Carr and Combe, Cope and Cragg, Cliff and Clough, Deane and Dikes, Pitt and Hole, Flood and Fell, Hayes and Park, Grove and Hurst, Green and Grave, Garth and Grange, Moor and Marsh, Shore and Slade, Wood and Shaw, Hide, Holme, and Warren, Wear and Hatch, Field and Croft, Forest and Garden, Holt and Hope, Plains and Platt, Street and Lane, Burrow and Town, Barnes and Lodge. The second consists of specific names of places, such as Oxford, Buckingham, Wortley and Preston. The frequent adoption of such names of places as surnames gave rise to the old distich

"In ford, in ham, in ley, and tun,

The most of English surnames run.”

As names of places, most of these specific

names are very much older than the conquest. The Saxon charters published under the able and learned superintendence of Mr. Kemble, contain many names of places of the whole number, nearly one-fourth end in ford, or ham, or ley, or tun.*

A former Lord Lyttelton once contended that his family must be more ancient than that of the Grenvilles, since the little town existed before the grande ville. At Venice a. somewhat similar, but more serious dispute once arose between the houses Ponti and Canali. The former alleged that they, the Bridges, were above the Canals: the latter, that they, the Canals, existed before the Bridges. The Senate was obliged to remind the rival houses, that its authority could equally pull down Bridges and stop Canals, if they became a public nuisance.

Unlike names derived from occupations, these local English names are in themselves void of any signification, with reference to the condition in life of those who first assumed them. Persons who bear the names of specific places in England, must not suppose that their ancestors were either lords, or pos sessors of such places, but, as Camden justly observes, "only that they originally came from them, or were born at them." Devon or Kent became the surname of a man who had come from Devon or Kent, just as Lichfield or Lancaster denoted a person from one or other of those places.

When Jews abandon their biblical onomasticon, we frequently find them known by the names of places from which they have emigrated. Thus, in the north of Germany, there are many Jewish families of the name of Warschauer, Dantziger, and Friedlander. And thus the Bassi of Pisa received the name of Pisani on their migrating to Venice; and a victim of religious persecution at Lucca having fled to Geneva, there exchanged his hereditary name for that of Deluc, which has since become well known to the scientific world in the person of one of his descendants. Many English names, such as Fleming, Lombard, Pickard (Picard) refer merely to the country from which the family first came to England.

Camden gives Drinkwater as an instance of a name, local in its origin, and "altered to a significative word by the common sort, who desire to make all to be significative."

*The exact examination of the numbers is due to Dr. Leo, in the introduction to his edition of the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, Halle, 1842; translated as "A Treatise on the Local Nomenclature of the Anglo-Saxons, London, 1852."

He supposes the local origin to be Derwentwater. A similar corruption of the ItaloTyrolian name Tunicotto into the German Thunichtgut would tend to increase the probability of Camden's conjecture as to Drinkwater. We venture, nevertheless, to hold that Drinkwater is not any corruption of a local name, but belongs to the class of names which indicate a personal quality or habit. The existence of Boileau in French, and Bevilacqua in Italian, seems sufficient to show that this is so. There is also an English name Drawwater. The Flemish name Tupigny has been altered in this country to Twopeny, which is a better example of Čamden's proposition.

The instances in which places have derived their names from those of men, are rare in comparison with those in which men have assumed surnames derived from places. Some places, however, received their names from men even in the Saxon times, as Alfreton, Ed wartston, Ubsford, Kettering, Billinghurst, Leffrington. After the Conquest many places acquired a distinguishing surname, as it may be called, from the family name of the resident landowner. The following are in stances: Hurst- Pierpont, Hurst-Monceaux, Tarring-Neville, Tarring-Peverill, Rotherfield-Greys, Rotherfield-Pypard, DraytonBassett, Drayton-Passelew, Melton-Mowbray, Higham-Ferrars, Minster-Lovel, StansteadRivers, Ashby-de-la-Zouch.

Names of men have, in some few instances, been converted into words of general import wholly independent of the original meaning of such names. A Scotchman, Macadam, first showed how to macadamize our roads, and enriched the vocabulary of most of the nations of Europe; and the Spanish jesuit, Escobar, has caused a great people to adopt his name, and the words escobarder and escobarderie, as the fittest to describe what the Lettres Provinciales so fully exposed to the world. In like manner we speak of tantaliz ing, of herculean strength, of a Fabian policy, and of a sandwich, a tilbury or a brougham.

Professor Pott of Halle, whose work on family names is full of proofs of great learning and unwearying labor, is sometimes unhappy in his suggestions as to the etymologies of English surnames. He conjectures

* Maria Theresa changed the name of her minister Thunichtgut (Do-no-good), into Thu-gut, (Dogood); probably, as Professor Pott observes, (p. 40,) "den Spott seines sehr übles vorbedeutenden Namensklanges abzuziehen." In like manner the Romans changed Maleventum into Beneventum, and Egesta into Segesta.