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A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES, 
 
 REV. J. W. DANIEL, A.M., 
 
 Atithor of " The Girl in Checks " and ''Out from under 
 
 CtEsar's Frown.' 
 
 Nashville, Tenn. . 
 
 Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South. 
 
 Barbee & Smith, Agents. 
 
 1893. 
 
 li 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1893, 
 
 By J. W. Daniel, 
 In the OfHce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 It is the custom of authors to dedicate their frodiutions to some person 
 or persons. No limit has been fixed relative to the number of people to 
 whom a single volume may be devoted. Hence the author takes the lib- 
 erty of dedicating this volume most respectfully, without consulting them, 
 however, to every man, woman, and child whose surname is recorded 
 within this book, with the sincere hope that the perusal of its pages may 
 be as pleasant to those who read as the writing of them was to the 
 
 AUTHOR. 
 
 (3) 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It is natural that all men desire to know the origin as well as 
 the signification of their names. This little volume, the author 
 flatters himself, will gratify that appetency in the minds of 
 many who rnay read it. 
 
 We are not too modest to declare our honest conviction, that 
 a close and thoughtful perusal of the pages of this book will 
 help many readers to a higher appreciation of English history 
 and literature. The author has struggled with those environ- 
 ments, which circumscribe the major part of the readers of this 
 day and time. Hence he persuades himself to believe that he 
 sympathizes with that large class of readers who have neither 
 the time, nor the library in and by which, to solve the problems 
 that are continually presenting themselves to every thoughtful 
 reader. 
 
 Let every reader decide for himself as to how much he has 
 really lost already by not having been able to appreciate the 
 allusions in English literature to the customs, manners, and do- 
 mestic life of our progenitors. It may be that thousands of 
 pages of history and fiction have been read with the hearty ap- 
 preciation of a certain degree of vagueness pervading the whole, 
 and arising from certain missing links, or at least clues not in 
 the possession of the reader. Who has not at some time in his 
 life stumbled, so to speak, upon an exposition of some old cus- 
 tom or usage which has shed a volume of light upon what he 
 has read.' Is it a presumption on the part of the writer to af- 
 firm that most authors have assumed that the ordinary reader 
 is more conversant with the social, moral, and political life of 
 his mediseval progenitors than he really is.' If such statements 
 savor of a spirit of audacity, then the writer pleads that his ex- 
 perience and observation have been thoroughly anomalous. 
 
 The author then, of these pages, flatters himself that this 
 book will bring much pleasure to ordinary readers, not only in 
 solving the problem of the meaning and origin of their names, 
 
 (5) 
 
6 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 but also in shedding at least some light upon much that they 
 have read. The book herewith submitted to the public has fur- 
 thermore been written for the people. Hence the writer hopes 
 that it will be instrumental in helping even the youthful reader 
 to appreciate more fully what he may read hereafter. It is 
 not by any means a treatise on etymology, though it necessari- 
 ly has much to do with that branch of linguistic research. 
 Wherever the author has undertaken, however, to trace a name 
 to its primary root, he has followed the latest and most highly 
 approved standards. 
 
 It may be necessary to state that the author has penned these 
 pages during the fragments of time snatched from professional 
 duties. This in part, may account for many defects in the 
 book. Truly thankful, however, without bemoaning the many 
 imperfections of the volume, for whatever favor his former pro- 
 ductions have met with from an indulgent public, he sends forth 
 this unpretending treatise on surnames in the hope that many 
 may be enabled thereby to learn something that they did not 
 know before. If the reader finds, however, as he doubtless 
 will, that the subjects treated frequently change, let him re- 
 member the old adage: "Variety is the spice of life." The 
 mellow notes of the Southern mocking birds which have 
 greeted the writer's ears during the composition of the volume 
 which he now gives to the public admoni^h him of the truth- 
 fulness of the adage just quoted. The Author. 
 
 Chester, S. C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. Page 
 
 "What's in a Name?" 9 
 
 Chapter II. 
 A Few English Surnames That Make Us Laugh 23 
 
 Chapter III. 
 Patronymic Inheritances from Remote Fatherlands 37 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Surnames Derived from the Signs of Shop Keepers 45 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Surnames Derived from the Occupations 60 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Surnames Derived from Places of Residence 86 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 The Smiths, Browns, Blacks, and Railroads 125 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Surnames Which Embody the Anglo-Saxon Idea of Home. . 140 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Islands, Fords, and Lakes 154 
 
 Chapter X. 
 Surnames from Civil and Religious Offices 160 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 A Few Gaelic Surnames 178 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 Conclusion 189 
 
 (7) 
 
A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 " what's in a name? " 
 
 WHEN the student becomes wearied and ex- 
 hausted by close and prolonged application, 
 there is no surer or more efficacious restorative than 
 a ramble along the prattling brook or through the 
 deep shades of the fofest or over the hills and 
 through the secluded valleys. Nature has her 
 own vis medicatrix, and to him only who dares to 
 penetrate the solitary glens and the sylvan seclu- 
 sions of earth will come the aroma of wild flowers 
 and the exhilarating voices of wild nature's revels. 
 Many rare and choice bouquets may be gathered 
 elsewhere than from hothouses and well-cultivated 
 flower gardens. So, along the byways of litera- 
 ture and almost unwritten history, the rambler 
 may gather the sweetest nosegays of unadorned 
 truth. I therefore propose in this chapter, a vin- 
 dication, if such defense is required at my hand, 
 of "A Ramble among Surnames," which the ti- 
 tle of this volume promises to its readers. 
 
 A ramble, such as we have determined to take, 
 may be considered by the student, as he sits in his 
 cozy library, surrounded by thousands of volumes 
 
 (9) 
 
lO A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 of the best literature of all the ages of the historic 
 past, to be wholly unnecessary; while the profes- 
 sional critic may find much, as he would even in 
 scrutinizing a beautiful flower that God made, to 
 condemn in the proposed ramble through the 
 backwoods of history. The strict utilitarian may 
 demur. We even now hear his cyniclike interro- 
 gation: " What's the use of it? " But we too may 
 ask, as we stand upon the border of the territory 
 which we mean to partially explore: Have all 
 such demurrers forgotten the declaration even of 
 the old Roman, "Sine nomine homo nan est?" 
 and may a man not seek to know where his name 
 came from and what it means? Surely he who is 
 not interested in all that pertains to his individual 
 appellative, whether such relative matter comes 
 from the noonday scenes of civilization and refine- 
 ment or from what we have chosen to christen 
 rambles through the backwoods of history, is not 
 capable of being interested. 
 
 But we have the teachings of the ancients on 
 our side, and that fact is even potent enough to 
 persuade the critics to go along with us, for any- 
 thing that is antique has more influence over many 
 of the degenerate sons of Adam than even the truth 
 itself. The old Grecian philosopher, Pythagoras, 
 taught that the name bestowed in childhood was 
 instrumental in shaping the character in after life, 
 and that, therefore, the success of people depend- 
 ed largely upon the names bestowed upon them in 
 infancy. The ancient Romans also laid much em- 
 
"what's in a name?" II 
 
 phasis upon the choice of names for their children. 
 A great feast was made on the day the child re- 
 ceived its appellation, which they called Nomi- 
 nalia, the naming feast or festival. And even so 
 wise a heathen as Cicero believed that names in- 
 fluenced the formation of character, therefore he 
 has left on record a list of names which he consid- 
 ered fortunate. 
 
 But it may be that many are inclined rather to 
 pass over these declarations of the ancients as 
 merely the outgrowth of that degree of supersti- 
 tion which characterized those dark ages in which 
 they lived; but really there is much more in this 
 affirmation than we are liable to suppose upon 
 merely a casual examination of the subject. 
 
 The Cherokee Indians, the noblest of all the 
 North American tribes, called the panther, once 
 so numerous in that territory formerly occupied by 
 them, " the cat of God," and selected it as one 
 of their great religious emblems. Their male chil- 
 dren were made to sleep upon its skin from infan- 
 cy to manhood, that they might imbibe from it 
 some portion of the cunning, strength, and prodi- 
 gious spring of. the animal to which it belonged. 
 On the same principle their female offspring were 
 reared on the soft skins of fawns and buffalo 
 calves, that they might become gentle and obe- 
 dient.* We must admit that these results were 
 ■achieved by the Cherokee parent. Their women, 
 
 * Logan's " History of Upper Carolina," p. 54. 
 
12 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 the earliest historians tell us, were the gentlest of 
 the women of all the tribes of the North American 
 Indians, and their men were, until corrupted by 
 the white trader, the bravest and noblest of their 
 race. Who then will deny that these several 
 traits of character were largely produced by the 
 custom to which we have alluded ? The children 
 of these savages were taught the design of that 
 custom from their earliest infancy up to mature man- 
 hood and womanhood; therefore they strove to 
 incorporate into their moral and physical natures 
 the lessons intended to be taught thereby. The 
 results, however, would have been quite different 
 if the child had been left in ignorance as to the 
 signification or design of these pallets of skins. 
 This, of course, is merely illustration. 
 
 The Greeks, Romans, and ancient Hebrews, 
 unlike the people of to-day, knew the mean- 
 ing and understood thoroughly the import of 
 their names. Therefore, on the same principle 
 that the Cherokee Indian was inspired by the as- 
 sociations that clustered about the bed of skins 
 upon which he or she was reared, so the ancient 
 Greek, Roman, or Hebrew youth was ambitious to 
 emulate the ideal contained in the name which 
 distinguished him as an individual. There was, 
 then, really no superstition in ascribing virtue to a 
 name, the meaning of which was understood and 
 appreciated by the man or woman upon whom it 
 was conferred; and therefore there ought not to 
 be the remotest surprise at the fact that Cicero 
 
"what's in a name?" 13 
 
 denominated certain Roman names as bona 
 noniina. 
 
 We can base an argument, however, proving 
 the influence of names on character on no higher 
 authority than that of divine inspiration. If really 
 a name, the meaning of which is appreciated by 
 the person upon whom it is bestowed, has no in- 
 fluence over the moral and mental natures of an 
 individual, then we may justly demand of those 
 who thus affirm a reason as to why God claimed 
 the sole prerogative of bestowing names upon cer- 
 tain individuals who were to become mighty 
 agents in perfecting his plans, and of changing the 
 names of Abraham and Sarah when they were 
 called actively into his service.* 
 
 But some one, out of harmony with history, may 
 ask with Juliet : 
 "What's in a name? 
 That which we call a rose by any other name would smell 
 as sweet." 
 
 That is doubtless true, but we must remember 
 that she had just said : 
 
 "O be some other name!" 
 
 Thus she has left on record the fact that she real- 
 ly felt, as a mere matter of sentiment, that there 
 was not a little in the cognomen by which men and 
 things are known, or we may more properly affirm 
 that the doctrine that there is something in a name 
 is really Shakespearean. There is much in an ap- 
 
 * For a fuller account of scriptural names see Chapter XI., 
 pp. I20-I22, of my little work "The Girl in Checks." 
 
14 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 pellation, even if it serve no other purpose than 
 that of distinguishing man from man and thing 
 from thing. All of us, indeed, are brought to ap- 
 preciate its value when, wishing to speak of some- 
 thing or of some person, we awake, as did Nebu- 
 chadnezzar of old, to the realization that the thing 
 is gone from us. 
 
 There can, indeed, be no exercise in the whole 
 business of instruction more useful to the mind 
 than the analysis of names in the concentrated 
 light of history and the conditions out of which 
 they were evolved. It brings the careful student 
 into the inner sanctuary of thought, as it relates to 
 the annals of nations, for they are but the crystal- 
 lization of thought as it stands connected with the 
 great as well as the lesser events of the ever reced- 
 ing past. Surnames are the side lights of historj'', 
 while the appellations which things and places 
 bear constitute the foot lights of the drama of life 
 as it was played by our Anglo-Saxon progenitors. 
 He who reads history without a knowledge of the 
 derivation of names may stand in the dim light of 
 the outer court, and even there he may indeed of- 
 fer incense, but he who penetrates within and 
 looks upon the scene under the resplendent in- 
 fluences of side and foot lights beholds it grow 
 incandescent in interest, and he worships and 
 adores. 
 
 Surnames became generally hereditary about 
 the close of the thirteenth century, and all kinds 
 of methods were resorted to in order to establish 
 
"what's in a name?" 15 
 
 them. They were fixed upon us by our ances- 
 tors from the most casual incidents and eviron- 
 ments, as well as from commonplace characteris- 
 tics and occupations. It may, at the first thought, 
 appear incredible that surnames should have been 
 applied so indifferently; but when we consider 
 that only a few centuries ago the single names, 
 which our Anglo-Saxon ancestors bestowed upon 
 their children, were really less than four hundred 
 in number, and that only twenty or thirty of these, 
 for each sex, were in common use — half of all the 
 names of men being made up of the seven appel- 
 lations, John, Henry, William, James, George, 
 Thomas, and Richard — so that a number of per- 
 sons even in a small community would bear the 
 same name; and when we remember that these 
 single names gave no hint of relationship or family 
 descent, we can easily see that the necessity for a 
 second, or surname, would speedily arise, and 
 that the source of supply would be a matter of 
 secondary importance. 
 
 Surnames, therefore, became a necessity, and 
 are really so to this day. However, we have our 
 patronymic appellations, no matter how they came, 
 and we are all more or less inclined to trace our 
 genealogy as far back as we possibly can. In 
 Massachusetts, it is said that so many articles of 
 furniture are claitned, even to this day, to have 
 been brought over in the " Mayflower," with the 
 Pilgrim Fathers, that it has long since passed into 
 a standing joke to allude to that ship, so famous 
 
1 6 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 in American literature, as "The furniture ves- 
 sel." This disposition to trace our lineage as 
 far into the remote past as we can, and to make 
 the descent and connections as honorable as we 
 can, seems to be an innate propensity of man- 
 kind. And is it not commendable? Indeed, we 
 have no hesitancy in affirming that this predisposi- 
 tion in the heart of man has been strengthened 
 by the strict genealogies of the Bible, wherever 
 the teaching of divine inspiration has obtained 
 the ascendancy. 
 
 But, as merely illustrative of this disposition to 
 trace one's genealogy, the story is told of a dis- 
 pute between an Irishman and a Jew as to the 
 antiquity of their respective nations. The Jew 
 grew eloquent as he correctly affirmed that he 
 could directly trace, through the Bible, his gene- 
 alogy to Adam. It was a crushing argument, but 
 the ever ready Hibernian was competent to meet 
 it. "Why, tare and ages," said he, "my an- 
 cestor married Eve when she was a widow ! " 
 This somewhat amusing anecdote is true to na- 
 ture : when man cannot trace his genealogy, there 
 is frequently a disposition to invent a line of de- 
 scent. 
 
 Again, the absurd and puerile attempts to ac- 
 count for the meaning of some surnames have 
 given prominence, among the unlearned masses, to 
 certain traditions, which have been handed down 
 from father to son. The reader may have heard 
 the anecdote by which some would-be wit at- 
 
"what's in a name?" XiJ 
 
 tempted to account for the large number of Moors,* 
 that have found their way into almost every town 
 and community. It runs thus: "Once upon a 
 time," and that is evidently the orthodox formula 
 with which to begin folklore, " the people of the 
 world met together to make surnames. They la- 
 bored hard all day," mentally, of course, "and 
 when they had named the last applicant, and were 
 congratulating themselves upon the results of their 
 day's work (for the supply of names was just 
 equal to the number of applicants, so that there 
 were no names to throw away, neither was any 
 applicant compelled to go without a name), the 
 tardy denizens of the world made their appearance 
 in the distance, leisurely walking forward to re- 
 ceive their surnominal appellatives. The Naming 
 Committee was so perplexed that their joy was 
 turned into mourning, for the supply of names was 
 already exhausted. Just at this perplexing junc- 
 ture, however, an urchin discovered the approach- 
 ing column of those who always, it appears, de- 
 light in being behind in every undertaking, and 
 cried out: 'Yonder comes »2(?re.'' 'A name! A 
 name ! ' vociferated the populace. So all who 
 came in late, after the supply of names had been 
 exhausted, were called Afore." The wit who 
 would thus place the great burden of the world's 
 tardiness upon the Moors, however, would have no 
 doubt been a little tardy himself in giving expres- 
 sion to his witticism had he stood, at the time he 
 
 *The spelling of the name vsu-ies, as More, Moor, and Moore. 
 2 
 
l8 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 gave utterance to the solution of the problem, in 
 the presence of the progenitors of that worthy and 
 numerous family. More in the Anglo-Saxon 
 tongue means great or large, a surname inher- 
 ited by the gigantic men among our progenitors. 
 The reader will pardon the insertion of another 
 one of these old family legends. It was related to 
 me by an intelligent member of the Scotch family 
 of Moreheads, and the narrator evidently believed 
 the myth by which he accounted for the surname. 
 "There once lived," said he, "in Scotland two 
 Johns More, who were neighbors. One of them 
 lived on the top of a high hill, and the other lived 
 at the foot of the same hill. They were popularly 
 known as John More at the head of the hill, and 
 John More at the foot of the hill. But in the 
 course of time a mad bull made its appearance in 
 the community of the two Johns More, and the 
 ferocious monster became the terror of the entire 
 neighborhood. The citizens determined to slay 
 the mad beast, and on a certain day they turned 
 out en masse to hunt and kill, if possible, the fero- 
 cious intruder. At sundown they were to meet 
 on the top of a neighboring hill, that the results of 
 the search for the bull might be made known to all 
 of the hunters. On the day appointed, therefore, 
 the hardy Scotchmen of the community sought 
 everywhere, over hill and through valley for the 
 disturber of the peace of their neighborhood, and 
 as the sun began to sink behind the western hills 
 they began to gather together, one by one, at the 
 
"what's in a name?" 19 
 
 appointed place of meeting. And as each sturdy 
 Scotchman came in from the hunt he was com- 
 pelled to announce the results of the fruitless 
 search for the monster. At last all the hunters 
 had returned but John More at the head of the 
 hill, and no one had found the mad bull. The 
 absence of John More, beyond the time of meeting 
 previously agreed to, however, begot serious ap- 
 prehensions relative to the probable fate of the 
 brave Scotchman. But anon, in the dim twilight, 
 they beheld the hitherto absent hunter slowly wend- 
 ing his way toward the appointed place of meet- 
 ing. He staggered under the ponderous weight 
 of some object, which he carried upon his shoul- 
 der; and when he reached the circle of his friends, 
 it was discovered that John More at the head of 
 the hill had encountered single-handed the brute, 
 had killed him, and had cut off his large head, 
 which he laid down at the feet of his waiting 
 countrymen as a trophy from the hard-fought 
 field. His neighbors, therefore, ever after that 
 event called him John Morehead, and he became 
 the progenitor of the numerous family which 
 bears his name." Morehead, however, like the 
 Celtic Kenmore, simply means large head, and was 
 doubtless bestowed upon some Scotchman just 
 as the grandson of Duncan, Malcolm of the Great 
 Head, got his surname. 
 
 Does not, therefore, the mere existence of these 
 old traditions relative to surnames, which, as we 
 have just seen, are frequently untrue, make it plain 
 
20 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 to every one that any attempt to arrive at the 
 truth is commendable, even if it relates to only 
 a name? Indeed, there is something superbly 
 grand in that measure of honest and sincere men- 
 tal culture which enables any man to rise supe- 
 rior to his environments, to get above that which is 
 merely legendary, and to satisfy that appetency to 
 know why things are as they are, even if it is 
 merely to know the causal agencies of so insignifi- 
 cant a thing as a surname. 
 
 We appreciate the sentiment of the old Roman: 
 " Nomo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto."* 
 Surnames relate exclusively to man, and are natu- 
 rally of universal interest. Hence the writer pro- 
 poses in the following chapters to pull at the latch 
 strings of mediasval castles, to refresh himself under 
 the rooftree of the humble cottages of the Middle 
 Ages, to walk amid the din of the crafts of our 
 progenitors, to ramble over their playgrounds and 
 battlefields, to linger amid mediaeval rural scenes, 
 and to sit in old England's marts of trade, view- 
 ing all of these things under what we have chosen 
 to term the foot and side lights of the drama of 
 life, as it was acted by our forefathers, and all to 
 the end that we may know what there is in a name. 
 The Mesopotamian traveler, it is said, is fre- 
 quently surprised to find the by no means preten- 
 tious buildings of the modern inhabitants of that 
 ancient country constructed of brick stamped 
 
 * " I am a man, and nothing which relates to a man can be a 
 matter of unconcern to me." 
 
"what's in a name?" 21 
 
 with the cuneiform legends of Nebuchadnezzar. 
 These ancient brick have survived empires, felt 
 the shocks of the battering-rams of beseiging 
 armies, and having spanned centuries pregnant 
 with decay and revolutions awful to contemplate, 
 now furnish building material for the degenerate 
 Mesopotamian, who is totally ignorant of the mean- 
 ing of the cuneiform inscriptions imprinted on 
 them. A sad lesson indeed ! but may we not dis- 
 cover a more humiliating fact in the wide-spread 
 ignorance relative to the meaning of those sur- 
 names which are almost daily uttered by our own 
 tongues? 
 
 Surnames are instructive, and it is frequently 
 the case that the study of a single name produces 
 much food for thought, just as the study of words 
 gives us clearer ideas and broader conceptions, 
 for English surnames are but words, and many of 
 them words which have long ago become obsolete. 
 Indeed, family names make up the links of that 
 chain which binds us securely to the past. Ding, 
 as an old English verb, for instance, is now al- 
 most obsolete, and to many educated Englishmen 
 it is as much a mystery as a word from the Greek 
 language would be to one who had never studied 
 the beautiful language of Plato and Aristotle. 
 But Dingman still survives as a surname, and it is 
 precisely the same name as Thrower. It was ap- 
 plied to one who became an expert in hurling 
 missiles or implements of war, and the two names 
 bear exactly the same relation to each other, rela- 
 
22 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tive to the time in which they were applied as sur- 
 names, that the patronymics Archer and Gunner 
 sustain to each other. We see that the one is 
 older than the other, and the names Archer and 
 Dingman bind those who have inherited them to 
 medieeval arts of war, and the later name keeps an 
 old word from dying completely. 
 
 There is something then in a name, and in the 
 following pages we will endeavor practically to 
 demonstrate this truth. If, however, some things 
 are written which the reader may think irrelevant, 
 and if now and then that which is ridiculous and 
 that which may provoke a smile claim the atten- 
 tion of those who may follow us in these desultory 
 rambles, let it be remembered that our design is 
 somewhat similar to the spirit which pervades 
 Marraion's palmers: 
 
 To charm a weary hill 
 
 With song, romance, or lay; 
 Some ancient tale, or glee, or jest. 
 Some lying legend at the least. 
 They bring to cheer the way. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 A FEW ENGLISH SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 
 
 THERE are many peculiar surnames which 
 provoke a smile the moment we hear them ut- 
 tered. It is worthy of note that the most amusing 
 surnames that we hear and read of are pure Eng- 
 lish words. This is the result of two causes. 
 The fact that we readily perceive their meaning 
 makes them funny. Many very common family 
 names would appear just as ridiculous as the most 
 peculiar patronymics that we occasionally hear if 
 we knew what they mean. The other cause, 
 which lends an air of oddity to certain surnames, 
 is the fact that the word or words, which enter 
 into the composition of such names, have under- 
 gone very radical changes relative to their signifi- 
 cation. Take, for example, the English family 
 name Coffin, which formerly meant a covering 
 of any kind. In Shakespeare's "Titus Andron- 
 icus " the word is used to denote a pie crust. In 
 Act v., Scene II., Titus addresses his daughter 
 Lavinia, relative to her enemies, Chiron and Deme- 
 trius : 
 
 " Hark, villains! I will grind j'our bones to dust, 
 
 And with your blood and it I'll make a paste, 
 
 And of the paste a coffin I will rear." 
 
 The word also meant a chest, so that the origi- 
 
 (23) 
 
24 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAJIES. 
 
 nal Coffin may have been a chest maker. In the 
 course of human events a Coffin may have claimed 
 the hand of a Wainwright — i. e., a wagon maker 
 — and among their progeny there may be one of 
 whom those who fear the coffin and shudder at 
 the thought of a grave may say : 
 
 " Her voice is as sweet as the whippoorwill's, 
 And the sunshine's in her hair ; 
 But I'd rather face a redskin's knife 
 Or grip of a grizzly bear." 
 
 And yet there is really no difference between 
 a chest maker and a wagon maker. Who would 
 not be as willing to be called the one as the other? 
 
 There is little Julia Tanner — 
 
 Such a mite of a gal! 
 Why, two of her size rolled into one 
 
 Won't ditto sister Sal. 
 
 Yet she is plucky; but notwithstanding all these 
 things, the effeminate, though tall and handsome 
 Charlie Fairchild claims her hand in holy wed- 
 lock. If the current of domestic life flows smooth- 
 ly, all will be well; but suppose there is a little 
 unpleasantness, then the timid Fairchild may 
 truthfully say: 
 
 " Though she ain't any size, while I'm 
 Considerable tall, 
 I'm nowhere when she speaks to me, 
 She makes me feel so small." 
 
 It is very plain to every one who has even casu- 
 ally studied surnames that certain personal traits 
 and characteristics, peculiarities and oddities, ac- 
 complishments and habits, have entered largely 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 25 
 
 into the composition of patronymics. Indeed, one 
 cannot but be impressed, in studying the origin of 
 surnames, with the naivete among all nationalities 
 with which peculiar characteristics were sought 
 out and applied in surnames. The student of 
 colonial history in the South is familiar with the 
 names of the Cherokee Chiefs, Corane, " a ra- 
 ven," and Sinnawa, "the hawk's head." These 
 names were doubtless given because of some per- 
 sonal trait, as watchfulness, for instance, which 
 their fellow-savages saw in them. He who was 
 an expert in killing deer, among these Cherokees, 
 was called Awatahowwe, " the great deer killer of 
 God for the people." 
 
 But there are purely English names that demon- 
 strate the natural predisposition to give prominence 
 to certain habits and characteristics in conferring 
 surnames. A stealthy, quick, and scoutlike 
 movement records the chief characteristic of the 
 progenitor of the Golightly family. The origi- 
 nator of the name Goforth may have secured his 
 name by the frequent excursions he made, in the 
 days of the feudal system, into the lands of his 
 enemies. Anyway it was applied because of some 
 idiosyncratic mark of this kind. Ashburner 
 could not have originated from any profession. 
 We have known men in the rural districts where 
 wood of every variety was plentiful, to burn hick- 
 ory altogether. May not the name Ashburner 
 have thus come in use as a surname? 
 
 Black, Blackman, Redman, or Redmon, as it 
 
26 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 is frequently written, together with Whiteman, are 
 names of comparison relative to complexion. The 
 Whiteheads and Blackheads could very frequent- 
 ly swap sur nominal appellations, and thus truth- 
 fully bear each other's patronymic. 
 
 Longfellow and Short, as descendants of pro- 
 genitors who worthily inherited those cognomenic 
 titles of distinction, can no longer claim their 
 names by virtue of anything uncommon in their 
 bodily make-up, but are now really as other men. 
 But here is a scene worthy of the pages of a 
 patent medicine almanac. It might be very appro- 
 priately styled " before and after taking." John 
 Stout, lean and cadaverous, arm in arm with Hen- 
 ry Tallman, who is almost as broad as he is long. 
 The scene speaks eloquently of how the mighty 
 are fallen, and really the shadowy has passed 
 into genuine substance. 
 
 This natural predisposition, to give surnames ex- 
 pressive of qualities or attainments, is beautifully 
 illustrated by the line of old English kings. Be- 
 ginning with Alfred, surnamed the "Great," or 
 the"Truthteller,"wehave as his direct descendant 
 Edward, surnamed the Elder, who was succeeded 
 by Ethelstan, surnamed the Steadfast, and Ed- 
 mund the Deed Doer, and Edred the Chosen, so 
 called on account of the many excellencies flowing 
 from his pious life. Then came Edgar the Peace 
 Winner, who really made peace, however, by vir- 
 tue of hard fighting. Then we have Edward the 
 Martyr, so styled because he died at the hand of 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH 2*] 
 
 an assassin instigated by Edward's step-mother, 
 Elfthrith. Ethelred, surnamed the Unready, 
 which did not mean then what it would now mean, 
 but Ill-advised, was the Rehoboam of the long 
 line of Old English kings. 
 
 From the line of Danish kings, descended 
 from Harold Bluetooth, we may note Sweyn Fork- 
 beard, Harold Harefoot, so named because he 
 was swift on foot; and from the House of Flan- 
 ders, A.rnulf, surnamed the Young, and Baldwin 
 Fairbeard, as illustrating the disposition of the 
 populace to confer surnames because of certain 
 distinguishing features or characteristics. If kings 
 were thus named, we submit that the populace was 
 even more liable to be nicknamed. 
 
 We do not mean to institute invidious compari- 
 sons, but it appears to be a very reasonable prop- 
 osition that, since almost every rural town has, 
 to-day, its " Cheap John," it is not at all strange 
 that old English communities should have had a 
 John Smart or a Henry Sharp. 
 
 Outlaw is rather a suspicious-looking surname, 
 but he who thinks that there is anything dishonor- 
 able connected with that formidable-looking name 
 only publishes his ignorance of English history. 
 It is a name which may be placed in a line, for all 
 we know, with the names of martyrs, who died for 
 the truth. The great rulers of England fi-equent- 
 ly outlawed the best of men. Note the following 
 instance: "One day" about A.D. 1050, King 
 Edward's brother-in-law, "Eustace, who was a 
 
28 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Frenchman, had been to see the king, and was 
 riding back to the sea to pass over to his own earl- 
 dom of Boulogne. When he and his men came 
 to Dover, they behaved lawlessly, and wished 
 to make the townsmen lodge them where they 
 would; and one of them struck a townsman. 
 Then a fight began, and many were slain on either 
 side; but at last the men of Dover drove them out 
 of town. Then Eustace rode back to the king 
 and complained of the Dover folk, and told the 
 story his own way. The king was very angry, 
 and bid Godwin, the earl, go and punish them. 
 But Godwin said he would not till they also had 
 been heard, and he told the king that the French- 
 men ought to be punished. Then the king sent for 
 Leofric and Siward; and Godwin summoned his 
 folk, and it was like to have come to a battle be- 
 tween the two armies. But Leofric thought it bet- 
 ter that the Wise Men be called together to settle 
 the matter. When the Wise Men met they out- 
 lawed Sweyn again, and called Godv/in and Har- 
 old, his son, to come alone before them; but they 
 would not come unless safe conducts were given 
 them. So the Wise Men outlawed Godwin and 
 his kin." We have quoted thus from York-Pow- 
 ell's " Epoch's of English History" to show that 
 outlaws were sometimes the best of people. 
 
 The surname Toplady is an English word, which 
 is rather hard to understand intelligently in the 
 connection in which it is used. The old-fash- 
 ioned and now obsolete whipsaw doubtless gave 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 29 
 
 US this name. Timber was formerly sawed length- 
 wise by means of a saw operated by two men. One 
 Stood in a pit, hence the surname Pitman; and the 
 other stood on the scaffolding above, and was 
 called Topman. They drew the saw upward and 
 downward, and thus sawed the timbers used in 
 mediasvil buildings. We can, therefore, easily con- 
 ceive how the daughter, or wife, who may have 
 been bereft of her husband, for mere consistency's 
 sake, may have been called Toplady in the day 
 when surnames were not permanently fixed as they 
 now are. It is impossible to say positively ho.w the 
 surname Overall came into use. It is a modern 
 English word, and while its meaning is perceptible 
 to every one, no one can say, confidently, how it 
 came to be applied as a surnominal appellation. 
 It is very probable, however, that the title was 
 given to some early under king who was raised to 
 the kingship of several factions. 
 
 Goodenough is, without doubt, a survival of the 
 old Puritan idea of coining such names for their 
 children; for the old registers abound with such 
 Christian names as Thankful, Dust-and-ashes, 
 Hold-the-truth, Accepted, Repent, and many such 
 ridiculous names. The story is told of a back- 
 woods American mother that she named her in- 
 fant daughter Amazing Grace, and when some one 
 remonstrated with her, she replied: " Why! it's a 
 nice name, for it's in the hymn book." Charlotte 
 M. Yonge says: "Original is a family name still 
 handed on in Lincolnshire. Probably it was at 
 
30 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 first Original Sin." Every whim and peculiar 
 notion to which humanity is heir seems to have 
 been utilized as material for names. Hence sur- 
 nominal literature teems with a sense of the ridic- 
 ulous. 
 
 William Loveman may edit a matrimonial jour- 
 nal, John Trueman may still be true to his cogno- 
 men, and the Stickwells have manufactured glue 
 and mucilage. 
 
 A bicker was an engraver, the Anglo-Saxon 
 sted (^steth) means a bank or shore; Bickersteth 
 therefore signifies the engraver's homestead, for 
 steth is really cognate with stead. But as some old 
 Bicker lived on the coast, it was very natural that 
 he should have dug a dike to keep back the tides, 
 hence we have the territorial surname Bickersdike 
 conferred on some one who lived in close proxim- 
 ity to the dike. Washburne was applied to a 
 branch that was subject to overflow. It is not a 
 matter of surprise, then, that Minnie Washburne's 
 affections should break over the channel in which 
 they were once confined, and fill Bickersdike 
 with sunshine and happiness. 
 
 AttaculacuUa was a prominent Cherokee chief 
 who lived and reigned over his tribe from about 
 1700 to 1753. The name signifies " most excellent 
 wood cutter." The old English name Truax, 
 which has lost an e between the contiguous u and 
 a, the suffix being the way the old English spelled 
 axe, has about the same signification as the name 
 of the old chief to which we have just alluded. 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 3 1 
 
 No doubt the progenitor of the Truax family 
 knew how to " hew to the line," and kept a keen 
 edge on his tools. This suggests the surname 
 Whetstone,* with which the writer has met. 
 Would it not provoke a broad smile if a Truax 
 should marry a Whetstone? 
 
 Those of our progenitors who loved to have sun- 
 shine in the soul, who laughed away the dark 
 shadows of life, and who sought happiness every- 
 where and in everything, have given the world 
 the surname Lovejoy. The ancients regarded the 
 rose as a symbol of secrecy. It was suspended 
 over their tables at their festivals in token that all 
 that was said there should not be divulged. Hence 
 arose the saying sub rosa. In the feuds between 
 the houses of York and Lancaster the white and 
 red rose became respectively the badges of the 
 contending partisans. It is not, therefore, strange 
 that we should meet with Rose as a family name ; 
 nor is it surprising that he who distilled the rose 
 was called Rosewater. 
 
 The name Peabody was bestowed on some 
 plump-bodied mediaeval Englishman in very much 
 the same manner that Edith Swan's-neck, whom 
 Harold dearly loved, got her surnominal appella- 
 tive. The name has been contracted to Swaneck. 
 Notwithstanding the oddities of surnames, how- 
 ever, they have multiplied as man has gone forth 
 on his mission of multiplication. 
 
 * See Chapter IV. The name was doubtless suggested by a 
 shpp sign. 
 
32 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Peabody Duty perhaps keeps a store, 
 
 With washing tubs and wigs and wafers stocked; 
 And Dr. Quackenbox proclaims the cure 
 
 Of such as are with any illness docked ; 
 Dish Alcibiades holds out a lure 
 
 Of sundry articles, all nicely cooked ; 
 And Phocion Aristides Franklin Tibbs 
 
 Sells ribbons, laces, caps, and slobbering bibs. 
 
 But hold! here comes WiUiam, or for short Bill 
 Graybill, whose black hair and beard tell us too 
 plainly that he is not old enough to claim the true 
 import of his name, arm in arm with John Bed- 
 good, whose angular form speaks so eloquently 
 and convincingly that we had, by far, rather ac- 
 cept the truthfulness of what his name implies 
 than to put it to a practical test. 
 
 " Speak of the , and his imps will appear." 
 
 True to the proverb, here comes John Walkup. 
 It was cruel to say the least of it, that some 
 uncouth characteristic of the primal progeni- 
 tor of the accomplished little Nellie Wildman 
 should have fastened such a surname on her, but 
 then it need not be so for a lifetime. She may 
 change her name without a special act of the Leg- 
 islature. But alas ! there is poor John Craven, 
 who has an eye single to the prize, and Miss Nel- 
 lie feels that, if surnames are to enter into such 
 matters, in the approaching nuptials she will have 
 only leaped " from the frying pan into the 
 fire." These matrimonial alliances are really ri- 
 diculous sometimes. Only last month Walter Fitz- 
 water — i. e., Walter tAe son of Water — married 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 33 
 
 Minnie Crane. Was it a union of different species 
 of the same genus? And again, cards are out an- 
 nouncing the approaching union in holy wed- 
 lock of Rev. George Swindler and Miss Grace, 
 the accomplished daughter of Henry Overcash. 
 Can it be possible that it is really a love match? 
 But it was announced through the press a few 
 days ago that there was a brilliant wedding in 
 a rural town. The groom, Richard Allamong, 
 "took unto himself to wife" Miss Fannie New- 
 comb. It is to be hoped that the union will be a 
 very congenial one ; for if it is not, we have grave 
 apprehensions that Richard AUamong's black 
 ringlets will pay for it, and that he will repent the 
 day in sackcloth and ashes in which he formed 
 the acquaintance of a new scalp scraper. But that 
 was rather a consistent, as well as a happy union, 
 that took place ten years ago between the two 
 contracting parties, Miss Carrie Skinner * and 
 Thomas Swift. We felt assured, at the time the 
 wedding was announced, that there would never be 
 a divorce suit in this case, provided the groom 
 would always exercise common sense, and fleet- 
 ness of foot, when little family jars might occur. 
 And really time has verified our surmise, for as- 
 suredly ten years is long enough to demonstrate the 
 fact that a Swift, with ordinary discretion, may 
 live with a Skinner. 
 
 We have really been afraid to read the press 
 
 * A dealer in skins, a prominent branch of mediaeval as well 
 as modern merchandise. 
 3 
 
34 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 notices of divorce suits, ever since we read of 
 Robert Child wedding Minnie Breakspear; we 
 have lived cherishing the hope, however, that no 
 bones have been broken in the severe course of 
 discipline through which the bride may have 
 caused the stupid Child to pass. 
 
 But enough of such puerile punning with names, 
 even if they do justify it at least in some measure. 
 
 Brock means a badger. It has long since passed 
 into an adage in speaking of persons or things ex- 
 tremely gray to refer to them as being " gray as a 
 badger." It may have been because of gray hairs 
 that this appellative was bestowed. A beard 
 streaked with gray would have reminded our sim- 
 ple-hearted progenitors of the streaked face of the 
 badger. Hence we have the surname Brockman. 
 
 Johnsrud is a corruption of Johnsrood — i. e., the 
 measure of land that belonged to John. Gilhousen 
 is composed of the Gaelic gil (a servant) and 
 housen (the old English way of spelling house). 
 Oilman simply means a servant man. Goodnowis 
 thoroughly English, but how long will that blessed 
 state continue ? Who would not as willingly sub- 
 mit to the patronymic Hogwood as to Swinburne, 
 or hogbranch? Who had not just as lief be a 
 Roundtree as a Rockwell.* 
 
 Pennypacker was an employee in the mint, and 
 a more liberal monetary policy on the part of the 
 government might have obviated the necessity for 
 
 * These are territorial names, and are fully explained in 
 Chapter VI. 
 
SURNAMES THAT MAKE US LAUGH. 35 
 
 the surname Poorman. The name Starkweather 
 is connected in some way with a sheep divested of 
 its warm coat of wool, but as to how the name 
 originated no one is able to explain. Livingood is 
 a descendant of one who lived well and "fared 
 sumptuously every day," while Hogmire lived near 
 a swamp in which hogs were pastured. 
 
 Lookabill is an English surname with which the 
 writer has met. It is doubtless a corruption of the 
 pet name Lucky Bill, a popular cognomen which 
 was bestowed on some mediasval William to whom 
 fortune was partial. A friend of mine, however, 
 told me that his mother knew a family living in 
 one of the Northern States whose patronymic ap- 
 pellation was Redheifer. I gave my Yankee 
 friend the palm, for that was to me the most ri- 
 diculous surnominal cognomen I ever heard of a 
 man enduring, and really it must have been humil- 
 iating to the feminine members of the family. 
 Happy lot for them that they could change their 
 family name through the services of a minister, 
 and it is to be hoped that all the hoys of that fami- 
 ly were girls and that they all found suitors. 
 
 Many of the more seriously disposed readers, 
 however, of this book may criticise the light man- 
 ner in which the writer has dealt with quite a num- 
 ber of peculiar names which occur in this chapter, 
 but he has only one suggestion to offer relative 
 to peculiar surnames, and no apology for what 
 they may suggest to the mind, for he is not re- 
 sponsible for them. The suggestion is this: Love 
 
2,6 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 covers a multitude of defects, even in surnames; 
 and matrimony annihilates a vast number of un- 
 couth family names. Peg-a-way is an American- 
 ism, the meaning of which is familiar to all of us. 
 The fact that it is an Americanism saved the ex- 
 pression from having been fastened on some poor 
 mortal as a surname, for Stickaway is actually a 
 patronymic appellation. Charlotte M. Yonge, in 
 her excellent work, " Christian Names," says that 
 in one of the Northern States there is a family 
 " where the sons are called One, Two, Three 
 Stickaway and the daughters First, Second, Third 
 Stickaway." The best we can do, then, with our 
 peculiar names, if we cannot change them, is 
 simply to imitate the honest Shoemaker,* peg-a- 
 way and stick to the last, for what Englishman 
 would not rather have the most peculiar surname 
 with its centuries of Anglo-Saxon history and prog- 
 ress han any patronymic appellation that could 
 be coined in the light of this nineteenth century? 
 We love our names with all of their oddities be- 
 cause our fathers bore them. 
 
 * See Chapter V. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PATRONYMIC INHERITANCES FROM REMOTE FA- 
 THERLANDS. 
 
 THE names of countries have very frequently per- 
 formed double duty, if we may so express the 
 idea, for we often meet with them as surnames. 
 Many of our progenitors sought their fortunes in 
 other lands than those in which they were born, 
 and in the emergencies and exigencies which 
 necessarily evolved family names it was very nat- 
 ural that the name of the country, from which one 
 emigrated to England, should serve also as a sur- 
 name. Thus Thomas from Wales very naturally 
 became known to the people as Thomas Waley or 
 Waleys. In this way also the names Welch and 
 Walsh were derived, and the progenitors of those 
 who bear either of these three family names were 
 undoubtedly Welsh emigrants, who cast in their 
 lots with their nearest neighbors, the Englishmen. 
 The etymology of the ethnic name Welsh proves 
 conclusively that the term was conferred upon the 
 inhabitants of the Province of Wales by the Ger- 
 mans, as a reproach. It is from the Sanskrit mlech, 
 and means " a person who talks indistinctly" or 
 " a jabberer." The Sanskrit m frequently be- 
 comes w in the Gothic tongue. Hence according 
 to this phonetic law " from mlech we obtain the 
 
 (37) 
 
38 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 German wlack, walach and ivalsch,^' " The root," 
 says Isaac Taylor, "appears in German in the 
 form wal, which means anything that \s foreign 
 or strange." Hence we obtain the German word 
 ■waller, which no longer survives in English except 
 as a surname, and which means a stranger or pil- 
 grim. We still have, however, wallet, a stranger's 
 or pilgrim's equipage. 
 
 The surname Saxon has survived that ethnic 
 branch of the great Indo-European family from 
 which it sprung. The term means a knife, a short 
 sword, or dagger. The term was applied to our 
 ancestors as an ethnic name, doubtless, because of 
 the peculiar arms with which this warlike tribe de- 
 fended themselves. As a surname it was bestowed 
 upon some bold descendant of the old Saxons, 
 who, like Cedric of " Ivanhoe " fame, clung tena- 
 ciously to old Saxon customs and manners, and 
 who preserved the purity of the Saxon blood after 
 the Norman invasion and the revolutions that fol- 
 lowed that period of English history. The Saxons, 
 however, unlike the Waleys, Welchs, and Walshs, 
 were not immigrants, but the conquerors of the 
 dark-skinned Euskarian tribes, which originally 
 inhabited England. 
 
 Hugh, the German who sought a home among 
 his Anglo-Saxon cousins, was very naturally called 
 Hugh German or Gorman. Isaac Taylor says of 
 this name: " The etymology has been fiercely bat- 
 tled over; perhaps the most reasonable derivation 
 is from the Gaelic gair mean, ' one who cries 
 
PATRONYMIC INHERITANCES. 39 
 
 out,' and the name either alludes to the fierce 
 war cry of the Teutonic hordes, or more probably 
 it expresses the wonder with which the Celts of 
 Gaul listened to the unintelligible clash of the 
 harsh German gutturals." Scot means a wanderer. 
 It is derived from the Irish scuite, which denotes 
 a rover. Thus William, who wandered over into 
 England, became known to the people as William 
 Scott; while Harold, " from the Land of the Mid- 
 night Sun," and a descendant he may have been 
 of the Vilcings, inherited the surname Norman or 
 Norris. Thus Louis from France passed very 
 easily into Lewis French, Francis, or Frank. If 
 the later appellation prevailed, as was frequently 
 the case, his progeny would be known as Franks. 
 It has been very plausibly supposed that the 
 French or Franks, like the Saxons, won their eth- 
 nic title from the use of \}a.& franca, a kind of jav- 
 elin. 
 
 The surnames Briton and English doubtless 
 came into use through the effort of our progeni- 
 tors to distinguish, in a day prior to the annihila- 
 tion of tribal differences, between two persons 
 bearing the same Christian name. 
 
 The place name Holland means ihs.fen, from ol- 
 lant, marshy ground. It was applied as a surname 
 to some emigrant from that country. Thus we 
 may account also for the surnames Ireland and 
 Spain. The Flemings were emigrants from 
 Flanders. 
 
 These surnames, which clearly demonstrate the 
 
40 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 prevalence of foreigners in England at a very ear- 
 ly period of her history, show how readily our 
 progenitors received strangers from any part of 
 western Europe. Isaac Taylor, in tracing the 
 history of place names in England, satisfactorily 
 proves that many of these emigrants to England 
 were of the noblest families of Western Europe. 
 They were in many instances the descendants of 
 kings and noblemen. "The Icelings," says he, 
 " the noblest family of Mercia, are found at Ick- 
 lingham in Suffolk." The name of the place Ick- 
 lingham, the home of the Icelings, where the 
 name still obtains as a surname, proves very con- 
 clusively that this ancient family chose that place 
 as their home when they first entered the land 
 of their adoption. The same writer affirms that 
 " the Hastings, the noblest race of the Goths " are 
 yet found at Hastingleigh and Hastings, places first 
 settled by them in the counties of Kent and Sus- 
 sex. The name frequently occurs as a surname, 
 and wherever we meet with it we may rest as- 
 sured that it sprung from this noble race of Goths. 
 Arding is a royal name. The name was applied 
 to a race of kings among the Vandals. This roy- 
 al family settled in Sussex and Berkshire, as the 
 place names Ardington and Ardingley conclu- 
 sively prove. A branch of the royal Visigothic 
 family first founded Belting in Kent. Hence the 
 name by which they were known was not only 
 given to the town which they built, but was be- 
 stowed upon many of their descendants as a sur- 
 
PATRONYMIC INHERITANCES. 4 1 
 
 name. Isaac Taylor also affirms that " The Irings, 
 the royal family of the Avars, are found at Erring- 
 ingham in Sussex and atErrington in Yorkshire, " 
 whence the name has spread abroad as a surname. 
 No less than thirteen places in England were 
 founded by the Billings " who were the royal race 
 of the Varini; " they therefore profited extensive- 
 ly by the conquest of England, and the name as a 
 surname became extensively applied to their nu- 
 merous progeny. Whether Henry W. Shaw, 
 the humorist, craved a kingly name, or designed 
 to burlesque a royal appellative, or really wanted 
 to be identified with the numerous descendants 
 of the Billings, when he assumed Josh Billings as 
 a nom de -plume is a question which presumably 
 must forever remain unanswered. 
 
 The English surname, sometimes met with, New- 
 comer was evidently applied to some immigrant to 
 England, but the fatherland of the Newcomers 
 must forever remain a mystery. It is really an in- 
 stance of a nickname passing into a permanent 
 surname, just as we have in the names Littlejohn, 
 Whitehead, Golightly, Goforth, Friday, and Trip- 
 lett, doubtless one of a trio born at the same 
 time. 
 
 Surnames are so thoroughly connected with the 
 customs and even with the efforts put forth by old 
 England to evolve that phase of gubernatorial, 
 ecclesiastical, and social rank to which she after- 
 ward attained, that it is difficult to appreciate the 
 full force of certain current expressions unless we 
 
42 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 are familiar with all the conditions out of which 
 they were evolved. Hence it frequently occurs 
 that the study of surnames, for they are words 
 more closely connected with prevailing conditions 
 of society at the time they were applied, than any 
 other class of words, perhaps, gives us a clearer 
 conception of the meaning of kindred terms than 
 we could easily obtain otherwise. 
 , In the eastern section of South Carolina there 
 is no more familiar name than Easterling. Our 
 Anglo-Saxon forefathers called emigrants from 
 the country lying east of their little sea-girt island 
 easterlings. Hence the term Sterling. Connected, 
 therefore, with that name we have a most inter- 
 esting piece of history. 
 
 In that far-off age when surnames were made, 
 when every petty earl or baron had his private 
 mint, when money was coined by towns as well as 
 by states, we cannot fail to learn even from ro- 
 mance literature that men had even then learned 
 the art of short weight. A scene in Ivanhoe illus- 
 trates the prevalent shortage at that time in coin. 
 When Gurth, the thrall of Cedric, acting, clandes- 
 tinely, squire to the disinherited Wilfred, paid 
 Isaac of York eighty zecchins for the use of the 
 noble steed and goodly armor, which the disinher- 
 ited knight used in the tournament at Ashby, it 
 will be remembered by every one, who has read 
 the scene, how the covetous Jew weighed the 
 eightieth zecchin on the end of his finger and tried 
 its genuineness by ringing the metal upon the 
 
PATRONYMIC INHERITANCES. 43 
 
 table, struggling all the while between a desire to 
 reward the swine herder and his greed for gold. 
 But the clear ring and full weight made Gurth one 
 zecchin poorer than perhaps he would otherwise 
 have been. In that age when there could be very 
 little guarantee of the genuineness and quality of 
 the current money, the coin brought to England 
 by the Germans was known as Easterling or Ster- 
 ling money, which was a synonym for its purity, 
 hence the pound sterling, or the term as used to 
 denote a man of pure character. 
 
 The surname Wightman is of doubtful origin. 
 The prefix wight may be the Scandinavian term 
 denoting nimble, active, or strong, or the name 
 may have been applied to an emigrant from the 
 Isle of Wight. In the latter case it literally means 
 the Jute, or Goth-man, for "in the laws of Ed- 
 ward the Confessor the men of the Isle of Wight 
 are called Guti — /. e., Jutes or Goths. We have 
 also the intermediate forms Geat, Gwit, Wiht, 
 and Wight." Newport, either in the Isle of 
 Wight or in South Wales, has perpetuated itself as 
 an old English surname. There are, however, no 
 less than twelve villages in England bearing the 
 name Newport, and the place name has become a 
 family name, just as the villages of Stroud, New- 
 land, Newby, (the suffix dy means a town), New- 
 bury (sometimes corrupted into Newberry), and 
 many other place names have passed into sur- 
 names. The name Galloway is a beautiful illus- 
 
44 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 surnames were frequently derived from mere ac- 
 cident. One of the galleons of the famous Span- 
 ish Armada " succeeded in weathering Cape 
 Wrath and the storm-beaten Hebrides," and was 
 at last wrecked on what is now the coast of Gal- 
 loway, hence the place name. " Tradition avers 
 that a Spanish stallion rescued from the wreck 
 became the ancestor of the strong and serviceable 
 breed of Galloways." 
 
 Ratcliffe, at Bristol, England, has given us a 
 family name. It means red cliff. Norwood 
 (North wood) was bestowed on some denizen 
 who inhabited such a region of uncultivated coun- 
 try. Thus we have also such surnames as Bald- 
 ridge and the poetic appellations Whitehurst 
 (white-forest), and Silverwood. But as we will 
 devote a chapter especially to these territorial sur- 
 names, it is not necessary that we pursue the study 
 of this class of family names at this point in our 
 rambles. 
 
 It may be a matter of information, however, to 
 say, before closing this chapter, that all surnames 
 were originally written not after the Christian 
 name, as they are now placed, but above it. Hence 
 they were originally called supernomina, or over- 
 names. They were never hereditary in England 
 till after the Norman conquest. When they be- 
 came hereditary, they were no longer called over- 
 names, but sirname or sire's name. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SURNAMES DERIVED FROM THE SIGNS OF SHOP 
 KEEPERS. 
 
 THE chief towns and cities of England have al- 
 ways been busy marts of trade. The manufac- 
 turer as well as the trader, the shop keeper as well 
 as the importer of foreign articles, all had their re- 
 spective places of business. Thames Street, Lon- 
 don, was, in that period when surnames were be- 
 stowed, literally alive with fish mongers. There 
 were so many fast days and Lenten seasons that 
 fish formed an important article of food, and we 
 may rest assured that Anglo-Saxon energy and 
 enterprise created a supply equal to the demand. 
 Ironmonger's Lane was filled with the smoke of 
 the furnace, while the clanging sound of the ham- 
 mer's strokes upon the anvil and the groan of the 
 bellows told plainly how busy the begrimed smiths 
 were who stood toiling at the forges. Armors 
 had to be manufactured and repaired, imple- 
 ments of bloodshed as well as tools for the artisan ; 
 in fact everything that was made of iron en- 
 gaged the attention of the busy workmen, for a 
 medigevil city made nearly everything that the 
 populace wanted. The Vintry tells of the place 
 where the vinters stored and dealt out their wines. 
 
 (45) 
 
46 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES, 
 
 East Chepe or East Market as the name implies, 
 St. Nicolas Shambles, and the Stocks Market all 
 tell us of the places of business of the mediaeval 
 butchers, while Cordwainer Street was the abode 
 of the sons of Crispin. Paternoster Row and 
 Bowyer Row tell us respectively of the places 
 where beads were turned with which the saints 
 worshiped, and bows were made with which the 
 sinners killed each other. 
 
 It is not till one examines the long lists of 
 trades collected together by Riley that he can 
 form anjrthing like a correct estimate of the 
 enormous amount of work that was performed 
 day by day, and of the divisions and subdivisions 
 of labor that prevailed on every hand. The 
 craftsmen were nearly all specialists in some par- 
 ticular line of trade. We may rest assured that 
 the spirit of rivalry was abroad among these mul- 
 titudes of laborers. The craftsmen did not forget 
 to advertise their wares and their respective places 
 of business, though it was done without the aid of 
 printers' ink. 
 
 Macaulay speaks of the gay appearance of Lon- 
 don in the olden times, caused by the painted 
 signs of the store and shop keepers. All sorts of 
 animals, frightful dragons and monsters were 
 painted to attract the attention of the passer-by 
 and invite his custom. The shop keepers of feu- 
 dal times were ambitious to excel each other, as 
 they are to-day, in the novelty of their signs ; and 
 this, together with the ignorance of the times, gave 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 47 
 
 rise to many amusing scenes. " The story is toid 
 of a certain shoe maker, who hearing or seeing 
 the Latin expression, Mens conscia recti, though 
 knowing nothing of its meaning, thought it would 
 be an additional attraction to his sign and had it 
 inscribed beneath his pictorial shoe. A rival son 
 of Crispin, not to be outdone in business enter- 
 prise, at once offered an amendment, and placed 
 upon his sign the words, Men's and women's con- 
 scia recti. These signs gave rise to personal 
 names." 
 
 The Fishers made their name with hook and 
 line, but the competing fish mongers along Thames 
 Street in London and elsewhere, took their names 
 doubtless from the pictorial representations of their 
 craft painted in gaudy colors over their fish stalls. 
 Thus John, a fishmonger, who had the figure of a 
 bodfish painted over the entrance of his place of 
 business or who dealt especially in that species of 
 fish, would become very naturally known as John 
 Bodfish, by way of distinguishing him from some 
 one else bearing the same Christian name. In 
 like manner the surnames Bass, Pike, Roach, and 
 Fish were no doubt conferred upon those who 
 first received these appellations. 
 
 There is a sad and pathetic chapter of Ameri- 
 can history relative to a surname, which doubtless 
 originated from these painted signs of the medi- 
 sevil fish mongers. Every student of the colonial 
 history of America has lingered with feelings of 
 sorrow over the account of Sir Walter Raleigh's 
 
48 A ItAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 attempt to plant a colony on Roanoke Island, on 
 the eastern coast of North Carolina. The little 
 band of brave men and women left by that un- 
 fortunate explorer on the island in the year 1587, 
 and never again seen by white men, has been gen- 
 erally alluded to by historians as " the lost colo- 
 nists." Recent investigation, however, has estab- 
 lished the fact that the colony was not destroyed, 
 but allied itself with the Croatan Indians, who still 
 hold a reservation in Eastern North Carolina.* 
 
 Virginia Dare was the name of the first child 
 born in the colony, and therefore the first white 
 child born upon the American continent. Her 
 progenitors were doubtless fish mongers. The 
 word " dare" means a small species of river fish. 
 The name as applied to men doubtless originated 
 from the painted sign of the " dare "or dace over 
 the place of business of the man who first received 
 the name. 
 
 " Dare" is from the old French dars or darz, 
 a dart or javelin. It is more remotely from the 
 Low Latin dardus which meant the same thing. 
 The fish was so named from its quick motion. 
 The word was pronounced by the Anglo-Saxons 
 as if written " dahr." Strange to say that when 
 Hamilton McMillan began to investigate traditions 
 among the colony of Croatans in Robeson County, 
 N. C, relative to the fact of their descent from 
 
 * For proof of this alliance see " Out from under Caesar's 
 Frown," Chapters XXVIII. and XXIX., a work by the au- 
 thor. 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 49 
 
 "the lost colonists," he says: " The name ' Dai-e' 
 was not recognized by them in our first investiga- 
 tions, but we afterward discovered that they pro- 
 nounced the name variously, as * Darr,' ' Durr,' 
 and ' Dorr.' This discovery was made when we 
 related to an old chronicler of the tribe the story 
 of Virginia Dare, the first white child born on 
 American soil." 
 
 It is, indeed, stranger than fiction, that the very 
 Saxon pronunciation of a surname should have 
 been locked up within a tribe of Indians for cen- 
 turies, and at last become a potent factor in estab- . 
 lishing the facts of history and tradition. 
 
 Ling, herring, lampreys, and sturgeon were 
 also consumed in great quantities as articles of 
 food. Hence we meet with the names of these 
 fishes as surnames. Special dealers in these va- 
 rieties of fish painted pictorial representations of 
 them over their fish stalls, and in turn the people 
 applied the sign as a name. 
 
 William, doing a smith's business at the sign of 
 the " arm and hammer," might after awhile be- 
 come known as William Hammersmith. Or an- 
 other William, a rival blacksmith, zealous to por- 
 tray the muscular capacity of his arm, had the 
 sign painter to deal somewhat in pictorial hyper- 
 bole, and may have thus secured for himself the 
 patronymic Armstrong.* We may account for 
 
 * This name, howevei-, may have been bestowed upon an in- 
 dividual because the strength of his arm was a distinguishing 
 characteristic. 
 4 
 
50 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 many English names in this way, foi" in the medi- 
 asval towns and cities where the trades were thor- 
 oughly distributed we find one man making one 
 thing and nothing else all his life. The maker of 
 bolts for crossbows would very naturally exhibit 
 over his place of business as a sign the painted im- 
 age of a great bolt, hence he would be distinguished 
 by his neighbors from other persons having the 
 same Christian name by the surname Bolt. Like- 
 wise the maker of spears inherited that title as a 
 patronymic distinction for his long line of descend- 
 ants. We sometimes meet with the English name 
 Swords, which doubtless came into use as a surname 
 from the sign of that instiiiment of carnage over 
 the place of business of the mediseval sword 
 maker. The forger of chains would very appro- 
 priately exhibit the painted links of a chain to pub- 
 lish to the eyes of the passing throng the manner 
 of business that was carried on within. 
 
 When we take into consideration the fact that 
 our ancestors, in the days when surnames were 
 formed and bestowed, were generally ignorant to 
 a degree that debarred them from reading their 
 mother tongue, we readily understand how em- 
 blems painted upon signboards over their shops 
 and stores were the only mediums through which 
 the artisan and trader could intelligently commu- 
 nicate the nature of their vocations to the great 
 mass of their customers. Therefore the manufac- 
 turer of bells would have an enormous bell paint- 
 ed on some conspicuous object at his place of busi- 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 5 1 
 
 ness, so as to attract the attention of any one need- 
 ing work in his line, and in the course of time his 
 sign became his surname. And assuredly the 
 Bells had a lucrative trade ; for mediaeval England 
 struggled through the mists of the Dark Ages, 
 keeping step with the jingling, jangling, and jar- 
 ring tones of thousands of bells on every side. 
 "They rang," says an English writer, "all day 
 long ; they rang from the great cathedral and from 
 the little parish church, from the stately monas- 
 tery, the nunnery, the college of priests, the 
 spital, the chantry, the chapel, and the hermitage ; 
 they rang for festivals, for fasts, for pageants, for 
 processions, for births, marriages, and funerals, 
 for the election of city officers, for coronations, 
 for victories, and for daily service; they rang to 
 mark the day and the hour ; they rang in the baby ; 
 they rang out the passing soul; they rang for the 
 bride; they rang in memory of the dead; they 
 rang for work to begin and for work to cease; 
 they rang to exhort, to admonish, to console." 
 The bell makers were therefore important factors 
 in early English civilization. They not only ad- 
 vertised their craft through the medium of the eye, 
 but manufactured that which advertised almost 
 everything through the medium of the ear. 
 
 We sometimes meet with the English name 
 Hornblower. Sincetherewere men, therefore, who 
 made their surnames by winding horns, it was 
 very necessary that the demand for that instru- 
 mentof torture to sensitive ears be supplied. Hence 
 
52 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 there were horn makers then as now. Indeed, the 
 spirit of the times made that branch of manufac- 
 ture very essential, for our progenitors were a very 
 noisy set of fellows. The hunter, the yeoman, 
 the soldier, and the rustic, as well as the gentle- 
 man, owned horns. Indeed, it was an accomplish- 
 ment to know how to wind a horn. The horn 
 maker, therefore, fainted his sign, won his sur- 
 name thereby, and added by his craft to the daily 
 volume of noise that floated out upon the air of 
 the sea-girt island. What a blessing the air is, 
 anyhow! It swallows so much that is offensive 
 and discordant. Verily, its digestive organs are 
 good and powerful! 
 
 We have already alluded to short weight in 
 the coin that was circulated in mediaeval times. 
 There was a necessity for weighing apparatus in 
 primitive times as well as now. Hence scale 
 makers were in demand, and again the painted sign 
 has given us the surname Scales. 
 
 In this manner many of the names of the ani- 
 mals of the forest were fastened as surnames upon 
 men. A number of rival butchers doing business 
 in the same town or city took their names from 
 the painted images of certain animals over their 
 places of business. Thus we have from the mam- 
 mals Buck, Bull, Bullock, Lamb, Roe, and many 
 others. 
 
 The surnames Fox and Todd must have origi- 
 nated through these signs of the shop keepers. 
 Tod, generally written Todd as a surname and 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 53 
 
 frequently spelled Todde in the oldest Saxon 
 books, is of Scandinavian origin, and primarily 
 meant a bush; but the term was applied to the 
 fox, it is supposed, on account of its bushy tail. 
 The names Fox and Todd, therefore, are the same 
 in meaning, and doubtless came to be used as fam- 
 ily names through the medium of these signs. 
 The name Hinds may have originated from the 
 fact of some medieeval butcher having painted the 
 figure of a female deer over his meat shop, or it 
 may possibly have been derived from the Anglo- 
 Saxon hine, the d being excrescent, a domestic. 
 
 The birds of the forest were not ignored in the 
 day of surname making, for we have the names: 
 Wren, Dove, Sparrow, Swan, Nightingale, Finch, 
 Bullfinch, Jay, Hawkes, Crane, Drake, Partridge, 
 Woodcock, Henshaw, which is, properly speak- 
 ing, ffernshdim, another name for heron ; and this 
 brings to mind the saying, " He doesn't know a 
 hawk from a handsaw," wherein the last word is 
 a corruption of hernshaw. By substituting this 
 word the drift of the proverb is apparent, inti- 
 mating that one does not know the difference be- 
 tween the hawk (or falcon) or the heron (or 
 hernshaw) which the hawk pursues. 
 
 Peacocks adorned the tables of the rich at great 
 banquets; the hedgecock was also consumed as 
 an article of food. Hence we have these names 
 as family names. 
 
 The major part of these names, perhaps, came 
 from the painted signs of hucksters, though some 
 
54 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 of them may have originated from trivial charac- 
 teristics and incidents. Carlyle informs us that 
 Harald, the first Christian king of Norway, as 
 early as A.D., 961, "got the name of Grey/ell 
 from his people on a very trivial account, but 
 seemingly with perfect good humor on their part. 
 Some Iceland traders had brought a cargo of furs 
 to Trondhjem (Lade) for sale. Sale being slack- 
 er than the Icelander wished, he presented a cho- 
 sen specimen, cloak, doublet, or whatever it was, 
 to Harald, who wore it with acceptance in public 
 and rapidly brought disposal of the Icelander's 
 stock and the surname of Greyfell to himself." 
 
 The surname of the first conqueror of the nu- 
 merous jarls of Norway, Harald Fairhair, and 
 that of the author of the Norman conquest of En- 
 gland, Rolf the Ganger (Walker) came from inci- 
 dents equally as trivial as that which gave Harald 
 Greyfell his appellation. Rolf Ganger was so 
 weighty a man no horse could carry him, says 
 Carlyle, and he walked, "having a mighty stride 
 withal and great velocity on foot." Hence his 
 name. Harald aspired to marry the beautiful 
 Gyda. The proud beauty answered him: "Her 
 it would not beseem to wed any jarl or poor crea- 
 ture of that kind. Let him do as Gorm of Den- 
 mark, Eric of Sweden, and Egbert of England: 
 subdue into peace and regulation the confused, 
 contentious bits of jarls around him, and become a 
 king; then perhaps she might think of his pro- 
 posal; till then, not." The proud answer pleased 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 55 
 
 the young suitor, and " he vowed to let his hair 
 grow, never to cut or even to comb it till this feat 
 were done and the peerless Gyda his own." It 
 took him twelve years to accomplish the work; 
 but it was done, and he won a wife and a surname. 
 Therefore it is clearly seen that our progenitors 
 were quick to perceive and apply any peculiar 
 trait, sign, or acquirement. 
 
 Surnames were sometimes bestowed from a 
 spirit of jealousy. We have a striking illustration 
 of this truth in the earliest historical records of 
 Norway. Thus, Chapman is of Norse origin, and 
 means a merchant or peddler. Bjorn, the son of 
 Harald Fairhair, as early as the middle of the 
 ninth century was the first man, so far as history 
 informs us, that ever bore that surname. He was 
 a peaceable, frugal, trading, and economic under- 
 king whom his jealous brothers mockingly called 
 "Bjorn the Chapman." He was cruelly mur- 
 dered by his brother " Eric Blood-axe " about 
 A.D. 933. But the name still lives. As it comes 
 to us through the English we have Chapman, but 
 that branch of the hardy family that sought their 
 fortunes among the Germans was called Kauf- 
 man. The two names have a commonNorse origin, 
 and are really one and the same name. 
 
 The Osbornes also are of Norse origin, and the 
 name means " The Bear of the Gods." It was 
 bestowed originally, doubtless by some viking, 
 upon some brave Norman who fought with an en- 
 ergy and a spirit of fearlessness which character- 
 
56 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ized the northern bear. Many names came from 
 personal habits, customs, and peculiarities. Prior 
 to the year 1127, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, had 
 received the surname Plantagenet " from his cus- 
 tom of wearing a sprig of flowering broom {gen- 
 ista) in his cap." Likewise three of the sons of 
 Henry XL as early as ii69had received surnames 
 by which they were popularly known. Henry, 
 surnamed Short Mantle, doubtless from the lack 
 of his mantle to measure up to, or rather down to, 
 the customary standard, received from his father 
 Maine and Anjou; Richard, surnamed Cceur de 
 Lion, the second son, so named on account of his 
 bravery, was given Aquitaine ; Geoffrey, the third 
 son, was made Duke of Brittany; John, the 
 fourth son, had nothing given to him, hence he 
 was called John Lackland. 
 
 Philip V. and his son Charles, Kings of France, 
 both inherited the surname Fair. Another son, 
 Louis X., on account of his temper, was surnamed 
 the Quarreler; while still another son, Philip VL, 
 was popularly known as Philip the Long. Again, 
 John, the son of Philip of Valois, who succeeded 
 his father on the French throne in the year 1350, 
 was like his father, impetuous, violent, brave, 
 and prodigal, altogether a very bad man, yet he 
 was surnamed John the Good, because doubtless 
 of that extraordinary degree of personal valor 
 which characterized him — " a quality at all times 
 possessing an irresistible charm for the French 
 people." 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 57 
 
 Hugh Capet doubted his own right to the throne. 
 Hence he would never wear the crown, but con- 
 tented himself with wearing the cha-p^e as abbot 
 of St. Martin de Tours; and therefore his sur- 
 name. It is a mistake, as some have supposed, 
 that "Capet -was an opprobrious appellation, de- 
 rived from Capita, big head. A large head, we 
 know, is often a sign of imbecility," but Hugh 
 Capet was not a fool. This erroneous idea led 
 an old chronicler to call Charles the Simple, Ca- 
 -pet (Karolus stultus vel Capet). Hugh's son, the 
 pious Robert, chanted vespers clad in a ckappe. 
 The ancient standard of the kings of France was 
 the chappe of St. Martin. Hence they gave the 
 name of chapel to their oratory.* 
 
 Surnames cannot always be relied on as telling 
 the truth. So much is proven at least in the case 
 of John the Good. The brave son of this prodi- 
 gal king, Phillip the Bold, was, however, more 
 appropriately surnamed. To multiply illustrations 
 as to how patronymics were evolved we may point 
 to another French king. In Charles V., who 
 ruled France from 1364 to 1380, " the French saw 
 for the first time a king who could regulate the 
 march of an army without engaging personally in 
 the campaign." Charles, "though he did not 
 himself lead his troops, knew how to appoint 
 good generals." Hence he was surnamed the 
 Wise. 
 
 There was a curious custom that prevailed 
 * M. Michelet's " History of France," p. 342. 
 
58 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 among our progenitors, even as late as the seven- 
 teenth century: that of wearing patches on the 
 face. This pecuHar custom originated with the 
 ladies of the court who cut court-plaster (hence 
 the origin of that term ) ' ' into the shape of cres- 
 cents, stars, circles, diamonds, hearts, crosses, 
 and some even went so far as to patch their faces 
 with a coach and four, a ship in full sail, a cha- 
 teau" and many such things. Thus we may ac- 
 count for many surnames, such as Cross, Ship, or 
 Shipp, and Castles. Doubtless the surname 
 Standish originated from this custom. It will be 
 remembered that Pope received a present from 
 Lady Shirley consisting of a " standish and two 
 pens." A standish (stand dish) was " a standing 
 dish for pen and ink." The surname Pitcher 
 must have either originated from this strange cus- 
 tom or from a shop sign. The old French ewer 
 has been adopted by our voracious language and 
 was current in the day of Shakespeare, for Gre- 
 mio, one of Bianca's suitors in "Taming of the 
 Shrew," eloquently presses his suit before Baptis- 
 ta, Bianca's father — 
 
 First, as you know my house within the city 
 Is richly furnished with plate and gold ; 
 Basins and ewers to lave her dainty hands. 
 
 The surname Ewer may be referred to this cus- 
 tom of pasting patches of court-plaster on the face. 
 
 Vane, a weathercock. Pear, Flagg, Crowe, and 
 Crabb, with a great host of English surnames of 
 this type, all had their origin either from shop 
 
THE SIGNS OF SHOP KEEPERS. 59 
 
 signs or patches of court-plaster worn as orna- 
 ments on the face. The surname Trump, " one 
 of the suit of cards that takes any other suit," is 
 a corruption of triumph, and it is by no means im- 
 probable that a noted gamester, exulting in his 
 skill as a card player should have so shaped the 
 ornamental bits of court plaster that he pasted on 
 his face as to advertise the fact that he was a 
 Trumf. May the Trumps continue to triumph, 
 but along other lines, however, than that of mere 
 gamesters. 
 
 The surnames Shear, Clock, Coulter, and 
 Sickles were doubtless derived either from these 
 signs or from the custom of wearing the patches 
 of court-plaster to which we have alluded. In- 
 deed a large number of surnames were thus orig- 
 inally conferred upon the progenitors of those 
 who now bear them. The reader may account, 
 therefore, for many purely English names which 
 do not appear in this chapter by remembering the 
 customs to which we have alluded. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SURNAMES DERIVED FROM THE OCCUPATIONS. 
 
 THE Anglo-Saxon race, at any period of its his- 
 tory, can never be accused of idleness. Our 
 progenitors were not only shrewd traders, skilled 
 in the art of advertising their wares in those days 
 prior to the introduction of printing presses, and 
 when almost universal ignorance prevailed, but 
 they were a producing people. The din of indus- 
 try and the whir of crude machinery in mediaeval 
 times, united with the clanging of bells, the blast 
 of horns, and the cries of hawkers and traders, 
 made old England a Babel of discordant sounds. 
 In fact, if the voice of history were silent on this 
 point, English surnames alone would constitute an 
 imperishable monument to the memory of this 
 truth ; and a nobler heritage than the fact that our 
 ancestors were laborers has never descended to 
 any people. They wrought and they dressed. Did 
 they not have the right to array themselves in cost- 
 ly garments on holidays, at least, when honest toil 
 was the price paid for such bodily indulgences? 
 Chaucer, old English for sJioe maker, sings of their 
 extravagance in dress. And since his progenitors 
 had made a surname for all of their descendants 
 by sticking to the last, did not this father of Eng- 
 lish poets have the right to violate the declaration 
 (fiO) 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 6x 
 
 of L'Estrange, " The cobbler is not to go beyond 
 his last," and to sing of the gayly attired young 
 medieval squire, 
 
 " Embrowdid was he, as it were a mede 
 Al ful of fresslie flowures, white and reede?" 
 
 But not only could the squires afford to dress 
 well in those days, but of the honest carpenter's 
 wife he says: 
 
 "A seynt [girdle] sche wered, barred al of silk; 
 A barm-cloth eek as whit as marne mylk 
 Upon hir lendes [loins], ful of many a gore. 
 Whit was hir smok, and browdid al byfore 
 And eek byhynde on hir coler aboute. 
 Of cole-blak silk, withinne and eek wihtoute." 
 
 There were Wymplers in those good old days 
 when surnames were made, and they took the 
 name of their occupation for their patronymic. 
 They manufactured wimples, or neckerchiefs, for 
 women, and many a Saxon belle, as well as queen- 
 ly matrons, like the wife of Bath, of whom this 
 poet, descended from the cobblers, sings, might 
 have been seen, in medigeval England, with their 
 scarlet stockings, and we may rest assured that 
 they were not over-particular to conceal them — why 
 should they be since they were beautiful (we mean 
 the stockings) and with their fine white wimples, 
 or kerchiefs. 
 
 Ancient Hosiers' Lane in London tells of the 
 extent, as well as the antiquity, of the stocking 
 trade. Verily, the Wymplers and Hosiers were 
 lady's men, and, since the one sought to adorn the 
 
62 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 neck, he must have been subject to their "beck 
 and nod;" while the other, working daily to clothe 
 and adorn the other extreme of their fair bodies, 
 was simply a football for beauty's fantastic toe. 
 But these old Wymplers and Hosiers have never, 
 in any age of the world's history, been without 
 synrpathizers and a goodly number of fellow-asso- 
 ciates struggling with like environments. Indeed, 
 while a few men, possibly very few, maybe really 
 henpecked, countless multitudes are veritable hen 
 hussies, if having to do with women's concerns 
 makes them such. 
 
 Many English names like these we have referred 
 to have the suffix er and ster. These are the re- 
 spective endings of masculine and feminine nouns 
 in the Saxon language. Thus some Nimrod, who 
 in mediceval times roamed over England's majestic 
 forests of oak clad in his jacket of Lincoln green, 
 that he might the better conceal himself alike from 
 his foes and the game he sought, being in strictest 
 harmony with the panoply of green about him, with 
 his quiver of steel-tipped arrows, silver hunting 
 horn, and well-bent bow of flexible Spanish yew, 
 who, like Locksley of Ivanhoe fame, could notch 
 the shaft of a Hubert or cleave in twain the sway- 
 ing v.'illow rod, or transfix the advance guard of a 
 flock of wild geese winging their way to the soli- 
 tary fens of Holderness — such a woodsman worthi- 
 ly won the title of Hunter. 
 
 Baker as an English surname is wide-spread, 
 competing, in this particular, with the names 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 63 
 
 Brown, Smith, and Jones. The work, of the baker 
 was in great demand, and it always will be, hence 
 the name is common. Not only were there public 
 bakeries then as now, but every gentleman had his 
 domestic baker; and besides, there were great 
 bodies of Church functionaries which must have 
 employed quite a number of professional bakers. 
 A recent writer, Walter Besant, in speaking of St. 
 Paul's Cathedral and of the great number main- 
 tained by the Church in that building alone, says 
 that " in the year 1850 the society, the cathedral 
 body, included the following: The bishop, the 
 dean, the four archdeacons, the treasurer, the pre- 
 centor, the chancellor, thirty greater canons, twelve 
 lesser canons, about fifty chaplains or chantry 
 priests, and thirty vicars. Of inferior rank to 
 these were the sacrist and three vergers, the suc- 
 centor, the master of the singing school, the mas- 
 ter of the grammar school, the almoner and his 
 four vergers, the servitors, the surveyor, the twelve 
 scribes, the book transcriber [whence we have the 
 name Scribner], the book binder, the chaimber- 
 lain [hence the surname Chamberlain], the rent 
 collector, the baker." This last and important 
 functionary " ovened every year," says the same 
 writer, " 40,000 loaves, or every day more than a 
 hundred, large and small." Hence the chief baker 
 of such an establishment must have employed quite 
 a number of helpers. A great Church institution 
 like this gave to the world at large, therefore, a 
 large number of persons bearing the name Baker, 
 
64 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 when trades came to be applied as surnames. 
 Therefore, that Baker, more fortunate than Pha- 
 roah's, who probably lost his head on account of 
 bad cooking, one who excelled in the culinary art, 
 at least to that degree necessary to the establish- 
 ment of his profession, fixed that title as a surname 
 upon the long line of his numerous progeny. 
 
 "In Mincing Lane," London, we are told, 
 "dwelt the men of Genoa and other parts who 
 brought wine to that port in their galleys." Hence 
 these importers of wine came to be known after 
 awhile by the surname Vintner or Vintners. 
 
 Mercer means a merchant. We frequently meet 
 with the name in its Middle English form, Mercer, 
 and also in its modern form. Merchant. The names 
 are one and the same. 
 
 In every great cathedral there were, besides 
 those already mentioned, sextons, gardeners, turn- 
 ers of beads for prayer, masons, painters, carpen- 
 ters, gilders, and carvers. It may have been that 
 these names of trades were first applied as sur- 
 names among the inmates of these cathedrals, for 
 we can readily conceive how a greater necessity 
 for some such cognomenic distinction would exist 
 among so great a number of men placed thus in 
 actual and daily contact than would arise among 
 the people outside, and who were not brought into 
 such close personal contiguity, just as surnames 
 became a necessity in towns and cities before they 
 were essential in the more sparsely settled country 
 districts. 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 65 
 
 Thus the world is indebted to the trades for its 
 Joiners, Sawyers, Farmers, Saddlers, Bowyers (or 
 bow makers), Archers, Wheelers (or wheel mak- 
 ers). Ropers (or rope makers), and its Plumers (or 
 feather workers), who doubtless made the plumes 
 that waved over the brows of knights and kings ; 
 and they, too, may have plumed many of those 
 deadly shafts that flew with such unerring precis- 
 ion from the flexible bows of our progenitors and 
 which tried every joint and rivet in the armors of 
 their enemies. 
 
 The mediaeval barber was an important adjunct 
 to his community. He not only did the hair dress- 
 ing for the people of his neighborhood, but also 
 the tooth pulling and blood letting, hence their red 
 and white striped sign posts. They have lived to 
 see their ancient profession divided into three dis- 
 tinct branches, two of them ( dentistry and surgery) 
 honorable, the other menial, leaving to the de- 
 scendants of the first barbers only the name. 
 
 While the porter made a name for his offspring 
 either by guarding gates or carrying burdens, the 
 potter at his wheel made a name for his progeny 
 by his dexterity in handling the pliable clay. To 
 the perfidy of these ancient craftsmen we are in- 
 debted for one of our most expressive words. 
 There were Roman potters as well as Roman ora- 
 tors, poets, and philosophers. Roman potters, it 
 seems, were as shrewd as our down-easters. When 
 they discovered a crack in their wares, they filled 
 it up nicely with a kind of prepared wax, and thus 
 5 
 
66 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 concealing the flaw, they put their cracked wares 
 on the market and sold them as sound vessels. 
 Roman pottery merchants thus imposed upon were 
 taught to look, when they made their purchase, for 
 the wax that concealed the flaws of imperfect 
 workmanship. Hence when they discovered a per- 
 fectly sound vessel, they said it was sine cera, with- 
 out wax. From this we have the word sincere, 
 signifying primarily without flaws. 
 
 Since our progenitors, as we have seen, knew 
 how to dress, weavers were a necessity, hence we 
 have Weaver as a surname. The Anglo-Saxon 
 word webba meant a weaver; the suffix a, says 
 Skeat, denoted the agent. The word is now ob- 
 solete, except in the old English surname Webb. 
 
 The great Webster whose eloquence, logic, and 
 astute statesmanship won him a name second to 
 none in the annals of America ; the learned Webster 
 whose lexicographical labors yet abide as the 
 standard of English-speaking people; and the 
 lesser Websters whose names have not been placed 
 upon the roll of honor and fame may all trace 
 their origin to some gentle and humble Saxon dame 
 who plied the shuttle, day by day, thus winning 
 an honest living and a surname for her progeny. 
 The thump of the loom was her piano and the htim 
 of the distaff her organ. Her vocation ranked 
 among the finer arts of that day, and had been con- 
 sidered an accomplishment second to none from 
 time immemorial. The science of music was left 
 in the hands of strolling harpers and clowns, and the 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 67 
 
 websters were useful as well as ornamental; and 
 while it may be said of these two accomplishments, 
 that the first has verily become the last, we should 
 never forget that poets, as far back as history leads 
 us, have sung of distaffs and looms as the choicest 
 symbols of princely women. Thus Homer de- 
 scribes the present of Alcandra to Helen: 
 
 " Alcandra, consort of high command, 
 A golden distaff gave to Helen's hand ; 
 And that rich vase, with living sculpture wrought, 
 Which, heaped with wool, the beauteous Philo 
 
 brought. 
 The silken fleece, impurpled for the loom. 
 Recalled the hyacinth in vernal bloom." 
 
 So also Theocritus, when he gives a present to 
 his friend's bride, couples it with verse : 
 
 " O distaff! friend to warp and woof, 
 Minerva's gift in man's behoof. 
 Whom careful housewives still retain. 
 And gather to their household gain. 
 Thee, ivory distaff, I provide, 
 A present for his blooming bride, 
 With her thou wilt sweet toil partake. 
 And aid her various vestes to make." 
 
 And even Augustus himself, at the height of hu- 
 man splendor, wore a robe which was made for 
 him by Livia, his wife. 
 
 There was an old practice in the years agone, 
 that a woman should never be married until she 
 had herself spun a set of body, table, and bed 
 linen. It is not difficult to see how easily the term 
 became applicable to all unmarried women, and 
 
68 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 finally became a law term and became fixed as 
 spinster. 
 
 The Websters, therefore, like the Smiths,* may 
 claim an ancient and honorable lineage, and 
 though the Harpers sung in palaces and before 
 kings, the Websters really have higher claims to 
 aristocratic origin. 
 
 Weber, or webber, meant a male weaver. The 
 word is now obsolete except as a surname. 
 Tucker is a Norse word, and is synonymous with 
 the English word weaver. It is not, however, 
 quite obsolete, like weber, but still survives not 
 only as a surname but as a word. We have it in 
 the modern tucking mill (cloth-making mill). 
 
 Brewer is a very common English surname. 
 There was not a single monastery in all England 
 that did not have its brewer as well as its baker. 
 It is recorded that the brewer of St. Paul's Cathe- 
 dral in London, brewed in the year 1286 67,814 
 gallons of beer. Verily the Church at least has 
 made considerable progress in the virtue of tem- 
 perance. But we have Brewster also as a sur- 
 name, showing that the brewer's art was also in 
 the hands of women. Over the products of their 
 art many a brave knight uttered the common 
 Saxon toast waes hael (be well) to his drinking 
 companion, and drank to the king, queen, or his 
 lady love. But many of the descendants of the 
 Brewers and Brewsters are to-day heart and hand 
 against the traffic of their progenitors. 
 * See Chapter VII. 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 69 
 
 And so also the plucky Saxon dame, who dared 
 at that early period of English history when sur- 
 names were made, to enter the arena of profes- 
 sional trades and compete for custom, placed her 
 bread tables by the thoroughfares and exhibited 
 the fruit of the oven — tempting barley loaves, 
 kneaded by her hand and baked under her su- 
 pervision — and thus won not only a living but a 
 name for all of her offspring — bakester, a. female 
 baker. Hence we have the name Baxter. 
 
 Tyler is from the French tailleur, a cutter, a 
 term applied to an individual, who stood with drawn 
 sword, as the guard of a lodge of Freemasons. 
 Those who have been initiated into the profound 
 mysteries of that ancient order may appreciate 
 more thoroughly, perhaps, what his real duties were 
 than the great outside world. Whatever else may 
 be the merits of the order of Freemasonry, it must 
 be admitted that it has given the English-speaking 
 people of the world a surname. The surnames 
 Butler, Plater, Glover, Collier, and Fuller are 
 purely modern English names, and were derived 
 from the vocations of the progenitors of those who 
 bear them. The Scrivener was a scribe or cop- 
 yist. There was no vocation known to our me- 
 diaeval ancestors to which the world is more in- 
 debted than . to the work of the Scriveners and 
 Scribners. We owe to them not only the preser- 
 vation of our early history as English people, but 
 the conservation and guardianship of ancient 
 literature and the Bible, the corner stone of the 
 
70 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 vast and imperishable edifice of Anglo-Saxon 
 civilization. 
 
 Hatcher is a name easily understood when we 
 remember that one of the trades of the Middle 
 Ages was that of raising sporting hawks for the 
 gentry. Hence one engaged in that occupation, 
 of rearing hawks under a hatch or coop, was called 
 Hatcher. 
 
 " There is no excellency without labor," and, 
 indeed, it appears that there would have been few 
 surnames without it. Like the doves of which 
 Israel's sweetest singer speaks of hovering, among 
 the pots, upon the flat house tops of the Jews, 
 there seeking a resting place for the night, but 
 soaring away in the early dawn with their wings 
 "covered with silver" and their "feathers with 
 yellow gold," untarnished by the sooty cooking 
 utensils, so the Cooks and Cooksons made them- 
 selves a name in the crude kitchens of our Anglo- 
 Saxon ancestors. 
 
 Dexter sometimes occurs as a surname. The 
 progenitors of those who have inherited that patro- 
 nymic were the attendants of the knights. It was 
 an heraldic term (meaning on the right side), and 
 the name was applied to the chief herald at tour- 
 naments, a place as well as an office of honor. 
 Hence it came in use as a surname. 
 
 The Woodward was the keeper or warden of 
 the forest, while Woodruff was the master of the 
 wood. 
 
 The name Shepherd scarcely needs explanation, 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 7 1 
 
 and is closely allied to Steward. They both be- 
 longed to that class of laborers which looked after 
 the stock of the old Saxon and Norman landlords. 
 Steward was originally written Sti-weard, and 
 meant "warden of the sties, or cattle pens." The 
 religious denomination which I have the honor to 
 represent has well-nigh monopolized the word. 
 Stewards are no longer keepers of the stock pens, 
 though they may think that they have some hard 
 stock to deal with when the time comes to collect 
 quarterage, but are now the financial board of a 
 great Church. The}'^ ought, therefore, as a body 
 not only to "be men of solid piety," but they 
 ought to demonstrate their " sound judgment" by 
 abounding in the graces of liberality and thanks- 
 giving, for the Church has rescued them from a 
 very menial office. But that name in its ancient 
 as well as modern signification carries with it the 
 idea of very great responsibility. The old Saxon 
 Sti-weard was responsible for the stock committed 
 to his keeping. And so God has honored this 
 name above all others, and, in one sense, he has 
 made it of universal application, so that all men 
 are stewards of the talents he has committed to 
 their keeping. 
 
 But it ought to be a source of pride to every 
 Englishman and American that so many people 
 bear names which are derived from the profes- 
 sional trades. One of the most interesting fea- 
 tures of name study is the fact that a large percent- 
 age of our ancestors made their names by dili- 
 
72 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 gence and perseverance in some honorable voca- 
 tion. Even the wild savage recognizes those traits 
 of character and attainments, which distinguish the 
 possessor from the less accomplished ; and he is 
 wont to confer on the brave, the cunning, and the 
 wise such titles as are expressive of their attain- 
 ments. 
 
 Bookstaver, one who compressed the folded 
 sheets or pages of books with a pointed or edged 
 instrument, preparatory to stitching them together, 
 occurs as a surname. Bookhammer was the 
 manufacturer of a broad-faced hammer formerly- 
 used for beating together the pages of books. It 
 was used especially for hammering the leather 
 backs of books, in very much the same manner 
 that a cobbler uses his shoe-hammer. The Carrier 
 was an overland transporter of mails and pack- 
 ages of merchandise, while the Cheeseman was 
 the manufacturer of that article of diet. 
 
 "A good name is rather to be chosen than great 
 riches," says the writer of Proverbs, and, while it 
 is true that our progenitors did not choose their 
 names directly, it is evident that they were an in- 
 dustrious people, and that they so wrought in the 
 professions and trades as to secure to their de- 
 scendants honorable names. 
 
 Caraways, Phny informs us, were originally 
 from Caria. The seed of the caraway were much 
 used in confectionery and also in the composition 
 of certain sweetmeats, for Cogan says: "We are 
 wont to eat caraways, or biscuits, or some other 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 73 
 
 comfits." Therefore a confectioner who made a 
 specialty of caraways would very naturally take 
 the surname Caraway. 
 
 The surname Stickler, as a word, now means to 
 insist on etiquette or persist in an opinion. Such 
 was not the original meaning. In Troilus and 
 Cressida, Act V., Scene IX., Achilles is made to 
 say: 
 
 " The dragon wing of night o'erspreads the earth, 
 And, sticklerlike, the armies separate." 
 
 A stickler was therefore a peace maker, " one 
 who parts combatants or settles disputes between 
 two men fighting," a man who had the arrange- 
 ment of the field during the time of those frequent 
 combats which took place between the gentry of 
 mediaeval England, frequently on very trivial 
 grounds. 
 
 Fielder must have been an excellent axman, 
 who cleared away the primal timber of old En- 
 gland and put the land in arable condition. Isaac 
 Taylor says that ye// "is derived from Norway, 
 where it takes the iorvcifjeld (pronouncedy-e//). 
 It is the usual name for a hill in the north-west of 
 England. The Anglo-Saxon ^e/t/ or f eld is from 
 the same root as the Norse _/i?//. Kfell is a place 
 where the ground is on the fall; afield or f eld is 
 where the trees have been felled. Just like the 
 American term 'a clearing,^ the word field bore 
 witness to the great extent of unfelled timber which 
 still remained. In old writers wood and field are 
 continually contrasted. With the progress of cul- 
 
74 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tivation the word has lost its primitive force. The 
 word fold is from the same root, and means an in- 
 closure formed by felled trees." 
 
 Badger is often met with as an English surname. 
 The name is also applied to a wild animal. But 
 Sceat says that the name, as thus used, " is a sort 
 of nickname, the true sense of the Middle English 
 badger or bager being a dealer in corn, and it was 
 thus presumably jocularly transferred to the ani- 
 mal because it either fed, or was supposed to feed 
 on corn. This fanciful origin is verified by the 
 fact that the animal was similarly named blairean, 
 in French, from the French bU "corn." The 
 name was originally spelled bladger, the I having 
 been dropped for convenience of pronunciation; 
 it is from the old French bladier, explained by 
 Cotgrave as "a merchant or ingrosser of corn." 
 Originally it is from the Low Latin bladtim, corn. 
 
 The surname Buckner is common. It is closely 
 allied with the English name Lander, which, in 
 Middle English, was variously spelled launder, 
 laynder, and landar, and meant, if we are gov- 
 erned by the masculine ending, a washing man. 
 Verily, the occupation of washerman has been 
 wrested from the sterner sex, like that of the wim- 
 pler and many others. Who can tell? The good 
 women may yet relieve us of much of the wear and 
 tear of political life. There may be a rest day in 
 the near future for man, for the good women have 
 already taken us from the washtub, and the signs 
 of the times indicate that we have just had a fore- 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 75 
 
 taste of the elevation that awaits us. The occupa- 
 tion of washerman had not wholly passed out of 
 the hand of men in Shakespeare's time, for in 
 " Merry Wives of Windsor'' Mrs. Ford orders the 
 servant: " Go, take up these clothes here quickly; 
 Where's the cowl-staff? look, how you drumble; 
 carry them to the laundress in Dutchet mead; 
 quickly, come." 
 
 But when Mr. Ford entered the apartment, he 
 meddled like a modern husband in woman's af- 
 fairs. Hear him as he addressed the servant: 
 "How now? whither bear you this? " 
 
 " To the laundress, forsooth." 
 
 Mrs. Ford, like a modern wife, could not sub- 
 mit to such high-handed indignity on the part of 
 the husband without at least telling him that it was 
 none of his business; let him attend to his own af- 
 fairs. "Why, what have you to do whither they 
 bear it? You were best meddle with buckwash- 
 ing?" 
 
 The intermeddling husband showed very clearly 
 the traits of his genus. If we may use a Western 
 phrase, he bucked like a thoroughbred broncho: 
 " Buck? I would I could wash myself of the buck ! 
 Buck, buck, buck? Ay, buck; I warrant you, 
 buck." 
 
 Buck signifies to wash linen, to steep clothes in 
 dve, and the term buckner was applied to a bleach- 
 er of linen. 
 
 The Chandler, or Candler, a different spelling 
 of the same name, got a surname from his occupa- 
 
76 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tion. He was a candle seller or maker, thus car- 
 rying light into many homes. It is, indeed, a sin- 
 gular coincidence that one of that name should 
 really have been the originator of female colleges, 
 thus sending into innumerable homes more light 
 than was ever dispensed by his candle-selling an- 
 cestors. In the year 1835, "a young lawyer. 
 Chandler by name, made an address at the Com- 
 mencement at Athens, Ga., in which he declared 
 his belief in the mental equality of the sexes, and 
 advocated collegiate education for young ladies."* 
 The speech resulted in the establishment of the 
 Methodist Female College at Athens, Ga., the 
 first female college instituted strictly as such in the 
 world. 
 
 Parker was the keeper of the wood. We may 
 get a better idea of the true import of the name by 
 comparing it with the somewhat kindred appella- 
 tion. Forester, or, as it is sometimes contracted, 
 Foster. Mediaeval writers oppose the forestis, or 
 open wood, to the walled-in wood, or ^parens. An 
 old writer says: ^'■Forestis est uhi sunt ferce non 
 incluscB, parens, locus ubi sunt ferce inclusm." So 
 the Forester, or Foster, was an inhabitant of the 
 open wild wood, while the Parker was the keeper 
 of the inclosed wood. 
 
 By thatch we mean a covering for a roof. This 
 word is a weakened form of the old Anglo-Saxon 
 thak, due doubtless to the use of the dative thakke 
 
 * See Smith's " History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida," 
 p. 508. 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 77 
 
 and plural tkakkes; hence we have, in provincial 
 English, thack, a thatch, and Thacker, both as a 
 surname and a word, denoting a thatcher. 
 
 Linder is derived from the lime tree, the lind. 
 The wood was white and smooth, and hence it was 
 much used for carving purposes; therefore the 
 term generally used for shield by the Anglo-Sax- 
 ons was lind, because it was made of the wood of 
 the lind. Hence, Linder was a carver in Lind 
 wood, or a shield maker. 
 
 The Palmer was a privileged character in medi- 
 aeval society. He bore about a palm leaf in token 
 of having been to the Holy Land — he was a pilgrim, 
 hence he was granted immunities which were not 
 bestowed on every son of Adam. To his fertile 
 imagination, and the prevalent propensity of that 
 day for hearing and telling tales, we may attribute 
 many of the unreasonable legends and mj-^ths of 
 mediaeval England. 
 
 Bower, says Skeat, was a bow maker, while the 
 occupation of the Downer was, in all probability, 
 to plume arrows. 
 
 The English surname. Marshal, is primarily 
 from the Old High German marah, a battle horse, 
 and the Middle High German shale, a servant. It 
 is very closely allied in meaning with the surname 
 Stabler, a master of the horse, a farrier or groom. 
 This name, like the office of constable, has wor- 
 thily worked itself up from the stables of the old 
 landlords to the position of a title of honor, just as 
 that officer of the peace was originally in the Latin 
 
78 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tongue comes stabuli, literally count of the stables, a 
 kind of overseer of the master's horses. 
 
 Goodman was the " master of the house," and 
 in this sense it is used in King James's translation 
 of the Bible. (See Luke xii. 39.^ At the time, 
 and even prior to that day, when surnames were 
 made, the old feudal lords were away from their 
 castles much of their time, either on crusades to 
 the holy land or on the war-path against rival or 
 enemy. Therefore it was necessary for them to 
 have some trusty steward to look after matters at 
 the castle during their absence. Those who have 
 read " The Abbot," by Sir Walter Scott, will re- 
 member how vividly the great novelist portrays the 
 necessity of such an overseer. This name, like 
 that of Steward, enjoys the distinction of having 
 been incorporated into the text of Holy Scripture. 
 No Goodman should, therefore, ever bring re- 
 proach upon that name, but should watch day and 
 night, as he is commanded in Luke vii. 37-40, that 
 no thief spoil the master's goods. 
 
 It has been frequently stated by writers on sur- 
 nominal nomenclature that Sanders is a corruption 
 of the Greek Christian name Alexander; but it 
 seems clear to the writer of these "Rambles" 
 that Sanders, as a surname, was derived from what 
 must have been rather a prominent occupation 
 with our Catholic progenitors. On saint's days — 
 and they were neither few nor far between — ^we 
 are told that the air of mediasval England was fra- 
 grant with that scented Indian wood called san- 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 79 
 
 ders. There must have been men, therefore, who 
 imported and sold that great ecclesiastical staple, 
 and who very naturally inherited the surname San- 
 ders. 
 
 The moorer was a laborer on board of a ship. 
 Primarily his work was that of confining or secur- 
 ing a vessel in a particular station by means of 
 ropes or cables. The term was finally applied to 
 any laborer in marine service; hence, also, the 
 name Moorman. 
 
 Strieker was applied as a surname to the man 
 who manufactured the strickle, an instrument used 
 to strike grain to a level with the measure, which 
 contained the threshed cereal. Taylor and miller 
 are occupations which still survive, so that the ori- 
 gin of these names of trade and their use as sur- 
 names is clearly obvious to every one. The sur- 
 names Carter, Cartwright, and Boatwright are 
 purely English, and therefore need no explanation 
 to make clear their origin ; and Hooper is equally 
 as plain when we remember that the laborers of 
 mediasval times were all specialists. The hooper 
 was, therefore, a necessary adjunct to the cooper. 
 
 According to Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," 
 hops were introduced from the Netherlands intoEn- 
 gland about 1524, and used in brewing. The in- 
 troduction of this plant, together with the commer- 
 cial demand for the herb, created a surname. 
 Hopper, a dealer in hops. 
 
 " The surnames Hayward and Howard," says a 
 recent English writer, " are corruptions of Hog- 
 
8o A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 warden, an officer elected annually to see that the 
 swine in the common forest pastures or dens were 
 duly provided with rings, and were prevented from 
 straying. The Howard family first comes into no- 
 tice in the Weald, where their name would lead us 
 to expect to find them." So the family name Cow- 
 ard may also be accounted for. The duties of the 
 cow-warden were analogous to those of the howard. 
 
 The patronymic Cushman is very probably de- 
 rived from the Anglo-Saxon cusceote, a wild pigeon, 
 whence we have the modern English cushat, a 
 wood pigeon. , Hence Cushat-man — by contraction 
 Cushman — ^was doubtless a hunter or vender of 
 wild pigeons. 
 
 The names Dyer, Draper, Cutler, Fowler, and 
 Stoneman, together with Bowman and Rickman, 
 doubtless sprung from the several vocations of the 
 progenitors of those who bear them. Rickman, 
 however, was the master of the barn or rickyard. 
 The arkwright was a chest maker, and the board- 
 man was a manufacturer of tables. 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, in " Ivanhoe," in the interest- 
 ing dialogue between Gurth and the clown Wamba, 
 has stressed the fact that bacon is Saxon : it was 
 preeminently the flesh upon which our progenitors 
 fed. There are many evidences, even in surnames, 
 of the importance attached to swine in Anglo-Saxon 
 times. It is not, therefore, surprising that there 
 should be Bacons, as well as Lardner, in the list 
 of English names. The latter name was bestowed 
 on dealers in lard. 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 8 1 
 
 Beavers is sometimes used as a surname. We 
 should not confound the patronymic with the name 
 of the wild animal, for the beavers were manufac- 
 turers.- Primarily the old term hcver signified " a 
 child's bib, mocket, or mocketer, put before the 
 bosom of a slavering child;" finally, the term 
 beaver meant the lower part of a helmet. In this 
 sense it is used by Shakespeare in " Hamlet:" 
 
 Hamlet. ' ' Then saw you not his face ? ' ' 
 
 Horatio. " O yes,, my lord; he wore his beaver 
 up." 
 
 In mediaeval times, therefore, the Beavers were 
 producers as well as consumers. 
 
 The trusler was a rope maker. It is derived 
 from the Middle English trussen, to twist or bind 
 together. From it the modern English truss, " to 
 pack, bind up, fasten as in a package or in bun- 
 dles," is derived. 
 
 Spencer means a short overjacket. Lord Sand- 
 wich (sand-bay) invented sandwiches, and Lord 
 Spencer was the inventor of the short jacket called 
 by his name. Hence some poet wrote: 
 
 Two noble earls, whom, if I quote. 
 Some folks might call me sinner, 
 
 The one invented half a coat, 
 The other half a dinner. 
 
 The plan was good, as some will say, 
 
 And fitted to console one, 
 Because, in this poor starving day, 
 
 Few can afford a whole one. 
 
 The proper meaning, however, of the surname 
 6 
 
82 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Spenser is clerk of the Icitchen — a spender, or ca- 
 terer. 
 
 In King Lear's reply to his daughter, Regan, 
 when she admonished him to return, after " dis- 
 missing half his train," to the roof of her sister 
 Goneril, we have an allusion to an occupation 
 which gave us a surname : 
 
 " Return with her? 
 Persuade me rather to be a slave and smnpter 
 To this detested groom." 
 
 Roquefort says, and it is corroborated by the 
 quotation we have just made, that sumpter orig- 
 inally meant not the horse, as we mean by that 
 term now, a pack horse, but the horse's driver. 
 It is accordingly, he says, "from the old French 
 sommetier, a pack horse driver." The surname 
 is generally written Sumter, having lost a -p. The 
 Falkner managed hawks, more difficult to govern, 
 doubtless, than the charge which was committed 
 to the hand of the Sumpter. It is synonymous 
 with, or rather it is the same word as, falconer. 
 
 The Tyerman made iron hoops with which he 
 bound together the segments of coach wheels. 
 The school teacher's craft gave him a surname, 
 Schoolcraft; while the preserver of fruits fastened 
 the patronymic Pickler to his progeny. The 
 professional hair curler was called a crispman, 
 which has been corrupted into the surname Criss- 
 man. The Holder was a laborer who worked in 
 the hold of a vessel. There was a kind of snare 
 used for capturing small animals, called in Middle 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 83 
 
 English a sfringe, from the fact that it was pro- 
 vided with a flexible rod. P. Plowman alludes to 
 it in Book V., 41. The manufacturer of these 
 snares would very naturally inherit the title 
 Springer, just as the maker of the 
 
 Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed, 
 of which Milton sings, became popularly known 
 by the surname Reeder. 
 
 He whose craft was to ornament with gold lace 
 the sleeves of the gentry was known as Gilder- 
 sleeve, while he who administered to the ills to 
 which flesh is heir was designated, not the doctor, 
 but the Leech, so the soldiers in the closing lines 
 of Timons of Athens, propose to 
 
 Make each 
 Prescribe to other, as each other's leech. 
 
 The shop keepers of London, even down to the 
 reign of George IL, kept men and boys stationed 
 at the doors of their respective places of business 
 to cry out an invitation to buy, and to enumerate 
 the wares on sale at their shops. The streets 
 where the private residences were located were 
 filled with hawkers crying their wares, so that the 
 city was a perfect medley of harsh sounds. Hence 
 we have the surname Crier. The Miner, unlike 
 the Crier, wag not city bred. 
 
 The warren was '* a place privileged by pre- 
 scription or grant from the king, for keeping cer- 
 tain beasts and fowls, called beasts and fowls of 
 ■warren.''^ Therefore we have not only the sur- 
 name W^ren, bestowed upon some one who 
 
84 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 lived near a warren, but also Warrener, the keep- 
 er of the warren. This latter name has been con- 
 tracted into Warner. 
 
 It may be merely a guess, but it appears to be in 
 strict accord with the spirit of the age of surnom- 
 inal generation that the maker of patens, " the 
 plate or vessel on which the consecrated bread in 
 the eucharist is placed," should have been called 
 Pater. Hence we have Patterson. 
 
 A man who wrought steel very naturally took 
 the name Steelsmith. Tod, as we have already 
 said, means a fox. Hence the surname Todhunter 
 is easily understood. We sometimes meet with 
 the family name Trainer. The progenitors of 
 the family may have trained either horses, hawks, 
 or dogs. Wright was applied to any one who 
 wrought wood for mechanical purposes. 
 
 Proctor, says Skeat, means " a procurator, an 
 attorney in the spiritual courts." Hence it is also 
 applied " to an officer who superintends university 
 discipline." It is evidently a corruption of the 
 Latin -procurator. Copeman means a merchant. 
 It is derived from the Dutch koofman, from koofen, 
 to buy. It is the same name as the Norse Chap- 
 man and the German Kaufman. B. Johnson uses 
 the word in its original sense when he says: 
 
 " He would have sold his part of paradise 
 For ready money, had he met a copeman" 
 
 The trades and professions have given the world 
 a large percentage of the surnames in common 
 use to-day, and as we conclude this desultory 
 
THE OCCUPATIONS. 8$ 
 
 ramble among the shops and places of business of 
 mediEeval craftsmen to refresh ourselves in the 
 rural districts of old England, as they were in the 
 days of our progenitors, it is with a degree of par- 
 donable pride, we hope, that we affirm that our 
 surnames teach us that our ancestors made an 
 honest living by honest work. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SURNAMES DERIVED FROM PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 
 
 IT was natural that men were surnamed from 
 the places of their respective habitations, for 
 place names have always existed, and men were 
 doubtless first distinguished from each other — that 
 is, those who had the same Christian names — by- 
 appending to their given names the names of their 
 respective places of residence. This class of fam- 
 ily names is perhaps the oldest in existence. This 
 method of discriminating between two persons in 
 the same region of country, who bear the same 
 name, is still in use by the people in the rural 
 districts. Thus, two Johns Anderson, where one 
 lives near a bridge, and the other in the fork of 
 two rivers or creeks, would be distinguished by 
 their neighbors as Bridge John and Fork John. 
 There is scarcely a neighborhood, into which one 
 may enter, where he will not hear some such dis- 
 tinction made relative to members of its constitu- 
 ents. If such, then, is realty a custom now, when 
 surnames prevail, we can readily perceive how 
 much more extensively such a usage would nat- 
 urally obtain when there were no surnames. 
 
 Some mediseval Englishman, therefore, whose 
 name we will suppose to have been Henry, and 
 who lived close to a tower noted for its height, 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 87 
 
 was distinguished from another Henry, who lived 
 in or near an unusually large house, by the popu- 
 lar appellative Henry Hightower, while his neigh- 
 bor having the same Christian name was called 
 Henry Morehouse, more signifying great or large 
 in Middle English. So John who reared his 
 crude mediseval dwelling on the top of some high 
 hill forever fastened the patronymic Hillhouse 
 on his progeny. The Norwegian word stackr 
 meant a columnar rock, but when the word was 
 Anglicized it became stack. Hence another John, 
 perhaps in the same community, who built his 
 cabin near a massive pile of columnar rocks was 
 known popularly, and his descendants after him, 
 as John Stackhouse. Thus we get the modern 
 English surname Gunhouse, which is of very late 
 origin, having been applied as a patronymic after 
 the introduction of the manufacture of guns. Sten- 
 house is undoubtedly a corruption of Stanhouse, 
 which means in Modern English stone-house. 
 
 Ware was at first a place name. It is connect- 
 ed with the romantic history of the great and good 
 King Alfred, who constructed a weir across the 
 river Lea in order to cut off the retreat of a Dan- 
 ish fleet, which had dared to invade his kingdom. 
 Ware in Hertfordshire marks the place where this 
 dam was built. Hence the surname was applied 
 to an inhabitant or inhabitants of that place to dis- 
 tinguish them from other persons living in the 
 neighboring communities. These territorial sur- 
 names have in many instances been so abbrevi- 
 
88 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ated that they are scarcely recognizable. For ex- 
 ample, William of St. Denys was contracted, or 
 corrupted rather, into William Sydney; John of 
 St. Maur became John Seymore; Henry of St. 
 Paul passed popularly into Henry Semple; and 
 George of St. Leger became known in the ver- 
 nacular of the people as George Sillinger. In the 
 early annals of London mention is made of Sir 
 William Sevenoke, who was so called because he 
 was from the town of Seven Oaks, which as a 
 surname has been unmercifully abbreviated into 
 Snooks. So the place name Trotterscliffe has 
 passed into Trosley, also used as a surname. 
 
 Hinton was applied as a place name to a town 
 located behind a hill, and the term as a surname 
 was first bestowed upon a man or men dwelling in 
 the little village hiding itself away beneath the 
 brow of the hill. 
 
 Croft in the Saxon tongue meant a wood. It is 
 frequently used also as an element in other sur- 
 names. Therefore those names compounded of 
 that term give us at least the place of the habita- 
 tion of their ancestors. The old English name 
 Ravenscroft was first given to some man who 
 lived near a forest noted as a haunt of that mis- 
 chevous and noisy bird. Ban meant a proclama- 
 tion. It is of Sanskrit origin, and is closely allied 
 to banc, destruction. Hence we have even from 
 other tongues bandit, abandon, etc. It therefore 
 meant a proclamation of outlawry. A wood infest- 
 ed with outlaws would very naturally be spoken of 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 89 
 
 as Bancroft, and George or Henry who lived near 
 that wood was so called. 
 
 Lea, or high, signified a partially wooded field 
 — a meadow or pasture. This word is appended 
 as a suffix to many English surnames. Thus we 
 have the name Owley (owl wood), Horseley and 
 Cowley, meadows or woods in which these animals 
 were pastured. Westley and Westfield are almost 
 the same name. Ashley, Oakley, and Birchley, or 
 Berkeley, are frequently met with as surnames, as 
 well as place names. They tell us of the peculiar 
 kind of trees which grew in those meadows adja- 
 cent to, or within which those of our progenitors to 
 whom these names were first applied, lived. By 
 the name Lindley we learn that those who were 
 first called by that name lived in or near a meadow 
 shaded by the lime tree. So we see that the trees 
 of the forest occupy a conspicuous place in Eng- 
 lish surnames. For example, Ac, Ack, or Ock 
 meant in the Anglo-Saxon tongue an oak. Acton, 
 therefore, signifies oak -town; Ackworth, oak- 
 farm; and Ockley, oak-meadow. The Gallic 
 dair also meant an oak. Hence Adair is a con- 
 traction of atten Dair, meaning a man, who dwelt 
 at the oak. Er at the end of names of places 
 signifies a man of the place, as Acker, a man of 
 the Oaks — that is, a man who dwelt among or 
 near a cluster of noted oaks. Those grand and 
 imposing old monarchs of England's primeval 
 forests were indeed very proper objects to en- 
 ter as component elements into English names. 
 
go A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Much unwritten history and thrilling traditional 
 scenes clustered about their great gnarled trunks 
 and limbs; the yeomen of the Middle Ages 
 had held their councils and divided the spoils of 
 their predatory excursions beneath the shade of 
 these old seers of the forest, and the old Druids 
 had gathered mistletoe from their great, clutchy 
 arms. Hence the oak has become thoroughly in- 
 corporated into English history, songs, and bal- 
 lads, fiction and legends, as well as English names. 
 May those into whose names the oak enters as an 
 element be as solid and useful as the timber from 
 which their names were' constructed! 
 
 The ash is also a valuable timber. It constitutes 
 the framework of many Anglo-Saxon names. 
 Thus we have Ashfield, Ashland, and Ashton. 
 The surname Nash may be thus accounted for: 
 William who pitched his tent or cabin near some 
 notable ash would be very naturally referred to as 
 William aiien Ash, contracted finally into William 
 Nash. There is, therefore, really no difference 
 between that name and Ashmore, except the dif- 
 ference between the size of the respective ash trees 
 near which the progenitors of these two branches 
 of the Ash family pitched their rude cottages, 
 more being Anglo-Saxon for great. 
 
 J^y, particularly in the North of England, meant 
 a dwelling or a town ; as Derby, deer's dwelling, 
 corrupted by dialectic influences to Darby; Kirk- 
 by, town of the church; Rugby, rock town; Ash- 
 by, dwelling or town at the ash. Nasby is really 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 9I 
 
 the same as Ashby — thus, William who lived in a 
 town situated in a grove of ash would be alluded 
 to as William atten Ashby, abbreviated to William 
 Nasby, or Nashby. Let, therefore, the numerous 
 namesakes of this towering giant of the forest bend 
 as gracefully under every trial and calamity as does 
 this handsome sylvan giant under the fiercest blasts 
 of Boreas. Let them be as flexible, graceful, use- 
 ful, and as strong as this sound and tall production 
 of, the rich alluvial plains and bottoms, for their 
 genealogy, as the name proves, extends as far back 
 in the annals of English history, proportionally, as 
 the penetrating roots of the graceful ash enter into 
 the firm clay subsoils of the earth; for is not the 
 fact of ancient lineage inspiring to all men ? 
 
 Relative to the name Birch, which was applied 
 in the same way as the names just referred to, this 
 story is told of Lord Lytton : He was seated one 
 day at dinner next to a lady whose name was 
 Birch, and who, tradition says, was beautiful, if 
 not over intelligent. Said she to his Excellency: 
 "Are you acquainted with any of the Birches?" 
 
 Replied his Excellency: "O yes, I knew some 
 of them most intimately whilst at Eton; indeed, 
 more intimately than I cared to." 
 
 "Sir," replied the lady, "you forget that the 
 Birches are relatives of mine." 
 
 "And yet they cut me," said the viceroy ; "but," 
 and he smiled his wonted smile, " I have never 
 felt more inclined to kiss the rod than I do now." 
 
 Mrs. Birch, sad to say, did not see the point, 
 
92 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 and, so the gossips have it, told her husband that 
 his Excellency had insulted her. 
 
 But, to return to surnames ending in ley, we 
 have Shipley, a sheep pasture, and Whitley, a 
 white meadow or pasture. Heutley and Hartley 
 both mean deer meadow. Huntley was a little 
 paradise for the sportsman, a meadow in which 
 game abounded, and therefore a hunting ground. 
 Shirley is from the Anglo-Saxon sciran, to divide. 
 Hence we have the word shire, a division of the 
 kingdom. Therefore the Shirley was a meadow 
 which divided or separated two sections of coun- 
 try. The first syllable of Shockley is modern Eng- 
 lish; it was a meadow used, therefore, for shock- 
 ing corn. Beasley is doubtless a contraction of 
 Beaversley. Beverley is an older form of the same 
 name. Eversley meant wild boar's wood. Arley 
 and Earnsley are different forms of the same name, 
 and chronicled the haunt of the eagle — eagle's 
 wood, as we would designate a place even to-day 
 frequented by that bird. 
 
 Surnames of this class help us to arrive, at least, 
 at a vague conception of the importance attached 
 to the various Anglo-Saxon deities. Our progen- 
 itors worshiped in groves, hence Tewesley was the 
 place where Tiw, the god of war, received the 
 adoration of our benighted ancestors. Freasley 
 tells us of another grove or meadow, where Frea, 
 the mjrthological wife of Odhin or Wodan and the 
 goddess of marriage, was worshiped. Wadley 
 and Wansley were places where the chief deity of 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE, 93 
 
 our progenitors, Woden, received that reverence 
 and homage vvrhich the heathen render to their 
 gods. Thursley was a grove dedicated to the wor- 
 ship of the dreaded Thor. Tinsley was the meet- 
 ing place of Things, or general council of the 
 whole island. The Thing was introduced into 
 England by the Northmen, and it has given us a 
 number of place names, at least one surname, and 
 two of our commonest words. Thus, Dr. Dasent 
 informs us that meeting is from mot thing, the as- 
 sembly of freeholders, while hustings is derived 
 from house things, an ancient council of duly qual- 
 ified householders to delegate their legislative pow- 
 ers to representatives elected to a higher council. 
 
 Hinkley, from hengst, a horse, was, like Horse- 
 ley, a forest ley, or pasture for horses. Henley is 
 from the Anglo-Saxon hean, poor. Hence the name 
 implies poor pasture or meadow in the sense of 
 barren. Langley means long meadow. Stanley, 
 from stan, a stone, was, as we would say, stony 
 meadow. 
 
 A very interesting, piece of history is connected 
 with the name Markley. Dr. Isaac Taylor says : 
 "When the unbelievers had been finally expelled 
 from Northern and Central Spain, the debatable 
 ground was the province which now goes by the 
 name of Murcia. This word means the district of 
 the march, or mar^va, the de»?arcation between 
 two alien races. To make a mark is to draw a 
 boundary. Letters of marque are letters which 
 contain a license to harass the enemy beyond the 
 
94 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 frontier. A. Margrave, Mark-graf, Earl of March, 
 or Marquess, was the Warden of the Marches, 
 who held his fief by the tenure of defending the 
 frontier against aggression, and this important of- 
 fice gave him rank next to the Duke or Dux, the 
 leader of the forces of the shire. The root is 
 found in all the Indo-Germanic languages, and is 
 probably to be referred to the Sanskrit marya, a 
 boundary, which is a derivative of the verb smri, 
 to remember. We may compare the Latin margo 
 and the Persian marg, a frontier. The uncleared 
 forest served as the boundary of the gau of the 
 Teutonic settlers. Hence the Scandinavian mork, 
 a forest, and the English word murky, which orig- 
 inally denoted the gloom of the primaeval forest. 
 The chase took place in the forest which bounded 
 the inhabited district. Hence the Sanskrit mrga, 
 chase, hunting. A huntsman being nearly synony- 
 mous with a horseman, we have the Celtic marc, 
 a horse, which has found its way into the English 
 verb to march and the French word marichal, a 
 groom or farrier." Therefore "the Anglo-Saxon 
 kingdom of Mercia was the frontier province be- 
 tween the East Angles and the Welsh." Hence we 
 have the place names along the frontier line: Mar- 
 brook, line of border brook; Marbury, border 
 town ; and Markley, from the Celtic marc, a horse, 
 and the Old English ley, a meadow or pasture. 
 Hence the meaning of this surname is really the 
 same as Hinkley and Horseley. 
 
 Hay, or, more properly, haw, meant a hedge; 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 95 
 
 therefore we have the surnames Haynes, or Hedges 
 in modern English; Haley, Hawley, or Harley, 
 different spellings of the same name, and all mean- 
 ing hedge pasture. Hawes is identical in meaning 
 with Haynes. Haywood means Hedgewood, and 
 Hagood, which has lost a y, or more properly a w, 
 means a good hedge. Hayworth may be easily 
 understood when we remember that worth means 
 a dwelling or town. Hawthorn means a thorny 
 hedge, while Haughton and Houghton, the same 
 name, simply mean hedgetown, or ttin. 
 
 From the Roman strata, or paved roads, we get 
 the surnames Stradley and Streatley. They were 
 meadows along these old Roman roads, which 
 crossed the island from point to point, and which 
 were as straight as the course of an arrow. Net- 
 ley meat a pasture for neat cattle, while Wheatley 
 simply meant a meadow which had been cleared 
 and planted in wheat. Norleigh and Sudley 
 mean respective north and south meadow. Dud- 
 ley is compounded of the Scottish dud, a rag, and 
 the suffix ley. Hence it means rag meadow. 
 Mobley was a place where some one of those dis- 
 orderly crowds designated as a mob, for which 
 medijeval England was noted, once assembted. 
 Low and law as suffixes of English names are the 
 same word. The former is English, while the 
 latter is the pronunciation of the word on the Scot- 
 tish border. The word is derived from the Anglo- 
 Saxon hlaw, a mound, or rising ground. Brad- 
 law therefore signifies broad hill. "The numer- 
 
96 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ous feels along the Scottish border are an evidence 
 of the insecurity arising from border warfare in 
 times when every man's house was, in a hteral 
 sense, his castle also. The hill where the border 
 clan of the Maxwells used to assemble previous to 
 their dreaded fora3rs bears the appropriate name 
 of the Wardlaw (guard hill). A reference to 
 this trysting place is contained in the war cry of 
 the clan: 'I bid you bide Wardlaw!'" In the 
 surname Winslow we have an allusion to some hill 
 dedicated to the worship of Woden, of which luins 
 is a corruption. Low and Law also occur in sur- 
 names. They are, as will be readily seen, synony- 
 mous with the English name Hill. We are not 
 surprised therefore, that there are Lowsons and 
 Lawsons. 
 
 Waddell is a corruption of ward dell — i. e., the 
 watchman's dell. It is a Scotch border name, 
 like Wardlaw and Ward, a watchman. 
 
 Ludlow means the "people's hill," a place of 
 meetings, just as the ancient place of national as- 
 sembly in Scotland was the mote hill at Scone, 
 near the ancient capital of the kingdom. Thur- 
 low was a mound or hill upon which Thor was 
 woi-shiped. 
 
 Towns and streams, hills and wells, and the 
 trees of the forest were also a fruitful source from 
 which family names were culled. While Richard 
 who lived at or near the wood naturally inherited 
 the title Richard Atwood, John from Cornwall 
 became John Cornwall or Cornish; while Wil- 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 97 
 
 Ham who lived on a hill, under a hill, or near a 
 well, won for himself the surname William Hill, or 
 Underhill, or Atwell. Becket, in the Anglo-Saxon 
 language, meant a small stream, from the Norse 
 beckr (Danish hoec'), a brook. Thomas who lived 
 near such a stream was popularly known as Thom- 
 as at the becket, and thus was named the Martyr 
 Thomas a Becket, and thus may be accounted for 
 the surnames Beck and Beckett. Holbeck or 
 Houlbeck are different dialectic spellings of the 
 same word, and mean the "brook in the hol- 
 low." Cawdbeck implies the cold brook, and 
 Foulbeck is synonymous with Fulbeck. Both 
 mean " muddy brook." 
 
 Drayton means literally wagon tun.* Beres- 
 ford explains its derivation when we remember 
 that the spelling of the first syllable is precisely 
 the way that the Anglo-Saxons spelled bear, the 
 wild animal. These last two names are indissol- 
 ubly connected with the history of education in 
 South Carolina. Gov. Drayton may be justly re- 
 garded as the founder of the South Carolina Col- 
 lege, and Richard Beresford left at his death in 
 1722 the sum of £6,500 for the maintenance and 
 education of the poor children in the Parish of St. 
 Thomas and St. Denis near Charleston. Journal- 
 ismism in South Carolina was first introduced by a 
 man whose forefathers received their surnames by 
 living in close proximity to some bog or swamp, 
 the peculiarity of which was its white mud or soil. 
 
 * See Chapter VIII., where this word is explained. 
 7 
 
98 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Thomas Whitmarsh issued the South Carolina Ga- 
 zette on Saturday, January 8, 1731. His succes- 
 sors, though not swamp bred, have done much for 
 the State and for humanity in dissipating the 
 moral miasmas of the Swamp State. Long live 
 every true knight of the quill. Boggs is likewise 
 a territorial Scotch name. It was bestowed on 
 some man who lived close to some one of the nu- 
 merousyews or bogs of Scotland. 
 
 Our progenitors were doubtless ignorant of the 
 science of botany, as ignorant as many of their de- 
 scendants are of the meaning of the names which 
 they have fastened upon themselves, yet patro- 
 nymics derived from the names of plants are found 
 in great abundance. The Anglo-Saxon air, de- 
 rived from the Latin alnus, an alder tree, together 
 with the Teutonic ey, an island, gives us the sur- 
 name Olney. Thus we have the names AUerton 
 or Ellerton, and AUerdale, implying respectively 
 alder island, alder town, and alder dale. The 
 lime tree has given us Lindfield and Lyndhurst. 
 Hurst is from the Anglo-Saxon hyrst, a thick 
 wood. The apple comes in, at least for a small 
 share of English surnames, as may be seen in the 
 names Appleby and Appleton, both signifying 
 apple tun. The names are the same, the only 
 difference being that the Applebys were originally 
 from the North of England, where by meant a 
 tun just as ton did farther south. 
 
 We have met with the modern English name 
 Crabtree. The meaning of the name is clear to 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 99 
 
 every one, but how it came to be applied as a sur- 
 name cannot be accounted for otherwise than that 
 some Englishman who did not have a surname 
 happened to live near an apple tree of that species. 
 We must remember that surnames were made by 
 the people at a time when a taste for Eesthetics did 
 not prevail. It is frequently amusing to note from 
 what trifling incidents surnames were evolved. 
 Walter Besant quotes "a curious little story" 
 which happened in the reign of King James I., il- 
 lustrating this fact. " One day in Bishopsgate 
 Ward," says he, "a poor man named Richard 
 Atkinson, going to remove a heap of sea-coal 
 ashes in his wheelbarrow, discovered lying in the 
 ashes the body of a newly born child. It was 
 still breathing, and he carried it to his wife, who 
 washed and fed it and restored it to life. The 
 child was a goodly and well-formed boy, strong 
 and well-featured, without blemish or spot upon 
 it. They christened the child at St. Helen's 
 Church, by a name which should cause him to 
 remember all through his life his very remarkable 
 origin. They called him, in fact. Job Cinere 
 Extractus. A noble name, for the sake of which 
 alone he should have lived. What an ancestor to 
 have had! How delightful to be a Cinere Ex- 
 tractus ! Who would not wish to belong to such 
 a family and to point .to the ash heap as the origin 
 of the first Cinere Extractus? Nothing like it in 
 history since the creation of Adam himself. 
 What a coat of arms! On a shield azure, an ash 
 
lOO A R.\MBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 heap proper, with supporters of two dustmen with 
 shovels; for crest, a sieve; motto like that of the 
 Courtenays, 'J^uo descensus?' Poor little Job 
 Cinere Extractus died three days afterward, how- 
 ever, and now lies buried in St. Helen's church- 
 yard, without even a monument." Thus sur- 
 names were bestowed from almost every conceiv- 
 able source. What difference does it make with 
 us whether we were named from an ash heap or 
 a canebrake, granted that we do not know what 
 our names mean? And canebrakes were utilized 
 as name material. What was not? Rodney, 
 Reed island, and Retford or Redford, Reedy ford 
 as we would say, conclusively prove that there 
 were homes where the reeds grew. Farnham and 
 Farnborough tell us respectively of a home and a 
 fort among the ferns. The silvery-barked beech 
 has given us the names Buckland, Buckhurst, 
 Buckley, Beecham, and Buckhalter. Was this 
 last name applied to some Englishman who by 
 accident or misfortune was forced to test the 
 truthfulness of the adage, "necessity is the moth- 
 er of invention," and thus provide for his steed a 
 halter improvised from the flexible limbs or withes 
 of the beech? Such things do occur even to this 
 day in the extreme rural districts. The birch has 
 also forever perpetuated its name in the patro- 
 nymics Bircholt (birch wood) and Birbeck (birch 
 branch). 
 
 £en and dtn mean bean in the Anglo-Saxon 
 language. Therefore Bennington signifies a set- 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. lOI 
 
 tlement reared by the descendants of the Bentons, 
 and Biniield was first a place name and was be- 
 stowed as a surname upon those who lived near a 
 farm or field distinguished for the production of 
 beans. 
 
 There were two words, owing to the different 
 dialects of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, for broom: 
 brom and hirm. The old Saxon surnames Brom- 
 ley and Birmingham therefore meant respectively 
 Broom-meadow and the home of the descendants 
 of the Birms or Brooms. In all probability the 
 progenitors of these two families were broom 
 makers and venders. 
 
 The syllable ing is sometimes used as a prefix ; 
 and when it is thus used, it denotes a meadow, as 
 Ingham, meadow home, or Ingrove, meadow 
 grove. It also has a topographic signification. 
 In the old English charters and chronicles, men- 
 tion is made of the Centings or the men of Kent, 
 and the Brytfordings or men of Bradford. A 
 rule which generally holds good in determining 
 the signification of this little syllable with its trinity 
 of meanings is this: When it is the initial sylla- 
 ble, it means meadow; when it occurs in the mid- 
 dle of a name, it denotes descendants; and when 
 it is the last syllable, it generally has a topo- 
 graphic meaning. Thus, the large family of Bil- 
 lings were originally devotees of the Celtic god 
 Bel, which, mythologically at least, was closely 
 allied to the Syrian Baal. Their settlement in 
 England has given us the place name Bellinger in 
 
I02 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Hants, which in turn gave many Englishmen its 
 own name as a surname. 
 
 The old chronicles speak of the family, or, more 
 properly, the tribe of the Hardings. The word 
 ward carries with it the idea of protection. There 
 is very little difference between the sound of ward 
 and hard; hence many names, in which ward oc- 
 curs as a component element, are spelled in Ger- 
 man and French as if they were hard.* There- 
 fore the term hard, when met with in names, is 
 frequently a corruption of ward. Both of these 
 words, in their primitive signification, are closely 
 allied to the German heri and the Northern her 
 or har, war. The old Norsemen delighted in 
 relegating to themselves the idea of strength and 
 firmness, therefore the Hardings were the de- 
 scendants of \}s\^ firm men, or, as we would say, 
 the invincibles. 
 
 The Waelsings were the men of Will, one of 
 the primeval gods of the old Teutonic race, 
 which impersonated the will. The Weelsings 
 settled in Norfolk, Durham, and Northumber- 
 land, and Wolsingham and Woolsingham are 
 corruptions of Wselsingham, the home of the 
 men of Wili. Hence we have the surnames 
 Walling and Woolfolk. 
 
 The Arrings settled at Arrigny, in France, and 
 
 at Arrington, in England. The word aar in the 
 
 Scandinavian tongue meant an eagle. Hence the 
 
 Arrings were the descendants of the eagles, and the 
 
 * Charlotte Yonge's " History of Christian Names," p. 420. 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. IO3 
 
 place name Arrington has passed into a somewhat 
 common English surname. From the aar we get 
 also the surname Arnold, eagle power. Thus we 
 find quite a list of these old family or tribal names, 
 as Herring from herr, an army, or, as it is some- 
 times translated, a soldier; Stanning, from stan, a 
 stone; Gilling, from gillie, a servant; and Can- 
 ning, from which the philosopher of Chelsea de- 
 rives the term king — konning — kanning, the man 
 who knows or cans. Kings among the original 
 Scandinavian tribes were the strongest and most 
 potent men, physically and mentally. Their at- 
 tainments fitted them for the position of leaders 
 and governors. The darkest ages of the world 
 have recognized true worth and have honored and 
 rewarded the acquirements and accomplishments 
 of their sons. The man who knows or cans has ever 
 been the true king of his community. 
 
 Many English surnames end with the suffix den, 
 which in Middle English meant a valley. The 
 word finally came to be applied almost exclusive- 
 ly to hog pastures, however, and very naturally, 
 too, because the low valleys were adapted to this 
 use. Isaac Taylor says: "The dens were the 
 swine pastures ; and down to the seventeenth cen- 
 tury the ' Court of Dens,' as it was called, was 
 held at Aldington to determine disputes arising out 
 „of the rights of forest pasture." 
 
 Cam is a Gaelic term which means crooked. 
 The surname, as well as place name, Camden, 
 therefore, in plain English, simply means crooked 
 
I04 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 valley. There are, to the American who has stud- 
 ied his country's history, sad associations clustering 
 about the name Camden. As we stand, even at 
 this late day, among the Southern pines and think, 
 of the struggle of our brave sires for liberty, the 
 defeat of the American army under Gates,* and 
 the fact that many brave patriots were hung at 
 Camden, the place, even at this distant day, seems 
 to be enveloped in an atmosphere of grief. There 
 is, indeed, no sadder wail in all the multiplied 
 forces of nature than the low, sorrowful moan of 
 the Southern pine. The widow and orphan, as 
 they listened to the soft wail of the pines around 
 Camden, may have almost imagined that their 
 groans, borne away on the Southern zephyrs, were 
 but echoes of the grief in their own hearts. The 
 pines have a right to moan, however, for an ac- 
 tor whose atrocities stand out in bold characters 
 upon the pages of Southern history was ushered 
 upon the scene of defeat at Camden. Rawdon is 
 purely an English name, and when we restore the 
 eliminated w in the last syllable we get the full 
 meaning of the name, Raw-down or barren heath, 
 a name bestowed, doubtless, because of the barren 
 nature of the lands where the first Rawdons reared 
 their primitive dwellings. The name is repulsive 
 even to this day to the ears of an American. We 
 fancy that we can almost hear the bleak winds of 
 
 *Gate, in Middle English, signified a passage, lane, or open- 
 ing. An individual living at the conjunction of several ways 
 would be called Gates. 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. I05 
 
 winter as they howl angrily over the treeless heath 
 and around the crude buildings of the first Raw- 
 dons. There is frequently an expressive appropri- 
 ateness in names. Rawdon affords us a striking 
 illustration of this fact, for assuredly it is a name 
 in American history barren of mercy and human- 
 ity toward innocent captives. 
 
 The pines have ample cause to groan and sigh, 
 for he whose progenitors wounded the shaftlike 
 trunks of these wailing seers of the forest and cre- 
 mated their resinous stocks has come, and Tarle- 
 ton wounds humanity by hanging innocent men. 
 The suffix le in the Saxon tongue was used to ex- 
 press iteration. Thus tar, or pitch, was a com- 
 mercial commodity among our progenitors who 
 lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, 
 the period of surname making, just as it is among 
 us. Hence a town noted for the production of tar 
 was called Tarleton, and John or Henry who were 
 inhabitants of that place were called respectively 
 John and Henry Tarleton, by way of disting.uish- 
 ing them from other persons who bore the same 
 Christian names. 
 
 The pines, I repeat, had a right to bewail the 
 coming of Rawdon and Tarleton, and now that 
 they are gone may they not breathe a requiem over 
 the silently sleeping dead? Hobkirk hill was 
 drenched in blood, and many a home was made 
 desolate because they came to Camden. 
 
 Hobkirk is a surname. Skeat says, in tracing 
 the etymology of the prefix hob, that the old Eng- 
 
I06 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 lish sense of the word " is well preserved in the 
 related word humj), which is the same word with a 
 nasalized termination." The original base was 
 huf, easily corrected to hub or hob. Hup means, 
 says Skeat, "to go up and down; whence also the 
 modern English hop." Kirk is Gaelic for church. 
 Hence Hobkirk was applied as a surname to some 
 man who reared his dwelling in close proximity to 
 a church built upon the pinnacle or highest part 
 of a hill. 
 
 Many English surnames still preserve the Mid- 
 dle English spelling and pronunciation. Thus we 
 have Dunstan, Dunham, and Dunton, frequently 
 corrupted into Dutton. Dmi is the Middle Eng- 
 lish pronunciation of the Anglo-Saxon ddn, a down 
 or hill. Stan and ham are Middle English for 
 stone and home, therefore Dunstan literally means 
 hill-stone, or, as we would say, stone-hill; Dun- 
 ham, hillhome, or Hillhouse, as it is written in 
 modern English; Dunton, hilltown. 
 
 Sometimes we meet with names composed of 
 both Modern and Middle English words. Down- 
 ham is a striking illustration. It is precisely the 
 same name as Dunham. Stanton is Middle Eng- 
 lish for stone-town. Stan, a stone, and the Welsh 
 suffix cyl, an oven or cell, make the surname Stan- 
 di. All of these surnames were doubtless be- 
 stowed by the populace because of the place of 
 habitation of those who inherited them. 
 
 Harden may be explained by restoring an elim- 
 inated d, but as har is a common element in sur- 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. IO7 
 
 names, we are very sure that as it occurs in patro- 
 nymics it antedates its derivative hard. A single 
 warrior was called har by the Northmen. It was 
 very early in use as a compotent element in names, 
 as it is not only used in Ulfilas' Bible, but occurs 
 in the names Harivald and Harald, meaning an 
 " army wielder." Tacitus alludes to the name in 
 speaking of a Batavian prince as Chariovalda, evi- 
 dently a Latinization of the name Harivald. Ger- 
 man scholars have translated the term har hyarmy, 
 instead of warrior or soldier, hence Harden was 
 doubtless first applied as a territorial surname to 
 some individual who lived near or within a valley 
 or hog pasture which had become distinguished as 
 the camping place of an army. Thus we may 
 account for the surnames Harman, a soldier, and 
 Harrington. 
 
 Til, in Anglo-Saxon, meant good or excellent; 
 therefore the purely Anglo-Saxon surname Tilden 
 is easily interpreted. Cobden means spider pas- 
 ture, if we translate it literally, for cob was the An- 
 glo-Saxon term for spider and still survives in the 
 modern English cobweb. The name was doubtless 
 applied to some hog pasture infected by spiders. 
 We are inclined to believe that Ogden has lost an 
 initial h, which when restored makes the name 
 comprehensible, just as the restoration of an elim- 
 inated e gives us the unmistakable meaning of 
 Kinden, or as the restoration of de gives us the 
 signification of the surname Gladen (glade-den). 
 Arden means "great forest" or pasture. The 
 
I08 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 first syllable of Dryden is thoroughly English, and 
 is therefore easily interpreted as a surname. A 
 hog pasture the principal growth of which was the 
 alder would very naturally take the name Alden. 
 Golden and Golden, in their present forms, are 
 liable to mislead us relative to their primative sig- 
 nification. The former was evidently applied to 
 some hog pasture noted for its yellow soil, or pos- 
 sibly for the production of yellow flowers, as the 
 marigold (named in honor of the Virgin Mary) or 
 some other wild flower. Our Anglo-Saxon pro- 
 genitors would have very naturally called a pasture 
 thus distinguished gylden-den, which, in Middle 
 English, was shortened to Golden. The latter 
 name either came from the fact that there were 
 coal deposits in or near the den, or it may have 
 taken its name from a species of the cabbage which 
 the den produced, for the Middle English col or 
 caul meant a cabbage. 
 
 Dowden has lost an n. Downden was its origi- 
 nal form. Hence the name literally translated means 
 hill pasture. Car is Welsh, and means a fortress. 
 Philologists are not agreed as to whether it is re- 
 lated to the Erse cathair or the Latin castra; Car- 
 den therefore means the fortress pasture or den, a 
 place name, doubtless, at first, which was after- 
 ward bestowed as a surname. Since we have 
 given the meaning of car, the surnames Carr and 
 Carson will be easily understood. In this connec- 
 tion, also, we may understand the signification of 
 the surname Carlisle. The / in this name is in- 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. IO9 
 
 trusive ; and when we eliminate it, for it was doubt- 
 less introduced to facilitate pronunciation, the 
 meaning of the name is evidently car isle, or for- 
 tress isle, as we would say. 
 
 Bourn, or burn, as it is usually written in sur- 
 names, means a stream. If Edgar, the son of the 
 Earl of Gloster in Shakespeare's play, " King 
 Lear," sings, 
 
 " Come o'er the bourn, Bessj, to me," 
 
 the Fool gives us to understand that the term was 
 applied to the larger class of streams : 
 
 " Her boat hath a leak, 
 And she must not speak 
 Why she dares not come over to thee." 
 
 Woodburn is therefore easily understood as a 
 territorial surname, and the first syllable of Clay- 
 bourn is Modern English, so that the signification 
 of that surname is clear to every one. Swinburn 
 is equally as intelligible as Burnside when we re- 
 store the e, which makes the first syllable pure Eng- 
 lish. The name Kilburn, however, carries us 
 back to the old times when the simple-hearted 
 priests reared their cells in the deep forests of old 
 England. Kil is Gaelic for church or cell. 
 Hence the name signifies " the branch of the 
 cell," just as Kilgore means bloody cell. 
 
 Endicott is a name indissolubly connected with 
 the colonial history of Massachusetts. It is com- 
 posed of an Icelandic term endi, end, and the 
 Anglo-Saxon cott, a dwelling house, and was 
 doubtless applied to the last house on some street 
 
no A RAMDLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 or in some one of the earlier settlements of En- 
 gland. It is therefore closely allied to the thor- 
 oughly English name Townsend. Westcott was 
 so named on account of its position relative to the 
 points of the compass. The name Prescott, how- 
 ever, is not so easily understood. The English 
 word frcss, says Skeat, is rather poorly explained 
 by the dictionaries. It meant formerly "to en- 
 gage men by earnest money for the public serv- 
 ice." Quoting Wedgewood, he says: " It is 
 quite certain that -press is a corruption of the old 
 word prest, ready, because it was customary to 
 give earnest money to a soldier upon entering the 
 service, just as to this day a recruit receives a 
 shilling. This earnest money was called prest 
 money — /. e., ready money advanced — and to give 
 a man such money was to imprest him, now cor- 
 ruptly written impress. At a later period the 
 practice of taking men for the public service by 
 compulsion made the word to be understood as if 
 it signified \.o force men into service, and the orig- 
 inal reference to earnest money was quite lost 
 sight of." It is therefore evident that a cottage 
 given as a hire or a reward for sei"vice, would be 
 called prest cott. The t having been dropped for 
 convenience of pronunciation, we have the sur- 
 name Prescott. 
 
 The name Bacot is compounded of the Anglo- 
 Saxon bac, back, and cote, a small dwelling or 
 inclosure. Cott or cot was the Northern and cote 
 the Southern form of this word. The position of 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. Ill 
 
 the cote relative to other cotes determined its 
 name. The Bacots were originally from South- 
 ern England, and strange to say, the old Saxon 
 pronunciation still adheres to the surname. It is 
 pronounced as if written Bay cote. The origin of 
 Trescot is not clear. The old dictionaries speak 
 of the tresser, a weaver, or one who plaits or 
 makes tresses, " or routes of women's haires," as 
 an old writer expresses it. We are very certain, 
 therefore, that Trescot is an abbreviation of tresser 
 cote. 
 
 In comparing the names Urbanus, " one who 
 dwells in urbs, a city," with the derivatives of Pa- 
 gus, Charlotte M. Yonge says: " In opposition to 
 this word Urbanus comes that for the rustic, Pa- 
 gus, signifying the country; the word that in 
 Italian becomes ^cese, in Spanish ^ais, in French 
 ■pays. The gospel was first preached in the busy 
 haunts of men, so that the earlier Christians were 
 townsfolk, and the rustics long continued heathen. 
 Whence Paganus, once simply a country man, be- 
 came an idolater, a Pagan, and poetized into Pay- 
 nim, was absolutely bestowed upon the Turks and 
 Saracens in the Middle Ages. In the meantime, 
 however, the rustic had come to be called -pcesano, 
 ■pays, paysan, and peasant, independently of his 
 religion; and Spain, in addition to her payo, 
 the country man, had paisano, the lover of the 
 country, and either in the sense of habitation or 
 patriotism Pagano was erected into a Christian 
 name in Italy, and Payen in France, whence En- 
 
112 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 gland took Payne or Pain, still one of the most 
 frequent surnames. 
 
 There is a bit of biography connected with the 
 name Payne worthy of preservation. "John 
 Howard Payne, the author of ' Home, Sweet 
 Home,' was a warm personal friend of John 
 Ross," says a recent writer, in recording some 
 personal recollections of the celebrated Indian 
 Chief, " at the time the Cherokees were removed 
 from their homes in Georgia to their present res- 
 ervation west of the Mississippi River. Payne 
 was spending a few weeks in Georgia with Ross, 
 who was occupying a miserable cabin, having been 
 forcibly ejected from his former home. A num- 
 ber of prominent Cherokees were in prison, and 
 that portion of Georgia in which the tribe was lo- 
 cated was scoured by armed squads of Georgia 
 militia, who had orders to arrest all who refused 
 to leave the country. 
 
 " While Ross and Payne were seated before the 
 fire in the hut, the door was suddenly burst open 
 and six or eight militiamen sprang into the room. 
 Ross's wife was seated on a trunk containing many 
 valuable papers and a small amount of money, 
 and at the unexpected intrusion she sprang up and 
 screamed wildly. Ross spoke to her in the Cher- 
 okee language, telHng her to be seated, as she 
 would save the contents of the trunk. She sat 
 down again, and the intruders told Ross that he 
 and Payne were under arrest and must prepare to 
 accompany the squad to Milledgeville, where they 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 11,3 
 
 were to be imprisoned. The soldiers lost no time 
 in taking their prisoners away. Ross was per- 
 mitted to ride his own horse, while Payne was 
 mounted on one led by a soldier. As the little 
 party left the hovel rain began falling, and contin- 
 ued until every man was thoroughly drenched. 
 Toward midnight Payne's escort, in order to 
 keep himself awake, began humming ' Home, 
 Home, Sweet, Sweet Home,' when Payne re- 
 marked : ' Little did I expect to hear that song 
 under such circumstances and at such a time. Do 
 you know the author ? ' 
 
 " ' No,' said the soldier; ' do you? ' 
 " ' Yes,' answered Payne, ' I composed it.' 
 " The soldier gave Payne to understand that he 
 doubted his declaration. ' You can tell that to 
 some other fellow, but not to me. Look here! 
 You made that song, you say; if you did (and I 
 know you didn't), you can say it all without stop- 
 ping. It has something about pleasures and pal- 
 aces. Now pitch in and reel it off; and if you 
 can't, I'll bounce you from your horse and lead 
 you instead of it.' 
 
 " The threat was answered by Payne, who re- 
 peated the song in a slow, subdued tone, and then 
 sung it, making the old woods ring with the ten- 
 der melody and pathos of the words. It touched 
 the heart of the rough soldier, who was not only 
 captivated but convinced, and who said that the 
 composer of such a song should never go to prison 
 if he could prevent it. And when the party 
 8 
 
1 14 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 reached Milledgeville, they were, after a prelim- 
 inary examination, discharged, much to their sur- 
 prise. Payne declared that it was because the 
 leader of the squad had been under the magnetic 
 influence of Ross's conversation, and Ross in- 
 sisted that they had been saved from insult and 
 imprisonment by the power of ' Home, Sweet 
 Home,' sung as only those who can feel can sing 
 it." 
 
 This close friendship existed between Ross, 
 whose Cherokee name was Koh-weh-s-koh-tveh, the 
 swamp sparrow, and Payne, who sung so sweetly 
 and tenderly of home, yet he never owned a 
 home until the grave closed over the mortal re- 
 mains of him whose song has found a home in al- 
 most every Englishman's heart. 
 
 Lynch is an interesting surname. It strikes 
 terror to the heart of courts of justice, robs the 
 lawyer of his fee, and relieves the jailer of his 
 saddest duties. It is derived from the Anglo-Sax- 
 on Mine, a hill, a sense still preserved in the mod- 
 ern English provincialism linch. (See Halliwell.) 
 The term now means to punish summarily by 
 mob law, but was originally applied to some 
 sturdy Anglo-Saxon who lived on or near a ridge 
 of land. Skeat, in his " Etymological Diction- 
 ary of the English Language," quoting from 
 Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," says that "this 
 mode of administering justice began about the end 
 of the seventeenth century," and that is " said to 
 derive its name from John Lynch, a farmer who 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. II5 
 
 exercised it upon the fugitive slaves and criminals 
 dwelling in the Dismal Swamp in North Carolina ; " 
 while Webster says that " the term is said to be de- 
 rived from a Virginia farmer named Lynch, who 
 thus took the law in his own hands." Thus it 
 will be observed that these learned lexicographers 
 differ as to the place of habitation of that Lynch 
 who gave to the world a word and a quick way to 
 justice or, as is doubtless sometimes the case, a 
 short route to injustice. 
 
 We are not willing, however, that South Caro- 
 lina should be robbed of her dues even by such dis- 
 tinguished authorities as those we have just quoted. 
 Lynch was not, properly speaking, a farmer, 
 neither did he live in Virginia or North Carolina ; 
 but he was a stock raiser who, true to the import 
 of his name, lived in the mountainous section of 
 South Carolina. In Mill's " Statistics of South 
 Carolina," under " Pendleton District," this sen- 
 tence is recorded: "At the foot of the mountain 
 resides Captain John Lynch, the author of the 
 famous law called by his name, of very notable 
 effect." The book was published in 1822, and it 
 seems that Lynch was then living. When, prior 
 to the Revolutionary War, as the struggle for 
 American independence is sometimes called, it 
 was impossible to bring a criminal to justice in the 
 "back country," as the border settlements were 
 then denominated, owing to the fact that there 
 were no courts of justice outside of the city of 
 Charleston, and when the entire "back country " 
 
Il6 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 was overrun with horse thieves, John Lynch 
 acted as judge, jury, and sheriff, and summarily 
 hanged these miscreants to a limb of the mest 
 convenient oak whenever they fell into his hands. 
 His name became a terror to these wretches and 
 is yet a terror to the heinous criminal. And while 
 the bad example which John Lynch inaugurated 
 has spread to the utmost bounds of the United 
 States, no state, perhaps, has suffered so severely 
 from its evil influences as South Carolina. 
 
 The sijrnames Ledyard, Ridgeway, Whitesides, 
 and Westall are all thoroughly English words, and 
 are therefore perfectly intelligible. The last 
 name mentioned, however, has lost an s, the res- 
 toration of which makes the meaning clear when 
 we remember that the Middle English stal was ap- 
 plied to one's place of business. 
 
 Wick is common as an element in surnames. 
 It occurs in Norse names as well as in Anglo- 
 Saxon names, and while the spelling of the word 
 is the same in both languages, the meaning is dif- 
 ferent. Isaac Taylor says: "With the Anglo- 
 Saxons it was a station or abode on land. Hence 
 a house or a village. With the Northmen it was a 
 station for ships. Hence a small creek or bay. 
 The sea rovers derived their name of vikings or 
 creekers from the wics or creeks in which they 
 anchored. The inland wicks, therefore, are 
 mostly Saxon, while the Norse wics fringe the 
 coasts." The names Eastwick, Westwick, and 
 Northwick were first applied to bays where the 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. II7 
 
 Norse invaders anchored their vessels when they 
 came over to England on their predatory excur- 
 sions. These names of bays were given eventu- 
 ally to towns that sprung up in the vicinity of these 
 Norse stopping places, and finally passed into 
 surnames, conferred by way of distinction upon 
 at least a few of their inhabitants. Lastwick and 
 Langwick mean primarily last bay and long bay. 
 Wicklow means town hill, while Wickham signi- 
 fies town home, or home town as we would say. 
 Warwick means war town. It is frequently writ- 
 ten -wich, as Greenwich, the "green reach" — i. 
 e., a green stretch or expanse in the bay; and 
 Netherwich, the lower or last bay. Woolwich * 
 means " hill reach," and Woolpert, "hill bright" 
 or "bright hill" as we would say, wool being a 
 corruption of hul, a hill. Traywick was doubtless 
 first applied to a town or settlement noted for the 
 manufacture of platters and bowls, or more prop- 
 erly, perhaps, a tray-shaped bay. 
 
 Garland in Modern English means a wreath, but 
 the prefix gar in the surname doubtless means a 
 spear, for that was the Anglo-Saxon word for 
 spear. The surname Garland, therefore, means 
 spear land, from a spear-shaped piece of land, or 
 possibly from a piece of land the timber of which 
 was especially sought after for the shafts of that 
 instrument of carnage. Garfield simply means 
 spear field. 
 
 Well in Old English meant any place whence 
 * Taylor's " Words and Places," p. 109. 
 
Il8 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 water flowed forth. Hence Bradwell signifies 
 broad spring. Crosswell was doubtless bestowed 
 upon some man who reared his crude hut or well- 
 fortified castle, as the case may have been, near a 
 spring where some pious pilgrim had set up a crude 
 wooden cross to commemorate his gratitude to 
 God for the mission of its gurgling waters in an 
 hour of intense thirst and suffering on the part of 
 the enthusiastic wanderer. Caldwell is a common 
 English surname. It was bestowed in all proba- 
 bility upon the progeny of some man who liked 
 cold water as a drink, and who accordingly chose 
 a site for his dwelling house near a spring noted 
 for its cold water. The prefix cald is simply the 
 Mercian form of cold. 
 
 Hel was the " mistress of the gloomy under 
 world," but " Helwell in Devonshire is probably 
 only the covered well, the word hell originally 
 meaning only the covered place. Thus a wound 
 heals when it becomes covered with skin. The 
 heel is that part of the foot wich is covered by the 
 leg. A helmet covers the head. The hull is the 
 covered part of the ship. To hele potatoes is to 
 clamp or tump them. In Kent to heal a child is 
 to cover it up in its cradle, and to heal a house is 
 to put on the roof or covering. A hellier is a 
 slater." Therefore the name Elwell, having lost 
 an h, simply means covered spring. 
 
 The old English surnames Mundenhall and 
 Munhall are interesting names from the fact that 
 they embody this idea expressed in heal or heall. 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. II9 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon word for hall, " the original sense 
 being cover or place of shelter," and because the 
 former embodies the den or swine pasture, while 
 both names have the Teutonic wiun, signifying 
 "rich protection," as a prefix. The former 
 name gives us to understand that there was a well- 
 fortified hall or castle reared within or close to the 
 hog pasture, the name of which was eventually 
 conferred as a surname on its inmates. It seems 
 that Shakespeare had some grave apprehensions of 
 the advancement of the price of hogs. In his 
 great play, "Merchant of Venice," he makes 
 Jessica say: " I shall be saved by my husband; 
 he hath made me a Christian." 
 
 Launcelot, the clown, replies : ' ' Truly, the more 
 to blame he; we were Christians enough before: 
 e'en as many as could well live, one by another. 
 This making of Christians will raise the price of 
 hogs; if we grow all to be pork eaters we shall 
 not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money." 
 
 However, if we may judge from the prevalence 
 of the dens, the -supply must have been equal to 
 the demand. The Celto-Saxon word combe means 
 a " bowl-shaped valley." It is the same word as 
 the Welsh crom, and in Wales " it denotes a cup- 
 shaped depression in the hills." When we unite 
 the Norse holl, a hill, with the suffix combe, re- 
 membering its Welsh signification, the surname 
 Holcombe becomes perfectly intelligible. Comp- 
 ton, originally Combeton, and Gatcomb, Gate- 
 combe, are easily understood when we thus restore 
 
I20 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 their original forms. The surnames Dodd and 
 Doddridge are plain enough when we learn that 
 the Cumbrian Dodd means "a mountain with a 
 round summit." 
 
 Barrow, borough, and berg are suffixes of place 
 names, and hence, since men frequently took their 
 names from the place of their habitation, they 
 have passed into the field of surnominal literature. 
 Isaac Taylor says that these suffixes are related " to 
 the Anglo-Saxon verb beorgan, and the German 
 bergen, to shelter or hide." The same author 
 says: " Sometimes these words denote the funeral 
 mound which gave shelter to the remains of the 
 dead, but more frequently they mean the em- 
 banked inclosure which afforded refuge to the liv- 
 ing. Such places were often on the crests of hills. 
 Hence the word came to mean a hill fortress, cor- 
 responding to the Celtic dun. In Anglo-Saxon a 
 distinction was made between bearh, which an- 
 swers to the German berg, a hill, and buruh, which 
 is the equivalent of the German burg, a town. 
 This distinctive usage is lost in- Modern English. 
 The word barrow, however, is generally confined 
 to funeral mounds." Marlborough was therefore 
 a fortification erected on a marly or chalky soil. 
 In the surname Richberg, where another fortress 
 was erected, rich describes the fertile nature of 
 the land. Tar is of Celtic origin, and means rapid 
 or rough. The name Yarborough was therefore 
 doubtless applied to the descendants of some 
 brave, hardy mountaineer, who selected a site for 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. 121 
 
 his home or fortress as the eagle selects a place 
 for her aerie, amid the projecting crags of some 
 towering cliff. Thus his castle was naturally for- 
 tified against the inroads of those predatory bands 
 that roved over England prior to that age in which 
 surnames were made. May the numerous de- 
 scendants of the first Yarboroughs always take 
 high positions and secure ground relative to every 
 moral issue, so as to place themselves above the 
 petty bands of roving demons that infest the low 
 grounds of immorality and wickedness ! 
 
 Cleveland and Clifton, cleve signifying in the 
 Anglo-Saxon tongue a cliff, are closely allied to 
 Yarborough, at least relative to the primal places 
 of habitation of the progenitors of these fami- 
 lies. The Clevelands and Cliftons, notwithstand- 
 ing the fact that many of them have arisen to prom- 
 inence, were, like the Hillboroughs, originally 
 cliff dwellers. 
 
 Among the brave heroes of the united colonies 
 in their long struggle for independence, the name 
 of Col. Cleveland, " who bore a command in the 
 engagement at King's Mountain in October, 
 1780," is almost forgotten. His remains rest on 
 the east bank of the Tugaloo River, in Oconee 
 County, South Carolina, near the little town of 
 Madison, on the Peidmont Air Line railroad. 
 The spot of his interment was left without a 
 stone to mark his sleeping place until a few years 
 ago, when a handsome granite shaft was reared 
 over his grave to perpetuate his memory. Like the 
 
122 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 distinguished President, a distant relative, he was a 
 large man, weighing over four hundred pounds. 
 
 Scarborough is closely allied to Yarborough. 
 Scar is a Norse word, and means " a face of rock 
 or cliff." The latter name was given to one who 
 might have lived on any cliff, while the former 
 was bestowed on some inhabitant of the Skerries, 
 or the rocky islets near the coasts of England, 
 which so frequently became the harboring places 
 of the hardy Norsemen. 
 
 The church " set upon a hill " could not be hid 
 in that day in which our progenitors sought sur- 
 name material. Churchill commemorates the fact 
 that there was a church thus located, and that 
 some Englishman's cottage also shared the heights 
 of that hill with the sober old structure dedicated 
 to the worship of God. Its walls and worshipers 
 have long since returned to dust, but the surname 
 which it gave still lives. Longstreet and Short- 
 house, Newland and Wetherhall are English 
 names, and their meaning is perceptible to every 
 Englishman. The last name, however, has been 
 contracted into Wetherall. The hall in Old Eng- 
 lish simply meant a place of protection. A barn 
 for sheep would hardly be called a sheep hall now. 
 Carstairs means stone steps, applied as a surname 
 doubtless because some one happened to live at or 
 near a stairway constructed of stone. The Celtic 
 word man meant a district, while the suffix shif, 
 from the Old English scipe, is equal to our word 
 shafe. Hence manship means district shape. 
 
PLACES OF RESIDENCE. I23 
 
 Shaw means "a shady place; a wood." In 
 the " Robin Hood Ballads " it is used in the plural. 
 
 In somer when the shavjes be sheyne, 
 
 And leves be large and longe, 
 His is full merry in feyre foreste, 
 
 To hear the fouly's song. 
 
 The Brezonec ker is precisely the same word as 
 the Welsh car and the English Chester, all of which 
 are from the Latin castra, a fortress. By the sur- 
 name Kershaw we therefore understand that the 
 originator of that name lived near a fortress lo- 
 cated in the wood. Crenshaw is a corruption 
 of Craneshaw. Evershaw, wild boar's wood, 
 from eofer, a wild boar, and Hinshaw, a wood be- 
 hind a hill, are frequently met with as English sur- 
 names. Cromwell is a hybred, compounded of 
 the Welsh crom, bending or bowed, and the Eng- 
 lish well, a spring or fountain of water. 
 
 Wad in the Anglo-Saxon tongue meant the 
 same as the modern word woad, " an herbaceous 
 plant," says Webster, " of the genus Isatis, of 
 which one species was formerly cultivated for the 
 blue coloring matter derived from its leaves, but 
 is now used only with indigo as a ferment in the 
 vat." This plant was cultivated by the Britons, 
 the first inhabitants of England. Frederick York- 
 Powell, in his " Early England ," says, in speaking 
 of the old Britons: " When the men went to war, 
 they used to throw off their cloaks and rush into 
 battle half naked, painted blue with the juice of 
 an herb called woad, just as is the habit of some 
 
124 -^ RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 savages now." The name of this species of in- 
 digo cultivated by our progenitors, together with 
 ■worth, a dwelling, near the field where it was cul- 
 tivated, gives us the surname Wadsworth. 
 
 But this ramble must close. We hope that the 
 reader will be able to arrive at the meaning of 
 many surnames not contained within this chapter, 
 by means of what is suggested by it. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, AND RAILROADS. 
 
 WE by no means feel inclined to attempt to 
 vindicate the broad scope we have given to 
 this chapter by the caption. Neither are we dis- 
 posed to apologize for associating railroads with 
 the three surnames we propose to discuss. The 
 subject matter of this chapter will, we hope, am- 
 ply justify the appalling liberty we have assumed. 
 The author is perfectly willing that every Smith, 
 Brown and Black read what he has to say of them 
 in this ramble among glowing furnaces and clank- 
 ing anvils, provided they buy this book and never 
 lend it to any of the common feo-ple. If, however, 
 after close examination of the data he has collected, 
 throwing light upon one of the most perplexing 
 problems of patronomatology, any member of that 
 universal family, I mean the triune family, upon 
 which all railroads and material enterprises are 
 dependent, does not heartily concur with all that 
 the writer has said, the whole matter may be com- 
 promised by sending the author his photograph, to- 
 gether with a bank bill, not less than fifty dollars, 
 to remunerate him for lost labors and toils many. 
 The proposition is, we think, a fair and equitable 
 one. Hence we enter upon the Herculean task 
 now before us with fear and trembling. 
 
 (125) 
 
126 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 A difficult problem, it is said, once puzzled the 
 brain of a rustic American citizen. He could not 
 solve the mystery as to the existence of so many peo- 
 ple who bore the ubiquitous cognomen Smith. It 
 was indeed the problem of his life, till at last he 
 drifted, by chance it may have been, into the " City 
 of Brotherly Love." There he read this sign over 
 the main entrance of a great factory: " The Smith 
 Manufacturing Company." The problem was 
 solved satisfactorily, at least to him; there, he con- 
 cluded, they made Smiths, and thus peopled the 
 world. 
 
 But that honorable name, so laudably connected 
 with almost every phase of Anglo-Saxon history, 
 antedates not only the city of Philadelphia, but the 
 glories of the New World itself. It is of ancient 
 origin, and was a common name among the Ro- 
 mans. (Fabricius — a smith.) There is, indeed, 
 an allusion to the name in the New Testament it- 
 self: Demetrius the silversmith, who did St. Paul 
 very great wrong. If that name, as it is recorded 
 in the sacred volume, had appeared as a disciple, 
 or follower of Christ, it would have become a pow- 
 erful argument in the hands of polemics in the 
 universal establishment of the doctrines of Armin- 
 ianism, or salvation decreed for all men. 
 
 Smiths are not made, therefore, as the rustic 
 backwoodsman imagined, but the whole frater- 
 nity of them enjoy the honorable distinction of be- 
 ing self-made, and may honorably claim a glorious 
 and ancient lineage. They get their name from 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. 127 
 
 the Anglo-Saxon Smitan, to smite. That term 
 was applied to all who dealt blows in an honest and 
 lawful craft. Their vocation was not to smite men 
 on the bloody field of battle, thus weaving for 
 themselves garlands of victory, and thereby in- 
 scribing their name in the annals of the world's 
 butcheries; but they smote the crude material 
 from the earth's bowels "hip and thigh," and 
 thus brought beauty, order, and utility out of 
 chaos. They were the artisans, the Tubal-cains 
 of the Anglo-Saxon race. Therefore, while the 
 theological controversialists have been unable to 
 use the name in the establishment of their doc- 
 trines, that name proves conclusively that the 
 disposition of the Anglo-Saxon race has ever been 
 in favor of getting an honest living by honest 
 strokes. 
 
 South Carolina and the world owes a lasting 
 debt of gratitude to that name, for our rice takes 
 precedence in all the markets of the world. " In 
 1693," we are told, " Landgrave Thomas Smith 
 — of whose descendants more than five hundred 
 were living in the state in 1808 (a number doubt- 
 less largely increased since), moved perchance by 
 a prophetic sense of the fitness that the father of 
 such a numerous progeny should provide for the 
 support of an extensive population — introduced the 
 culture of rice into South Carolina. The seed 
 came from the island of Madagascar, in a vessel 
 that put into Charleston harbor in distress." It 
 is, indeed, an evil wind that blows nobody any 
 
128 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 good, but it always requires a Smith to smelter and 
 hammer it out of adverse circumstances. 
 
 But this eminent Smith, who not only enjoyed 
 the distinction of having been created a lord, with 
 four baronies of twelve thousand acres of land, in 
 1691, which baronies, together with the title, it was 
 expressly declared by the patent dated on the 
 thirteenth of May of that year, were to forever de- 
 scend to his heirs "paying an annual rent of a 
 penny, lawful money of England for each acre."* 
 
 But alas! that unlucky date, the 13th of May! 
 Had the patent been granted by his Majesty on 
 some other date beside that of the unlucky 13th, 
 perhaps the Revolution of 1776 would not have 
 proved so disastrous to that title and the four baro- 
 nies. But that famous Smith, notwithstanding his 
 misfortunes, impressed his good sense and sound 
 judgment upon at least one usage of his country. 
 Tradition says ( and it is corroborated by authentic 
 dates and facts) that he "obtained the passing of 
 a law, the principle of which continues to this day, 
 for drawing juries indiscriminately from a box so 
 as to preclude the possibility of packing a jury to 
 carry any particular purpose. "t 
 
 How fortunate it is for us that the influence of 
 the Smiths has generally been upon the side of 
 right ! for really they hold in all moral and politi- 
 cal issues the balance of power. 
 
 Jones is a Scripture name, a corruption of Johns. 
 
 * Ramsay's " History of South Carolina," Vol. I., p. 5. 
 ■\ Hid., Vol. n., p. 113. 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. I29 
 
 As a surname it almost rivals Smith in popularity, 
 but even the Joneses can never hope to surpass in 
 numerical strength the Smiths. The reputation 
 of the Smith family is thoroughly established, and 
 those of us who did not happen to be called a 
 Smith can do nothing else but yield to that univer- 
 sal family the palm, not only in numbers, but in 
 antiquity of family and in all things else. What 
 adventurer ever surpassed Captain John Smith? 
 What wit ever equaled Sydney Smith ? 
 
 It has been a subject of conjecture as to why 
 the great sea captain, John Paul, who did the 
 Americans such noble service in the war of Amer- 
 ican independence, took the surname Jones. 
 John Paul, the father of the brave sea captain, 
 lived at Arbigland, parish of Kirkbean, Scotland; 
 and "there, on the 6th of July, 1747," John was 
 born. In baptism he was given his father's name, 
 and as a boy was called John Paul. At the age of 
 twelve he was apprenticed to a merchant, whose 
 ships were engaged in trade with the American 
 colonies. The boy went to sea in these vessels, 
 made several voyages to America, became a sailor, 
 and while still in his teens acquired a passion for 
 sea life, for adventure, and for war. 
 
 "The elder brother of John Paul emigrated to 
 America and established himself as a planter in 
 Virginia. Meanwhile the younger son became an 
 underofficer on a ship engaged in the slave trade 
 with the West Indies. It was not long, however, 
 before his moral nature revolted against the busi- 
 9 
 
130 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ness in which he was engaged, and he left it, as 
 the books say, ' in disgust.' On his way back 
 to England both the captain and mate of the ship 
 on which he was sailing died, and the command 
 of the vessel was given to John Paul, who brought 
 her into port with so great success that the 
 owners appointed him to the captaincy. 
 
 " In 1773 the elder of the Paul brothers died in 
 Virginia, and his estate fell to the younger. It was 
 at this time that the latter took the name of Jones. 
 His reason for doing so does not appear, but I 
 conjecture Jones was the maiden name of his 
 mother, and that the son, now twenty-six years of 
 age, and fired with ambition, determined to trans- 
 mit her name rather than the father's to pos- 
 terity."* 
 
 I am inclined to disagree with the historian. 
 May it not have been ^prudence that caused him 
 to adopt the name Jones ? Virginia had her John 
 Smith, and the young seaman could never hope to 
 rival him. Who wants to be overshadowed by a 
 greater man of the same state ? It may have been 
 modesty that caused the young captain to adopt 
 the name Jones ; or perhaps it was because he de- 
 sired to help the weaker. Every colony had its 
 Smiths, and John Paul came to the rescue of the 
 Joneses, and thus helped to cement the United Col- 
 onies by a dual element of commonality, for these 
 common names ought surely to bind together 
 every segment of our glorious Union. 
 
 *John Clark Ridpath, in The Cliautauquan for March, 1892. 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. 13I 
 
 Virginia and South Carolina may, therefore, 
 grasp hands even across "the old North State," 
 with her teeming multitudes of Smiths, and exult 
 in the historic distinction that while the personal 
 magnetism of one John Smith, in some way or 
 other, touched the heart of the fairest wild maid 
 of the Virginia forest when Powhatan was about 
 to become practically a Smiter himself, our Land- 
 grave Thomas Smith retaliated on the proud old 
 chief, and snatched the last, lingering laurel from 
 the brow of the poor red man, who has hitherto 
 exulted in the distinction that he had nobody 
 else to thank for his corn ; but now the Smiths 
 may rival these denizens of the forest in the fact 
 that they have nobody else to thank for their rice. 
 
 But in the mediaeval birthday of names, when 
 occupation fixed the cognomen Smith, Smyth, 
 Goldsmith, and Smithers, s-peciesoiiht. sa.me g-enus, 
 upon so many hardy Anglo-Saxons, complexion 
 also had much to do in fastening everlasting ap- 
 pellations upon the sons of men. The Browns 
 belonged originally, perhaps, to that honorable 
 class of men which cultivated the earth, or at least 
 their ancestors must have spent much time out- 
 doors; and thus tanned and browned, perhaps, by 
 the sun's rays, they won their laudable titles. The 
 Blacks were more tanned, and hence their name. 
 Many of the descendants of the Browns and Blacks 
 would exchange appellations with the Whites, and 
 many of us would lose our cognomenic distinctions 
 if another naming day were to roll around. 
 
132 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 So the Browns and Blacks belong really to the 
 genus Smiths, for they were Smiters too, though 
 they smote the earth "fore and aft," and were we 
 to institute a comparsion between them we would 
 follow the model of that distinguished Smith 
 who taught more children the principles of the 
 English language than any other man, dead or 
 alive, and who even rivaled Cupid himself in 
 teaching the youthful pupils that they " might, 
 could, would, or should love" — we would follow 
 his model and say — positive, Smith, comparative, 
 Brown, superlative. Black. 
 
 But while the world owes a debt of gratitude to 
 that enterprising Smith who introduced the cul- 
 ture of rice into South Carolina, it should never 
 forget another South Carolinian, Alexander Black, 
 who did more for the ' ' old Palmetto State ' ' than 
 any other man, living or dead. Our fathers had 
 rather a slow way of getting from place to place. 
 Judge O'Neall, in his "Annals of Newberry," tells 
 us that as late as 1813 the Hon. Ker Boyce, then 
 keeping a store in the little village of Newberry, 
 S. C, " began to trade overland with Philadel- 
 phia. Cotton was hauled from Newberry to Phil- 
 adelphia, and goods brought back by wagons. 
 He and Thomas Pratt [a fellow-townsman] an- 
 nually mounted their horses and rode to Philadel- 
 phia, purchased their goods, and thus laid the 
 foundation of their respective fortunes." Again, 
 there is a manuscript in the handwriting of General 
 Thomas Pinckney, still extant, which tells us that 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. I33 
 
 "On the isth of May, 1815," the General, "with 
 two ladies of his family, set out from their planta- 
 tion on the Santee, in their own carriages, and 
 traveled to Boston. They reached Philadelphia 
 on the 15th of June, having traveled 692 miles in 31 
 days, including stoppages, to that point. The 
 traveling expenses, including two weeks' stay in 
 Philadelphia, amounted to $420." 
 
 Alexander Black to the rescue. In 1827 he se- 
 cured a charter for the first railroad ever built in 
 America. Chiefly through his instrumentality 
 that road was completed from Line Street, near 
 Charleston, S. C, to Hamburg, S. C, in Octo- 
 ber, 1833; and during that month the crude little 
 engine — apparently prophetically named ' ' Best 
 Friend" — made its first trip at that time over the 
 longest continuous line of railroad in the world. 
 The first United States mail ever transported by 
 steam was hauled over a part of that road in Feb- 
 ruary, 1832. 
 
 The road was built by driving piles every six 
 feet a part, in parallel lines. The heads of the 
 piles were left about eighteen inches above the 
 ground, and were bound together by transverse 
 sleepers. Hence the term cross-tie, which still 
 adheres to the transverse piece of timber un- 
 derlying the rails, though the piles which they 
 tied across are no longer used. 
 
 A writer in the Southern Review of May, 
 1831, says, in describing the road: " These [piles 
 thus bound together] are surmounted by the longi- 
 
134 ^ RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tudinal wooden rails, about nine inches square, in 
 various lengths, from fifteen to thirty-five feet, on 
 the top of which, on the inner side, the fiat bar 
 iron is nailed. The tracks are about five feet 
 apart." 
 
 Historians have robbed South Carolina of the 
 honor of having built the first railroad in America ; 
 but it is due the state, even at this late day, that 
 she have restored to her the honor she has merited 
 in this matter. It is claimed that the Baltimore 
 and Ohio railroad was the first built in the United 
 States. That road has unjustly worn an un- 
 merited honor long enough. " On the 28th of De- 
 cember, 1829, the contracts were given out, and 
 on the 9th of January, 1830, the railroad was ac- 
 tually begun, by the driving of piles at Line 
 Street," Charleston, S. C. 
 
 " The Baltimore and Ohio, begun before the 
 Charleston and Hamburg, was intended for horse 
 power, it being then supposed to be impracticable 
 to use locomotives on short curves." 
 
 " Mr. Peter Cooper," whose progenitors doubt- 
 less knew originally how to make curves, "prac- 
 tically refuted this notion in August, 1830, but 
 some months before his experiment at Baltimore — 
 viz., on the 14th of January, 1830, five days after 
 the commencement of work on the Charleston 
 and Hamburg road — the Board of Directors of 
 that road (the Charleston and Hamburg) adopted 
 the report of Mr. Bennett, containing this memo- 
 rable sentence: 'The locomotive shall alone be 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. 1 35 
 
 used. The perfection of this power in its applica- 
 tion to railroads is fast maturing, and will certainly 
 reach, within the period of constructing our road, 
 a degree of excellence which will render the ap- 
 plication of animal power a gross abuse of the 
 gifts of genius and science.' " 
 
 Thus it is clearly seen that the Charleston and 
 Hamburg railroad — as a road for the use of loco- 
 motives — is seven months older than the Baltimore 
 and Ohio. 
 
 In the construction of this road, at Aiken, S. C. 
 (a name frequently met with as a surname from 
 the Old German A or Aach, flowing water, and the 
 Celtic ken, a cape, or headland, meaning, there- 
 fore, at the head of the flowing water), a point six 
 hundred feet above Charleston, the engineers met 
 with quite an obstacle. There is quite an abrupt 
 descent from the heights at Aiken to the low plains 
 of the Savannah, upon which Hamburg, the north- 
 western terminus of the road, was located. The 
 civil engineers were compelled to make a precipi- 
 tous descent of two hundred feet within half a 
 mile, air line, in order to reach the level plain be- 
 low. The idea of constructing a curve along the 
 sides of the sand hills, thus securing a gradual de- 
 scent into the lowlands, seems never to have en- 
 tered their minds. They therefore laid a double 
 track for half a mile, an inclined plane, thus 
 reaching the base of the high sand hill upon which 
 the town of Aiken is built. Upon the crest of the 
 hill was located a stationary engine, which operated 
 
136 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 a large horizontal wheel, about fifteen feet in dia- 
 meter, with a groove in the rim, or fellies, in which 
 worked, as a belt, an enormous rope, as long as the 
 track constituting the inclined plane. This wheel 
 was placed between the tracks. When the engine 
 reached Aiken from Charleston, therefore, it was 
 side tracked, having reached the end of its journey. 
 Half a mile below could be seen the engine on the 
 other end of the road waiting for its coaches, 
 which were to be let down this incHned plane. 
 The wonderful feat, in civil engineering, now be- 
 gan. One end of the great cable was fastened to 
 a coach at the bottom of the inclined plane, while 
 the other end was attached to a coach on the 
 heights, thus serving as a balance to each other. 
 As the great wheel revolved one car descended 
 slowly into the valley, while the other ascended the 
 heights. Thus one by one the coaches were let 
 down and drawn up. 
 
 The coaches were very much like our modern 
 freight cars. There was a door in the side 
 through which the passengers entered, and a seat, 
 a rough bench, was constructed along the entire 
 length and width of the coach, against the walls, 
 which constituted the back of the seat. There 
 was no need for checking baggage, as every pas- 
 senger was required to deposit his traveling effects 
 on the floor in the center of the coach in which 
 he was placed, so that all of the passengers sat 
 with their backs against the walls of the coach, 
 and facing the pile of baggage in the center of the 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. I37 
 
 car, so that each passenger could watch whatever 
 belonged to him. The conductor kept the engi- 
 neer company on the little platform of the engine. 
 There was no cab attached to the engine in those 
 days, and both the engineer and conductor got the 
 full benefit of outdoor life in all kinds of weather. 
 A narrow platform was built around the coaches, 
 and the conductor passed from the engine around 
 and into the coaches when he went forth to collect 
 the fare from the passengers. But the great 
 artisans have made wonderful improvements. 
 Through the instrumentality of the craftsmen, the 
 Smiths, we may now cross the continent in a 
 handsome parlor car. Really distance has been 
 well-nigh annihilated, and the ends of the earth 
 have been linked together! Who then does not 
 feel thankful for that disposition of the Anglo-Sax- 
 on race which not only gave us the wide-spread 
 surname Smith, but which has girded the conti- 
 nent with railroads? Horace Bushnell, in speak- 
 ing of this age of road building, says : ' ' The dark 
 age built castles on the inaccessible peaks of moun- 
 tains, to get away from enemies; we build cottages 
 on public roads, which we like to have as perfect 
 as possible, to facilitate access and motion. The 
 Egyptians built pyramids over the dead ; we build 
 roads to give life and swiftness to the living. The 
 Chinese erect a wall to shut themselves in; we 
 open roads and ports and span the ocean itself 
 with floating bridges, that we may go everywhere 
 and behold the coming of all people." 
 
138 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 To macadamize a road, a system of road mak- 
 ing devised by John Macadam, means literally to 
 son of manise a road, from the Gaelic Mac, a son, 
 and the Hebrew Adam, man. Surely the roads of 
 mediseval times needed to be made passable for 
 the sons of men, for that dark age was an age like 
 that in which Shamgar lived. " In the days of 
 Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, 
 the highways were unoccupied, and the travelers 
 walked through byways." (Judges v. 6.) This 
 fact is beautifully portrayed in the first chapter of 
 " Ivanhoe," in the dialogue between the Prior, the 
 Abbot, Gurth and Wamba. Therefore, if Path- 
 finder occurs as a surname, we are not surprised; 
 if John and Henry really indulged in the privilege 
 of having a road through the dark forest to the 
 place of their habitation, we are not surprised that 
 their fellow-men should have distinguished them 
 from the masses by bestowing the surname Hatha- 
 way ; and if William really reared his crude dwell- 
 ing upon a roadside, we are not surprised if he in- 
 herited the surname Attaway. Ridpath — i. e., 
 — Ridepath, gives us to understand that many of 
 the roads of our progenitors were merely by-ways. 
 
 In concluding this ramble, then, let us notice 
 some of the periods of development in road mak- 
 ing. A name frequently gives us a memento of 
 two or three periods of English history. Thus 
 Avon or Aven is a Celtic term which means a 
 river ; strat is an abbreviation of strata, the name 
 by which the Romans called the roads which they 
 
SMITHS, BROWNS, BLACKS, RAILROADS. 1 39 
 
 built through the territory of the ancient Bretons ; 
 therefore we have Strathaven, a river road; so in 
 the rural districts we hear roads referred to as the 
 river-road and the ridgeway. Rutledge (from the 
 Celtic rut path) means the same as Ridgeway. 
 The name of Shakespeare's birthplace, "Strat- 
 ford on Avon" contains words from three periods 
 of English history, Celtic Avon, Roman Strata, 
 and Anglo-Saxon ford. From the bypaths of the 
 Celts and Saxons, to the great roads of the Ro- 
 mans, we pass on through the intermediate stages 
 of road making, and enter a parlor car, take up 
 a morning paper published hundreds of miles 
 away, and as we speed along through our great 
 country we are ungrateful if we do not breathe a 
 benediction on the Smiths, Browns, and Blacks. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SURNAMES WHICH EMBODY THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA 
 OF HOME. 
 
 THERE is nothing connected with EngUsh sur- 
 names with which the student of patronoma- 
 tology is more impressed than with the prevalence, 
 in Anglo-Saxon names, of those prefixes, and 
 suffixes, principally, which convey the idea of 
 protection, inclosure, and defense. We may find 
 a cause for this national idea of the sacred 
 right of property in the fact that the Saxons were 
 invaders, and therefore found it necessary at first 
 to fortify and protect their homes and their prop- 
 erty. Hence the sacred idea of home, from this 
 incipient step of what may be termed national self- 
 preservation, has become thoroughly incorporated 
 into the very nature of English-speaking people, 
 as well as into the very texture of the civil institu- 
 tions of those countries where the Anglo-Saxon 
 element predominates, as in that of no other peo- 
 ple or nation on the globe. 
 
 A close examination of these suffixes gives us a 
 correct insight into the distinguishing characteris- 
 tics of English civilization, and indeed that love 
 of privacy and seclusiveness of home life which 
 they reveal, as well as the sacred rights of prop- 
 erty and of home, constitute the basic elements 
 (140) 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. I4I 
 
 out of which has grown the grandest and strongest 
 type of civilization the world has ever known. 
 And, what is truly remarkable, the great conflicts, 
 social and political, of this century, such as 
 Socialism, Nihilism, and Communism, have been 
 the outgrowth not of English civilization, but of 
 those civilizations where these sacred rights of 
 home and property have not been inculcated in 
 the heart of every freeman from century to cen- 
 tury. It is indeed interesting to trace the develop- 
 ment of our social institutions through the medium 
 of English nomenclature. 
 
 "The primary meaning of the suffix ton" so 
 frequently met with as an ending of English 
 names, says Isaac Taylor, "is to be sought in the 
 Gothic tains, the Old Norse teinn, and the Frisian 
 tene, all of which mean a twig, a radical significa- 
 tion which survives in the phrase "the tine of a 
 fork." We speak also of the tines of a stag's 
 horns. In modern German we find the word zaun, 
 a hedge, and in Anglo-Saxon we have the verb tyn- 
 an, to hedge. The phrase "hedging andtining," 
 for hedging and ditching, was current two hundred 
 years ago. Brushwood used for hedging is called 
 tinetum in law Latin. Hence a tun, or ton, was a 
 place surrounded by a hedge, or rudely fortified by 
 a palisade. Originally it meant only a single croft, 
 homestead, or farm ; and the word retained this re- 
 stricted meaning in the time of Wycliffe. He 
 translates Matthew xxii. 5: "But thei dispisen- 
 den, and wenten forth, oon into his toun (dypos). 
 
142 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 another to his marchanndise." This usage is re- 
 tained in Scotland, where a solitary farmstead still 
 goes by the name of the toun, and in Iceland, 
 where the homestead, with its girding wall, is 
 called a tun. In many parts of England the rick- 
 yard is called the bar/o«, that is the inclosure for 
 the bear or crop which the land bears. Thus we 
 have the English patronymic Barton, corrupted 
 frequently into Burton, and Kerton or Kirton from 
 the Brezonec, Ker either from the Latin castra, or 
 the erse cathair, a fortress, thus implying fortress 
 inclosure. So we may also account for the sur- 
 name Kershaw, fortress wood or thicket. In the 
 name Winchester we have the remains of Roman 
 civilization in England. The first syllable is from 
 the Celtic gwent, a plain, which by Latinization 
 passed into venta, which in time was corrupted 
 into win ; the word Chester is from the Latin cas- 
 tra, a fortress, Winchester therefore means "the 
 fortress of the plain." Chichester, anciently writ- 
 ten Cissanceaster, and meaning "fortress of Cissa," 
 who, according to the Saxon chronicle, was one 
 of the three sons of ^Ue, who landed at Keynor 
 in Selsea, and having advanced into the interior 
 and succeeded in capturing the old Roman fortress 
 (now Chichester), established the capital of his 
 kingdom over the South Saxons at that place. 
 "Dorchester," says Taylor, " was the city of the 
 Durotr'iges, or dwellers by the water." Dur is 
 Celtic, and means water. The Celtic word man, 
 a district, occurs in the name Manchester, " dis- 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. I43 
 
 trict fortress." Colchester is from the Latin word 
 colonia, a colony, and the suffix Chester. Taylor 
 says that "in the immediate vicinity of Colchester 
 a legion was stationed for the protection of the 
 colony" planted there by the Romans. "The 
 precise spot which was occupied by the camp of 
 this legion is indicated by the remains of extensive 
 Roman earthworks at Lexdon," England, "a 
 name which is a corruption of Legionis Dunum." 
 These place names were, of course, conferred 
 upon men as surnames because they happened to 
 be inhabitants of those places. 
 
 But, to return to the study of surnames ending 
 with the suffix ton, the name Washington brings 
 up an interesting feature of the Anglo-Saxon lan- 
 guage. Jng, while it was not universally used in 
 that sense, was the common patronymic of our 
 progenitors. Thus the old Saxon Chronicle of 
 A.D. 547, long before the day of surname mak- 
 ing, we read: 
 
 Ida wses Eopping, 
 Eoppa wses Esing, 
 Esa wses Ingwing, 
 Ingwi Agenwiting. 
 
 Which in Modern English means : 
 
 Ida was Eoppa's son, 
 Eoppa was Esa's son, 
 Esa was Inguy's son, 
 Inguy, Agenwit's son. 
 
 "In fact, the suffix ing,''^ says Isaac Taylor, 
 " in the names of persons had very much the 
 same signification as the prefix Mac in Scotland, 
 
144 ^ RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 O' in Ireland, Ap in Wales, or Beni among the 
 Arabs." 
 
 Wash is from the Anglo-Saxon wascan. " The 
 original sense," says Skeat, " was probably ' to 
 wet.' Hence to flood with water," therefore 
 we have the English place name The Wash. 
 Hence Washington was the son of some pioneer 
 who reared his tun or habitation on some alluvial 
 plot of ground which was subject to overflow or 
 inundation. There is frequently observable a de- 
 gree of fitness, purely accidental it appears, be- 
 tween names, separated by time and geographical 
 space, that is really remarkable. A beautiful co- 
 incident of this kind may be traced between the 
 first local settlements of those pioneers upon whom 
 the surname Washington was bestowed and the 
 site of the national capitol.* This fortuity becomes 
 still more noticeable when we remember that 
 Potomac signifies, in the Indian tongue, " river of 
 the burning pine," or, which is more intelligible to 
 Englishmen, "the river or place of the council 
 fire." We are led to marvel at these thoroughly 
 fortuitous combinations of what may be appro- 
 priately styled ancient and modern facts and asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 Morton simply means great or large inclosure. 
 This meaning is readily observed by restoring the 
 eliminated e, whence we have the Celtic more, 
 
 * The greater portion of the present site of Washington 
 was almost a swamp less than a century ago, and subject to 
 overflow. 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. I4S 
 
 great. By a similar process we get the modern 
 as well as the primitive signification of the first 
 syllable of the surname Whitington, and by apply- 
 ing to fhe name what we have just learned relative 
 to the name Washington we may arrive at the full 
 import of that surname. We will not affirm, how- 
 ever, that the progenitor of the Whitingtons lived 
 in a white bouse. The adjective was, more proba- 
 bly, descriptive of the chalky nature of the soil 
 upon which the tiin was located. Some mediaeval 
 landlord who first reared his house in a quiet and, 
 perhaps, secluded cove, by the choice of a build- 
 ing site forever fixed on his progeny the surnomi- 
 nal cognomen Covington. Norton (north town), 
 Sutton (south town), Weston (west town), and 
 Eston or Easton (east town), with the popular 
 corruptions of the last two into Wesson and Eason, 
 likewise becomes surnames from the place geo- 
 graphically considered, where, severally, these 
 tuns were first reared. The names Middleton, 
 Shelton (shell town), and Walton (wall town) 
 embody physical and geographical features, which 
 distinguish them not only from each other, but from 
 the great number of names ending with the suffix 
 tiin. 
 
 Sir -Walter Scott has strikingly portrayed, in 
 "Ivanhoe," the Saxon propensity for swine's flesh. 
 Hence we have the surname Swinton; but Kinton 
 (kine inclosure) proves that they also possessed 
 cows, while Shipton (sheep inclosure) shows 
 
 that they owned sheep. Newton and Nevil, as 
 10 
 
146 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 well as Neville, are one and the same name, the 
 o'nly difference is that the last two have a French 
 suffix. Carl and Charl both mean a churl in the 
 Saxon tongue, but it by no means follows that the 
 Carltons and Charltons are the descendants of 
 churls, because they are the progeny of some one, 
 who happened to live in a medigeval town by that 
 name, any more than it makes a man a horse if 
 he should have been born in a stable. 
 
 Dalton is compounded of the old Saxon dal, a 
 valley, and the prefix tun, meaning, therefore, val- 
 ley home. A tun, or inclosure, standing apart 
 from all other buildings would, very naturally, be 
 referred to as Singleton. Hence the surname. 
 Saxton marked the spot where some old Saxon 
 reared his buildings; the tun of the Saxon, or 
 more properly speaking the English, for Saxon is 
 really a misnomer, was very different from that of 
 the old Briton who " lived in wattled huts half- 
 sunk in the ground, without windows or chimneys. 
 These huts were set together in villages which 
 had often a wooden paling and earthen walls 
 round them, and were placed in the midst of 
 woods, or on islands in the rivers or marshes; or 
 on hills, so as to be safer against foeman." The 
 English or, as the Welsh called them, Saxons 
 "were not a savage people, but a nation of yeo- 
 men, living each in his own homestead, tilling the 
 ground and keeping cattle. They did not dwell 
 in towns, but men of the same kin lived together 
 little in knots or farms. They called these vil- 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. I47 
 
 lages after the name of the kin that dwelt in them, 
 as Ashingham, the home of the Ashings, or family 
 of Ash," and Cotingham, the home of the Cotings 
 or descendants of Cote, a small mud cottage. 
 Coton is the plural of cote. Hence the surname 
 Cotton as it is frequently spelled. Cotton-tun 
 simply means cottages. 
 
 We frequently meet with families of German ex- 
 traction which bear the name Little. The original 
 name was Klein, which has been translated into 
 the English surname Little. Other branches of 
 the same German family have, in America, trans- 
 formed the name into Cline. Just such trans- 
 formation doubtless took place in medieeval En- 
 gland, when their cousins, the Germans, some of 
 whom bore the diminutive appellation Klein, or 
 Little, cast in their fortunes with our English 
 progenitors. Hence we have the English sur- 
 name Clinton, or Littleton. Denton was simply 
 a t4n located in a swine pasture ; while Heaton is 
 a contraction of Heathton, a tdn built on some 
 heath. 
 
 Graf, grave, or grove, from the Anglo-Saxon 
 grafan, to dig, signify a small inclosure, or grove, 
 and are frequently met with as component ele- 
 ments in Anglo-Saxon names, as Grafton, an in- 
 closed town, Cotgrave, an inclosed cottage, cir- 
 cumscribed, perhaps, by a ditch or moat, and Mus- 
 grave, or grove, the name is the same, the only 
 difference is in the spelling, which meant in the 
 Saxon tongue an odorous grove, or inclosure, and 
 
148 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 bestowed, doubtless, upon the progenitors of those 
 who now bear the name from having lived within 
 some sweet-scented grove. 
 
 There is a bit of interesting Southern history 
 connected with the last name. Captain Musgrove, 
 during the latter portion of the seventeenth and 
 the former portion of the eighteenth centuries, 
 was a prominent Indian trader with the Creeks. 
 The historians of Georgia have had much to say 
 of this successful, though unscrupulous trader, 
 under the name of John Musgrove. 
 
 "Oglethorpe," (evidently a nickname; thorfe 
 means a village, and as a surname corresponds 
 with the English name Towns, the prefix was doubt- 
 less bestowed upon the son of the first Thorpe, 
 who doubtless had a son whose eyes were defect- 
 ive or peculiar, for Ogle, a Dutch word, which was 
 introduced into England at a late period, for it was 
 added by Todd to Johnson's Dictionary, means 
 " to look at sideways," or "to cast sheep's e}'es 
 upon one," therefore the nickname Oglethorpe 
 is very much the same as, we sometimes hear it. 
 Crosseyed John. If we substitute Thorpe, or the 
 English equivalent Town for John in the last sen- 
 tence we have the full meaning of the name) says 
 an early historian on his first ascent of the Savan- 
 nah River, found him established, with his famous 
 half-breed wife, Mary, on the same bluff where 
 now stands the city of Savannah. " This Indian, 
 Mary, was born in the year 1700, at the town of 
 Coweta, upon the Chattahooche (painted or fig- 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. I49 
 
 ured stone), in Alabama. Her Indian name was 
 Consaponaheso, and by maternal descent she was 
 one of the queens of the Muscogee nation, and 
 the Indians conceded to her the title of princess. 
 When ten years of age, her father took her to Pon- 
 pon, in South Carolina, where she was baptized, 
 educated, and instructed in the principles of Chris- 
 tianity. Afterward she fled back to her forest 
 home, laid aside the civilization of the English, 
 and assumed the ease and freedom of the happy 
 Muscogee. In 1716 Col. John Musgrovewas dis- 
 patched to the Chattahooche by the Government 
 of South Carolina to form a treaty of alliance with 
 the Creeks, with whom that colony had been at 
 war. It was there stipulated that the Creeks were 
 to remain the free occupants of all the land east as 
 far as the Savannah River. The son of the Brit- 
 ish negotiator, John Musgrove, had accompanied 
 his father to Coweta, and falling in love with the 
 Princess Mary, made her his wife. After remain- 
 ing in the nation several years, and after the birth 
 of their onty child, they removed to South Caro- 
 lina. There residing several years in much hap- 
 piness, they afterward established themselves upon 
 Yamacraw Bluff, at the head of an extensive trad- 
 ing house, where Oglethorpe found them. By 
 his alliance with this remarkable woman, who was 
 well versed in the Indian and English languages, 
 Musgrove obtained considerable influence over 
 the natives and became exceedingly wealthy. 
 Mary was afterward the warm friend of Ogle- 
 
150 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 thorpe, and several times saved the early colonists 
 of Georgia from savage butchery." * 
 
 It was in 1736 that this woman became indi- 
 rectly the tutoress of the great founder of Metho- 
 dism. Mr. Ingham " came to Savannah from 
 Frederica on the 30th of March " (1735), to en- 
 able Mr. Wesley, by exchange of appointments, 
 "to visit his brother Charles in his sickness, 
 which it was thought might prove fatal. After 
 Mr. Wesley's return from Frederica to Savannah 
 on the 20th of April, it was thought best, in view 
 of the missionary work contemplated among the 
 Indians, that Mr. Ingham should remain at Savan- 
 nah and learn their language. He accordingly 
 arranged to spend three days a week in taking les- 
 sons from a half-caste woman (Mrs. Musgrove), 
 and the other three in teaching what he had 
 learned to Mr. Wesley." t 
 
 This beautiful woman, Mary Musgrove, married 
 Capt. Jack Matthews after the death of her first 
 husband. She was again left a widow, after 
 which she married Thomas Bosomworth, a cler- 
 gyman of the Church of England. Her history 
 fills, after her union with the notorious Bosom- 
 worth {worth is Anglo-Saxon for mansion or 
 town, therefore Bosomtown or mansion), a large 
 and inglorious part of the early annals of Georgia 
 and South Carolina. 
 
 Thus, really, the wild maid of the sweet-scented 
 
 * Pickett's " History of Alabama." 
 
 + Shipp's " History of Methodism in South Carolina." 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. 15! 
 
 forest was wooed and won by the sweet-scented 
 grove, but, alas ! she was too true, whatever may 
 have been her virtues, to the wild and barbarous 
 instincts of the savage. She and Bosomworth lie 
 buried on St. Catherine's Island. 
 
 The surnames Hargrave and Hargrove ar^ com- 
 pounded of the old Norse har, an army, and the 
 Anglo-Saxon grafan, to dig. Hence an encamp- 
 ment fortified by means of moats or ditches. A 
 man who lived near a plot of ground thus distin- 
 guished from the surrounding country was thus 
 named from the place of his residence. 
 
 " The suffix ham, which is very frequent in 
 English names, appears in two forms in Anglo- 
 Saxon documents. One of these, ham, signifies 
 an inclosure, that which hems in, a meaning not 
 very different from that of ton or worth. These 
 words express the feeling of reverence for private 
 right, but ham involves a notion more mystical, 
 more holy. It expresses the sanctity of the family 
 bond: it is home, the one secret (geheim) and 
 sacred place. In the Anglo-Saxon charters we 
 frequently find this suffix united with the names of 
 families, never with those of individuals. This 
 word, as well as the feeling of which it is the sym- 
 bol, was brought across the ocean by the Teutonic 
 colonists, and it is the sign of the most precious of 
 all the gifts for which we thank them. It may in- 
 deed be said, without exaggeration, that the univer- 
 sal prevalence throughout England of names con- 
 taining this word home gives us the clue to the 
 
152 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 real strength of the national .character of the An- 
 glo-Saxon race. What a world of inner differ- 
 ence there is between the English word home and 
 the French phrase chez nous I It was this supreme 
 reverence for the sanctities of domestic life which 
 gave to the Teutonic nations the power of breath- 
 ing a new life into the dead bones of Roman civil- 
 ization." * 
 
 A number of these surnames ending m ham are 
 easily understood, as Bigham, Oldham, Park- 
 ham. Beckham and Burnham were dwellings 
 reared close to rivulets. The original sense of 
 bar is "a thing cut, a shaped piece of wood." 
 Hence Barham means a house built of hewed 
 timber. Ham, however, occurs in such names as 
 Willingham, the home of the descendants of 
 Wili, and Cunningham, the home of the king.f 
 
 The Anglo-Saxon yard and the Norse garth are 
 synonymous terms, and both are very nearly 
 equivalent to tiin. The primary meaning is that 
 of an inclosure by means of rods, twigs, or brush- 
 wood. The plot of ground took its name from 
 the nature of the fence by which it was inclosed, 
 a sense still adhering to the English words yard 
 and garden. Therefore we have such surnames 
 as Stanyard — /. e., a yard inclosed with a stone 
 wall — and Applegarth, which simply means a^le 
 orchard. 
 
 The terms stoke and stow are sometimes met 
 with as component elements in surnames. A stoke 
 
 * Taylor's " Words and Places," p. 82. | See page 103. 
 
THE ANGLO-SAXON IDEA OF HOME. 153 
 
 was a place inclosed by piles, a stockade. Hence 
 we have the surnames Stokes and Stow, which 
 simply mean a stockade, and were conferred on 
 some man at first who lived near some notable in- 
 closure of that kind. It is generally believed by 
 etymologists that the name Bristow is derived 
 from the Celtic hriga, a bridge, and the suffix 
 stow, a stockade at the bridge or bridge stockade 
 as we would say. But we have gone far enough 
 along the lines indicated by the caption of this 
 ramble. We will now listen to the gurgling 
 streams, and coast along the shores of the deep 
 blue sea. 
 
T 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ISLANDS, FORDS, AND LAKES. 
 
 HE old Norse Holm means an island in a river. 
 We may thus account for the family name 
 Holmes and many other patronymics ending with 
 holm as a suffix. An island in the sea is denoted 
 generally by the Teutonic suffix ey or ay, as Whit- 
 ney or Ramsay, white island and ram's island. 
 The world owes a debt of gratitude to Eli Whit- 
 ney, of Connecticut, who invented the cotton gin 
 in 1793, and thus made cotton culture the great 
 industry of the South. The sea islands along the 
 Southern coast, and the mainland far into the in- 
 terior, annually, as the fields really become "white 
 unto the harvest," seem to whisper the name of 
 the great inventor, and to breathe, after all of our 
 international troubles, sentiments of a closer union 
 of the states. Surnames which have originated 
 from progenitors who lived on the numerous is- 
 lands that fringe the coasts of England, Scotland, 
 and Ireland are really as multitudinous as any other 
 class of territorial names. Thus we have Fairey, 
 fair, or beautiful island; Lindsey, denoting an 
 island where the linden grew abundantly; Rod- 
 ney, reed island; Henney,* poor island; andKirk- 
 sey, church island. It is not always easy, how- 
 
 * See page 93. 
 
ISLANDS, FORDS, AND LAKES. l^S 
 
 ever, to distinguish between names ending with 
 the suffix ley, an open place in the wood, and 
 those ending with ey or ay, an island. They are 
 all territorial surnames, however, just as Lange- 
 land, long land ; Parkhurst, park wood; Bever- 
 idge, beaver ridge ; and Asburn, ash branch — t. e., 
 a rivulet characterized by the ash trees that grew 
 in the territory through which it passed. 
 
 Notwithstanding the fact that England was a 
 well-timbered country, as the surnames ending in 
 hurst, a wood, croft denoting the same thing, and 
 many other words as ley, f ark, den, verify; there 
 seems really to have been very few bridges in the 
 days of surname making; nevertheless Bridges 
 and Bridgeman came in eventually for a small 
 share of the family names that were handed down 
 to posterity. The scarcity of bridges, however, 
 was not due to a lack of timber, for there was 
 wood of every variety from the Hazelhurst to the 
 Broadhurst, or from the hazel thicket to the broad 
 forest, embracing every variety of building mate- 
 rial. But the streams were crossed just as if there 
 had been bridges in abundance. The name Ford, 
 which was applied to some one who lived at or 
 near those places where the streams were forded, 
 evidences the fact that the rushing stream was 
 really no barrier to our hardy progenitors, even if 
 they had not brought the art of bridge build- 
 ing to perfection. But Ford was rather too gen- 
 eral to designate every one who lived at such cross- 
 ings. Hence we have the patronymics Sand- 
 
1$6 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ford, Oxford, Woodford, Stanford (stone ford), 
 Stratford (road ford), and Heri or Hartford 
 (deer ford). The word ford does not always, 
 however, denote passages across rivers for men 
 and cattle. The term is frequently of Scandinavian 
 origin. The Vikings appHed the word to pas- 
 sages for ships up the arms of the sea. Hence 
 we have the surname Langford (long ford) which 
 could not be very appropriately applied to the 
 crossing of a stream, for in such case we would 
 say Broadford, just as our progenitors did say 
 Bradford. 
 
 There is no doubt that Wofford is from -wol, the 
 Slavonic term for ox, and the suffix ford. For 
 the sake of euphony and ease of pronunciation 
 Tvol has been changed into zvof. Quite a number 
 of surnames are derived from fords named from 
 the fact of having been the crossing places of cer- 
 tain animals. From neai cattle and sheep we have 
 Nutford and Weatherford, the bear has given us 
 the surname Beresford, and the hog Swinford. 
 " The Gaslic and Erse word for water is tuisge. 
 The word whisky is a corruption of wisge-boy, 
 yellow water. In Welsh we have the related word 
 Tvysg, a current." Hence Wishford was a river 
 crossing distinguished on account of the swift cur» 
 rent of water with which the traveler had to con- 
 tend. The place name Stratford was easily cor- 
 rupted into Strafford, which frequently occurs as a 
 surname ; the r in Strafford was dropped, and the 
 surname was called Stafford. Mountford and 
 
ISLANDS, FORDS, AND LAKES. I57 
 
 Clifford are pure English words, and we may easi- 
 ly understand why the fords were thus named. 
 The close proximity of a mount and a cliff doubtless 
 gave rise to the names of these crossing places, 
 and the individual who reared his habitation in the 
 vicinity of these fords took their names as sur- 
 names. A ford noted as the meeting place of 
 some one of the mediaeval guilds would very nat- 
 urally be known to the populace as Guildford. 
 The place name Bedford, which, like most place 
 names, occurs as a surname, distinguishes the 
 place settled by Bedca, who was doubtless one of 
 the original Saxon invaders of England- In the 
 old Saxon Chronicle the name is written Bedan- 
 ford. Halhford is likewise derived from Halga, 
 and in the old records it is written Halgeforde. 
 So, also, the name Charford was anciently written 
 Cer dices-ford, which proves that this place name 
 was originally the plot of ground occupied by the 
 old Saxon chief Cerdic. 
 
 The surname Lake is very common. It was de- 
 rived from the fact that some old Saxon reared 
 his tun in close proximity to such a body of water, 
 and his descendants, or a part of them at least, 
 were popularly named Lake. We have met, also, 
 with the English surname Broadwater, which was 
 doubtless derived in the same way. Linn in the 
 Celtic tongue means a deep pool. Hence we have 
 the surnames Lynn and Lincoln. Kell, which is 
 frequently met with as a Celtic surname, is syn- 
 onymous with our English word spring, " a place 
 
158 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 where water flows forth." Cam, as we have al- 
 ready said, means crooked. The word was adopted 
 by the English from the Welsh, but is now obsolete. 
 Shakespeare in the play " Coriolanus," Act III., 
 Scene I., applies the word to the crooked reasoning 
 of Menenius Agrippa: " This is clean kam." 
 
 In the dialect of Manchester to cam means to 
 " bend anything away, or to cross or contradict a 
 person." Hence the surname Camlin really means 
 crooked pool, just as Hamlin means home pool, 
 and Cambeck signifies crooked or bowed branch. 
 Sherburn was the brook that marked the boundary 
 between two shires, and he who " pitched his 
 tent" by the side of its gurgling waters took the 
 name of the branch for his surname. But his 
 neighbor John or William, or whoever it may have 
 been, got for himself and progeny the surname 
 Overbrook, or Brookover, because he lived on the 
 opposite side of the brook relative to some one 
 else who had the same Christian name. Welborn 
 simply means spring branch. Carwell signifies 
 rock spring. Blackburn, Burnley, Bradbrook, 
 and Hilburn are intelligible to all who have fol- 
 lowed us in our rambles to this point. Wardwell * 
 carries us back again to the Scotch border. 
 Drinkwater and Stockwell, pure English names, 
 give us to. understand that our progenitors did not 
 share a spring in common with the beasts of the 
 field. Dillbeck tells us of a stream where the 
 dill grew in abundance. 
 
 * See page 96. 
 
ISLANDS, FORDS, AND LAICES. 1 59 
 
 The Welsh ^wl, an inlet or pool, has given us 
 the surnames Poole and Bradpole (broad pool). 
 The Anglo-Saxon ora, the shore of the sea or of 
 a river, occurs in the surname Windsor, which as 
 a place name was anciently called Windlesora, 
 the winding or tortuous shore. From the Celtic 
 Ruimne and the Anglo-Saxon mere, both of which 
 mean a marsh or a district of small lakes, we get 
 the surnames Romney, marshy island as we would 
 say, and Mersey, which means the same thing, or 
 rather the island of lakes. Blackmer(e) is per- 
 fectly intelligible when we restore the lost e. 
 
 But we have rambled by the side of the clear 
 water of the deep mountain pool, " lying like a 
 tear on the face of the hill," along the prattling 
 brooklet, through the marshes, by the shore of the 
 deep blue sea, and over the islands dotting the 
 land's end, and for fear of wearying those who 
 may have accompanied us, we will close this chap- 
 ter and seek rest and refreshment under the arched 
 roof of the mediaeval cathedral, and amid kings' 
 palaces and the spacious halls of Parliament, for 
 many of our English surnames have originated 
 among these scenes of religious and civil life. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 SURNAMES FROM CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 
 
 THE Church and the State have had a large 
 share in the work of surname making. In- 
 deed, there could not exist any phase of govern- 
 ment worthy of the name of government, as we 
 understand that term, without the existence of sur- 
 names. Confusion would reign everywhere su- 
 preme. As an illustration of the disorder that 
 would arise from the fact that there were no sur- 
 names, supposing such to be really the case, let 
 us take our stand at the delivery window of some 
 post office, and there witness the embarrassment 
 not only of the officials of the government, but of 
 the recipients of the mail as it is handed out to the 
 waiting crowd of citizens. A letter or package 
 directed to John, William, or Henry could be 
 claimed by a half dozen constituents of the town 
 or community. This would lead to the exposure 
 frequently of private affairs, to great delay often 
 in the delivery of mail to the proper person, and 
 indeed to almost every conceivable form of disor- 
 der and confusion. This illustration may be ap- 
 plied to almost every department of the govern' 
 ment, thus demonstrating the necessity of sur- 
 names. 
 
 Bible history beautifully illustrates the growing 
 (160) 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. l6x 
 
 necessity for surnames in the earlier ages of the 
 world. It shows us that at first men had only sin- 
 gle names, but these names frequently embodied 
 peculiar traits of character, prominent events, and 
 unusual experiences, relative to those persons upon 
 whom they were bestowed, thus supplying in some 
 measure the lack of surnames: as Moses, "drawn 
 forth," referring to his remarkable rescue from 
 the waters of the Nile ; an experience sui generis, 
 and not likely to be repeated in the life of any 
 other man. The same distinguishing features 
 were inherent in the names of Isaac, "laughter;" 
 Jacob, " the supplanter;" Moab, " the son of his 
 father;" and a great number of Biblical names 
 during that period of the world's history. What 
 was true in this respect with the Hebrews was also 
 characteristic of the Greeks, Romans, Chaldeans, 
 and Egyptians. Only single names were at first 
 bestowed; and afterward, when by natural in- 
 crease men began to multiply and became aggre- 
 gate in towns and communities, various expedients 
 were invented to distinguish two persons who had 
 the same name. Thus among the Romans such 
 additional appellations as Fabricius (Smith), Pic- 
 tor (Painter), and Agricola (Farmer) became 
 very common. 
 
 When among the Hebrews, however, these sin- 
 gle names were perpetuated from a sense of rever- 
 nece for the men upon whom they were at first be- 
 stowed, they lost their peculiar import, became 
 common property, and really " multiplied upon 
 11 
 
l62 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 the face of the earth." Hence, as it was very- 
 natural also that the mother desired to perpetuate 
 the name of the father or grandfather in the ap- 
 pellation bestowed upon the infant on her bosom,* 
 there arose the need of some additional means of 
 designation, and to meet this necessity the name 
 of the father, grandfather, or mother came to be 
 added to the Christian name. Thus, we read of 
 "Joshua the son of Nun," to distinguish him 
 from all other persons upon whom that popular 
 name had been bestowed, and of Simon Bar 
 Jonas — i. e., Simon, son of Jonas — to distinguish 
 him from all other Simons. This custom was in 
 use among the Jews down to comparatively recent 
 times. Frederick the Great compelled all the 
 Israelites within his kingdom to abandon this cus- 
 tom and to take surnames. Thus arose the sur- 
 name Strauss. Simon, son of Jonas, means Si- 
 mon, the son of the dove, in the Hebrew tongue. 
 Hence the German Jews, in order to comply with 
 the edict of the great Prussian king, simply trans- 
 lated Jonas into the German language, left off the 
 term for son, and in this way the name Simon, son 
 of Jonas, became Simon Strauss, or in our tongue, 
 Simon Dove. It would indeed be very interesting 
 to trace the results of this civil enactment to its ut- 
 most influence on surnominal nomenclature among 
 the German Jews, but such is not within the de- 
 sign of this work. 
 
 The old Greeks, however, adopted the same 
 * See Luke i. 59-63. 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 163 
 
 plan as that which was in vogue among the Jews: 
 the father's name was appended to the name of 
 the son. This custom also prevailed among our 
 English progenitors, and although they were not 
 compelled by civil action to take surnames as were 
 the Jews, yet the name of the father thus append- 
 ed very naturally passed into a surname by com- 
 mon consent. There is but a single step from 
 James Thomas's son to James Thompson, and 
 from John James's son to John Jameson. So Wil- 
 liam John's son became William Johnson, and 
 thus we have the clue to a large number of patro- 
 nymics, as Anderson — i. e., Andrew's son — Dix- 
 son, Dickson, and Richardson. The appellation 
 William thoroughly illustrates the patronymic pos- 
 sibilities which one of these English Christian 
 names has proven to have contained. It has 
 transcended its original sphere in Christian nomen- 
 clature, and has become in surnominal literature 
 a generic title, surrounded by no inconsiderable 
 number of specific appellations. 
 
 The bold and adventurous Northmen, while 
 they were heathens, deified the ivill, and we may 
 rest assured that no feature of ancient mythology, 
 as crude as the mythologic speculations of the 
 Northmen may have been, has exerted a more 
 powerful influence on English history and civiliza- 
 tion than this phase of the ancient Norse religion. 
 "In the beginning," not God, but the cow Au- 
 dumbla contrived to fashion the first man, Bur, 
 not out of the dust of the earth, but laboriously 
 
164 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 licked him out of the solid rock. It is not there- 
 fore a surprising fact that Bur, the creature of 
 of such persistent will force on the part of the 
 sacred cow, became the grandfather of the god 
 Will, the Will, who ranked equally with Odin, the 
 all-pervading, and Ve, the holy. Hence we have 
 the Teutonic Christian name William, denoting 
 "helmet of resolution." The name was popular 
 throughout the whole Teutonic-speaking world. 
 Hence before the day of surnames John or Henry 
 the sons of William would very naturally be al- 
 luded to as William's John or Henry, and in this 
 way the Christian name passed into a surname. 
 Therefore we have Williamson, Fitzwilliams, and 
 McWilliams. Wilson and Willson are contrac- 
 tions of Williamson. Billing is the son of Will, 
 and the addition of the letter 5 to this last name 
 gives us Billings, the grandson of the original Will 
 or Bill. The appellative Willie was pronounced 
 Wylie in the North of England and in Scotland, 
 and frequently occurs as a surname. Willis is also 
 a Scotch contraction of Willies, and is precisely the 
 same name as the English Williams. Wilkins and 
 Wilkes are dialectic variations of the same popular 
 cognomen. Wilmot and Wilmett are old English 
 feminines of William, and are occasionally met 
 with as surnames. Wims is a Dutch name, and is 
 the same as the English Williams. 
 
 Wilmer is from the German Willimar, resolute 
 fame, while Williheri, resolute warrior, has given 
 us the German surname Wilier and the English 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 165 
 
 patronymic Weller. The mythical cow Audumbla 
 not only licked out Bur from the solid rock, who 
 became the progenitor of the three brothers Wili, 
 Odin, and Ve; but indirectly, at least, furnished 
 the world with much of the nutritious milk of sur- 
 nominal literature. It is, however, a little remark- 
 able that we hear no more of Wili after he, togeth- 
 er with Oden and Ve, created the first human pair. 
 He infused feeling and will into the first man, and 
 then retired; but verily his namesakes are multi- 
 tudes. 
 
 Waling and Walling are Northern or Norse 
 names and are synonymous with the English sur- 
 name Wilson. Weland, Weiland, and Wayland, 
 different spellings of the same name (the first two 
 are German and the latter is English) are from the 
 same root, Wili, and mean an ingenuous smith. It 
 will be remembered by the student of history 
 that Weland made " the impenetrable corselet of 
 Beowulf, ' the twisted breastnet, which protected 
 his life against point and edge.'" The Smiths 
 and Williams', therefore, are not so unfortunate as 
 at least one part of the Darwinian theory, for 
 they may find their connecting link in the sur- 
 nominal cognomen Wayland or Weiland. 
 
 The Scripture name John means " the Lord's 
 grace." It is widely spread as a surname. We 
 have John, Johns, Johnson, and Jackson — all 
 species of the same genus. In the North of En- 
 gland and in Wales the name John was corrupted 
 into Jenk. Hence there were Jenkings or descend- 
 
l66 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ants of John. The g being dropped for conven- 
 ience of pronunciation, we have the common sur- 
 name Jenkins. We sometimes meet individuals 
 bearing the surnominal diminutive Littlejohn, 
 whose gigantic bodies eloquently deny the truth- 
 fulness of their patronymic title. But when we 
 consider that Jones is a corruption of Johns, and 
 ponder the universal prevalence of this Scripture 
 cognomen, together with its specific appellatives, 
 we must conclude that the fall of man by no 
 means contravened the injunction of God to 
 Adam, " Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 
 the earth, and subdue it; " for, as we have seen, 
 while there is a visible connecting link between 
 the Smiths and the Williamses, there is an invisible 
 spiritual affinity suggested by divine revelation 
 linking indissolubly together the three most wide- 
 spread and numerous families on the earth. 
 Towering over all the numerous progen}"- of the 
 sons of Adam, at least in civilized lands, the name 
 John, " the Lord's grace," and the appellatives of 
 that name, stand conspicuously preeminent; next 
 in order come the sons of Wili, the will; while 
 last, but not least, the Smiths, the sturdy actors in 
 the drama of life, go forth in obedience to the will, 
 under divine grace, to multiply, replenish, and sub- 
 due the earth. Though we hear no more of Wili 
 after the creation of the first human pair, except 
 in names bestowed by the sons of men, vald, 
 identical almost with the Laten valeo, to will or 
 choose, expressed in the Teutonic tongue that 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICERS. 1 67 
 
 will power which the god was believed to have 
 planted in the human soul. " Names in Wal," 
 says Charlotte Yonge, " are chiefly Northern, 
 those in Wil mostly Saxon." The German Wal- 
 ther and the English Walter are therefore closely 
 allied to William and its appellatives. The names 
 have a common origin in the mythological deity 
 Will. Walther and its English form Walter 
 were and are popular Chistian names, the mean- 
 ing of which is powerful warrior. They have 
 also become common as surnames. Wat is a very 
 early contraction of Walter ; and since there were 
 Watts, it is by no means a matter of surprise that 
 there were and are Watsons. Water, another form 
 of the same name, was in use in Shakespeare's day, 
 for Water was the assassin of Suffolk. Hence 
 we have the surnames Waters and Waterson. 
 The English possessive s is frequently affixed, in- 
 stead of son, to the name of the father. Thus John 
 Andrew's son, instead of becoming John Anderson, 
 became John Andrews. The Greek name Steph- 
 en, a crown, having been the name of a father, 
 perpetuated itself also as the surname of his prog- 
 eny, as Stephens and Stephenson. The latter 
 name is frequently corrupted into Stinson, the 
 writer having met with such a contraction relative 
 to this name by a somewhat backwoods populace, 
 in spite of the repeated protests on the part of the 
 unfortunate descendant of Stephen. Robert, in 
 the Teutonic language signifying "bright fame," 
 has given us the surnames Roberts, Robertson,' 
 
l68 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Robinson, and Robeson; while Henry, from the 
 same tongue and meaning "home ruler," has 
 given us the surnames Hawkins and Harrison, and 
 through the German Hendricks and Henning. 
 
 But the reader may ask how these names are rec- 
 onciled to the caption of this chapter. I answer 
 that the family was a c/f //institution and is approved 
 by God, and is therefore a divine institution also, 
 and that we are simply rambling according to the 
 promise made in the first part of the book, and 
 that we are coming presentlj- to those names de- 
 rived directly from civil and religious offices. 
 And if the critic's name should happen to be Davis 
 we seek to appease him by saying that he, with 
 the Davids, Davidsons, and Davieses, descended 
 from some Welsh progenitor whose Christian 
 name David means "beloved," and that the 
 primal progenitor of the wide-spread family was 
 " the man after God's own heart," and that 
 among the Welsh the name was contracted into 
 Taffy, but it must be distinctly understood that 
 the writer is not manufacturing taffy to avoid 
 criticism from the sources mentioned. 
 
 The Norman prefix Fitz (from filius, a son) is 
 frequently met with. The Russians affix -witz and 
 the Polanders sky to signify the same thing. The 
 Welch prefix af, which signifies son. It is said of 
 a Welshman, who was very zealous that no one 
 should surpass him in the length of his pedigree, 
 when making out his genealogical tree, wrote near 
 the middle of his long array of afs: "About this 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICERS. 169 
 
 time Adam was born." Frequently the a in a^ 
 was dropped, and thus John af Richard became 
 John Prichard; af Howel, Powel; af Rice, 
 Price; and so on. Hhys is in Welch, however, a 
 rushing man or warrior. It is sometimes spelled 
 in English according to its pronunciation — reece. 
 It has given us the surnames Rice and Rees. We 
 are all famiHar with the Macs and O's. The Irish 
 and Highland Scotch prefix Mac to indicate son- 
 ship, while the Irish use O to signify a grandson. 
 
 Some ludicrous things occur sometimes in be- 
 stowing Christian names, when some little Jenkins 
 or Jones is handicapped for life with some such 
 historic cognomen as Julius Csesar or George 
 Washington. I knew one little Smith, not above 
 five years old, bearing the ponderous appellation 
 Nafoleon Bonaparte. But things still more amus- 
 ing occur in surnames, when, for instance, some 
 sweet little maid bears the name Minnie Clarkson, 
 or Nellie O'Brian, or Julia MacElhany, which in 
 plain English means "Minnie the son of Clark," 
 or Nellie the grandson of Brian," or "Julia the 
 son of Elhany." The Macs and O^s, when be- 
 stowed as component elements in Christian names, 
 give rise to very amusing contradictions. John 
 Belton O'Neall Smith" means that John Belton 
 is the grandson of Neal Smith, which may be 
 anything else but true, for the grandfather in all 
 probability was really the ubiquitous John Smith. 
 
 But an unrelenting fate has fixed these names 
 upon us and we claim them with all of their con- 
 
170 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 tradictions. But it does seem a little strange that 
 the daughters of the Rices, Richards, Thomases, 
 Brians, and Neals did not receive any such last- 
 ing cognomenic distinction. But perhaps names 
 were not plentiful, and evidently they were not, 
 for our progenitors utilized every Heath, Wood, 
 Glen, Meadow, pasture, marsh, hedge, and 
 Christian name in making surnames. Therefore 
 they must have thought that it would be but a 
 waste of time and name material to confer such 
 appellations on the sex ever ready to change them 
 when a proper opportunity presented itself. 
 
 I have no apology to offer for leading those of 
 my readers who have followed me thus far into 
 the swamps, along the Hedges, by means of the 
 Hedgepath, through the Towns and cities, over the 
 Fields and through the Woods and pastures, and 
 along the Rivers, across the Becks, and along the 
 pathway by the Burns; for if these rambles have 
 made you tired, have we not refreshed ourselves 
 under the thatched roofs of the Williams, Richards, 
 and a number of others I need not mention? and 
 have we not looked upon the flaxen-haired progeny 
 of these old Anglo-Saxons through whom we have 
 received our names? Who remonstrates with me? 
 Have we not sat by the Stillwell at noon and lis- 
 tened to its progeny chatter like gurgling waters ? 
 Have we not scaled the Aldridge (high ridge), 
 whose progeny have suffered an inappreciative 
 populace to corrupt the name of that eminence, 
 where beautiful landscape scenes burst upon our 
 
CIVIL, AND RKLIGIOUS OFFICES. 171 
 
 view, into Aldrich? Have we not listened to the 
 songs and chirps of the birds of the Forestf Why 
 complain, then ? 
 
 But here is a priest's cell, and verily, as we re- 
 fresh ourselves at his humble board, we are im- 
 pressed with the fact that he gave the world a sur- 
 name through his progeny, in spite of the prohib- 
 itory law of the mother Church. But how the 
 mighty are fallen ! Here even the progeny of the 
 Popes greet us ! The infection is wide-spread 
 since the Popes have set the example, for here 
 comes the descendants of the Abbot, the Prior or 
 Pryor (you may spell their names either way, for 
 precedent and rule are unknown factors in spell- 
 ing surnames). But these holy Churchmen were 
 not ashamed of their crime, for they suffered their 
 progeny to take their names, even if their offices 
 were not communicable. Really there seems to be 
 but little difference in this respect between saint 
 and sinner ! But here comes a descendant of the 
 Dean. Alas ! he appears to have tarried too long 
 at the wine, but the Protestants are not one whit 
 behind the Catholics when it comes to breaking 
 law, for there goes Bishop and Parsons arm in 
 arm, and jolly fellows they are ! Perhaps they 
 have never thought of the holy ashes of their pro- 
 genitors. But we sometimes see the Sexton a 
 little too lively for one holding his office, while the 
 songs of the Clark were not always learned at Sun- 
 day school or holy service. But holy privileges 
 and immunities do not always make a man after 
 
172 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 God's heart, for here is a little tun reared under 
 the very shadow of the holy temple, and men call 
 the offspring of him who dwelt so near the house 
 of God Templetons, but alas! like many of 
 Adam's degenerate sons, the Templetons are not 
 all Christians. 
 
 The Jordans are descended from a religious 
 people. Their progenitors were probably Cru- 
 saders, for it was the universal custom of the pil- 
 grims to Palestine to bring back with them a bottle 
 of water from the Jordan for baptismal purposes. 
 " Hence," says Skeat, " the term Jordan came at 
 last to signify a bottle or vessel in which fluids 
 were kept, and in this way the term came in use 
 as a common English Christian name, and even- 
 tually became a common surname, just as Henry, 
 Thomas, and William became patronymics. The 
 bottle, however, as well as the child or children, 
 took the name, doubtless, from the River Jordan, 
 the water of which was used at the christening. 
 But alas ! many of the degenerate sons of men 
 have left off carrying bottles of holy water from 
 the Jordan, and instead of that baptismal water to 
 which superstition ascribed great merit, carry con- 
 cealed on their persons and otherwise bottles con- 
 taining fluids intended for other purposes than 
 sacramental uses. May none of the descendants 
 of the Jordans ever thus compromise the holy her- 
 itage which their fathers have left them ! 
 
 Our progenitors were very religious. As to their 
 piety so much cannot be affirmed; yet they had 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 173 
 
 holy aspirations. The parent who wished his 
 child to be become preeminently pious incorpo- 
 rated that desire into the name bestowed. Take 
 Goddard as an example. The name is from the 
 Old German, and signifies just what we would 
 mean to-day by the term Godward. Godfrey is 
 from the Old High German, and signifies "at 
 peace with God," a name doubtless embodying a 
 wish on the part of the first parent, who bestowed 
 it upon his child as a Christian name. Gulley is 
 rather a peculiar-looking surname, a first-rate 
 name for speculation on the part of the ignorant 
 relative to its origin. A child was once found in 
 a gulley, and the little stranger was given the sur- 
 name Gulley, just as it has been said that Hedge- 
 path as a surname sprang from the fact of a child 
 having been found by such a path, when really it 
 is a territorial name, and simply marks the place 
 where the first man who took that name lived. 
 A friend wrote me, "When I was in college in 
 Virginia, it was understood there that the common 
 name Baskerville was a corruption of ' Basket-in- 
 field,' because the family sprang from a child 
 found exposed in a basket in a field," afar-fetched 
 invention indeed to account for this old territorial 
 French name. I once heard a lady gravely state 
 that a child was once found snugly stored away 
 under an old bow-frame of a wagon, and that the 
 foster mother bestowed upon it the surnominal ap- 
 pellation Bobo. Hence the family by that name. 
 It is a great pity that such inventive talent was not 
 
174 ^ RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 turned into the realms of fiction. It certainly 
 would have been quite an addition to the school of 
 idealists. Bobo is an old Teutonic word, and is 
 ' ' one of the many forms of the primitive and uni- 
 versal adba, father." In the Old German it occurs 
 in three forms: Bobo, Bobbo, and Poppo. It is 
 synonymous with the English Pope. But to return 
 to the surname GuUey, Gudleifr is a Norse name, 
 and signifies "divine relic." History informs us 
 that a man by that name came to England with the 
 Danes, where the name was " turned into a sur- 
 name as Gulleiv, then shortened into GuUey, and 
 lengthened into Gulliver, a veritable though quaint 
 surname for the Lemuel Gulliver whom Swift con- 
 ducts through Laputa and Brobdignag with cool- 
 ness worthy of northern forefathers." 
 
 " Mauritius was naturally a term with the Ro- 
 mans for a man of Moorish lineage. The first 
 saint of this name was the Tribune of the Theban 
 legion, all Christians, who perished to a man 
 under the blows of their fellow-soldiers, near the 
 foot of the great St. Bernard. To this brave man 
 is due the great frequency of Maurits in Switzer- 
 land, passing into Maurizio on the Italian border 
 and Moritz on the German. The old French was 
 Meurisse; the old English, Morris." The Breton 
 form is Norris; the name, however, when assimi- 
 lated to the Latin spelling, becomes Maurice.* 
 The Irish and Scottish Morris must not be con- 
 founded with the Enghsh and French Morris and 
 
 *See "Christian Names," by Charlotte M. Yonge, p. 201. 
 
civile AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 175 
 
 Maurice. The name as it occurs in Ireland and 
 Scotland is in "imitation of the Gaelic Morier- 
 tagh," a sea warrior. 
 
 Samson was "a mighty man of valor," a prod- 
 igy in strength. Heqce the British Church did not 
 pass him by when it sought for names at the bap- 
 tismal font. Samson was a prominent Welsh 
 bishop and saint in the olden time, from whom 
 the name became a monastic appellation, as is 
 evidenced by Mr. Carlye's favorite Abbot Sam- 
 son. Our English progenitors, however, together 
 with all the English-speaking world since, have in- 
 sisted, in writing the surname Samson, in putting 
 a^ where it has no business, just as is the case 
 with the English name Hampton. The French 
 have, in this name, changed the a into i, and write 
 it Simson, "which is perhaps more like the origi- 
 nal; and our Simpson and Simkins may thus be 
 derived from it, when they do not come from 
 Simon, which was much more frequent." Simeon 
 is Hebrew from schama, to hear, it is frequently 
 confounded with the Greek Simon, which, I be- 
 lieve, has come to have the same import, obedient. 
 The two last surnames, together with Simmonds, 
 Simmons, Simcoe, and Sykes, are all corruptions 
 of that Hebrew appellation first bestowed by the 
 old patriarch Jacob on one of his sons. 
 
 We may thus derive many English surnames 
 from Christian names, which were really gathered 
 from the four corners of the earth, and which 
 were brought into what, in those days, was a very 
 
176 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 dark corner of the world, which explains many of 
 the inconsistencies which adhere to surnames. 
 
 Names which were derived from civil offices 
 are very common. We have Kings and .Queens 
 among us, but those who bear these titles of roy- 
 alty must not become elated and claim truly roy- 
 al descent. The fact that a man is named King 
 or Queen may really evidence nothing more than 
 that his progenitors were merely the attendants, or 
 household servants, of royalty, for there is but a 
 step between the King's John, and John King. 
 One thing is patent, however: the progenitors of the 
 Kings and Queens were men who at least " stood 
 in the presence of Kings." Men were knighted 
 for brave deeds, and since there were Knights 
 many, it is no matter of surprise that they have 
 multiplied " from the rivers to the ends of the 
 earth." The squire has always been an important 
 civil functionary. His progeny have taken the 
 name Squires and Squiers. The Page, Earl, 
 Baron, Duke, Lord, Constable, and Stuart have 
 each given the world a surname. 
 
 As a surname combining the dual idea con- 
 tained in the caption of this chapter the writer begs 
 to close this ramble among the civil and religious 
 offices of our ancestors by presenting his own sur- 
 nominal cognomen. Daniel is an old name, and 
 is of Hebrew origin. It means " a divine judge." 
 The old prophet of the captivity, vindicated, in his 
 administration, the validity of the idea embodied 
 in his name; he, like the American branch of the 
 
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS OFFICES. 1 77 
 
 family, which tradition says is of Jewish origin, 
 having sprung from a Jewess, who was converted 
 to Christianity in France, and whose descendants, 
 bearing her Jewish name, were banished from 
 France by the revocation of the edict of Nantz, 
 and found homes in the colony of Virginia, was 
 very jealous of his name. The Chaldean monarch 
 imposed upon him the name Belteshazzar, which 
 was merely the translation of his name into the 
 Chaldean tongue ; but it is remarkable that Daniel 
 never appropriated the heathen title by which his 
 name was translated, while he calls his three com- 
 panions by their heathen appellatives. Knowing 
 the Daniels as the writer does, this is by no means 
 strange, for all the family most emphatically refuse 
 to admit the pluralizing letter s, which the popu- 
 lace is so determined to attach to the name. I 
 mean, of course, the genuine Huguenot family, 
 for some have admitted the letter s, and write 
 their name Daniels. But the genuine Daniel fam- 
 ily, from the lion's den down to 1893, is always 
 singular, perhaps in more ways than one. If the 
 reader is offended at this breach of good taste, 
 however, he may ramble into the next chapter. 
 12 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. 
 
 IT was Sydney Smith who said that it required a 
 hammer and a chisel to get a joke into a 
 Scotchman's head. Perhaps the reverend wit 
 never knew why his Gaehc neighbors were so 
 steeled against the funny things that Englishmen 
 wrote and spoke. There is a possibility of satiety 
 even in the risible regions of jocundity. That 
 which is ludicrous at first may become so common 
 as to disgust rather than delight men. He who 
 would arouse the risible faculty of a soul must find 
 out something new under the sun. Jokes are 
 really so common with the Scotch that their prev- 
 alence have rendered that which is only ordinari- 
 ly funny, dull and insipid. Their surnames are 
 frequently veritable jokes. " Dr. Guthrie reports 
 having read of one Rev. Mr. Scamp, who was in 
 a sense, always a scamp, yet was much esteemed 
 while he lived, and died greatly lamented." His 
 very name was a capital jest, and Dr. Guthrie saw 
 the point without the aid of either a hammer or a 
 chisel. Some Gaelic surnames in common use 
 to-day surpass farcically even that unfortunate 
 preacher's humiliating cognomen. There is John 
 Dougal, the "black stranger," who is neither a 
 stranger nor very dark. He married a Scotch 
 (178) 
 
A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. 1 79 
 
 lassie, of course, for the Scotch are generally clan- 
 nish ; Bessie McDougal may have been her name — 
 that is, Bessie, the son of the black stranger. But 
 what is truly remarkable, they raised as interesting 
 a family of as white children as could be found 
 on the American continent. It was a feat which 
 no Englishman could have possibly accomplished. 
 Dugald is precisely the same name as Dougal, or 
 Dougall, as it is sometimes spelled. The two names 
 " have been from time immemorial Highland 
 names, and together with Donald serve as the 
 national nickname of the Gael among the Low- 
 landers," says Charlotte M. Yonge. Dowal is an 
 Irish form of the name Dougal. 
 
 Donald is said to have been the first Christian 
 king of Scotland. The author we have just quot- 
 ed, Charlotte M. Yonge, maintains that the name 
 is the Anglicism of Donghal, brown stranger, but 
 the Irish glossographers have translated it ' ' proud 
 chieftain." The colony of Scotch Highlanders 
 planted about the middle of the last century at 
 Fayetteville, N. C, was "made famous by its 
 having been the place where the heroine Flora 
 MacDonald, with her husband, found a home after 
 she had effected the escape of Prince Charles 
 Stuart, having disguised him in a woman's clothes 
 and passed him off as her servant; and his head 
 was worth thirty thousand pounds, and not a High- 
 lander, poor as they all then were, could be tempt- 
 ed to betray him." The heroic Flora, of whose 
 adventures in her early years Sir Walter Scott has 
 
l8o A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 written much, while on a voyage from America to 
 Scotland took passage in a ship which was at- 
 tacked by the enemy ; and Flora, although nearly 
 sixty years of age, bravely engaged in the fight, 
 and thus had her arm broken in the war of Amer- 
 ican independence. The heroic Amazon was, 
 therefore, true for once to her surname. Flora, the 
 son of the proud chief. 
 
 Douglas means dark gray. By an ancient, 
 though improbable, tradition the Douglasses are 
 said to have derived their name from a champion 
 who had greatly distinguished himself in an action. 
 When the king demanded by whom the battle 
 had been won, the attendants are said to have an- 
 swered, " Sholto Douglas, sir," which is said to 
 mean, "Yonder dark gray man." But many 
 writers contend, notwithstanding the tradition 
 which we have quoted, that the surname is terri- 
 torial and that it is taken from Douglas river and 
 vale. We cannot dogmatically dispute this old 
 tradition, for the victor to whom the name was ap- 
 plied may have been dark so far as complexion is 
 concerned, and gray beard and hair may have 
 filled the description otherwise. If the tradition 
 is true, the descendants of the Douglases have 
 outgrown the complexion of their fathers. Saun- 
 ders is a Scotch corruption of the Greek Alex- 
 ander, helper of men. Perhaps the improvement 
 of the Douglases relative to their complexion is ow- 
 ing to intermarriage with the Saunderses. Brian 
 or Bryan became popular as a Christian name, 
 
A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. l8l 
 
 and hence passed into a surname from the great 
 renown of Brian Boromhe, King of Leinster. 
 He was victor in twenty-five battles fought between 
 the Irish and the Danes. He was killed finally at 
 " the great battle of Clontarf on the Good Friday 
 of 1014." It is not therefore a Gaelic, but a Cel- 
 tic name, and signifies strong. The surnames 
 Gregg, Grigg, and Griggs are all from the Gaelic 
 grig or gairig, fierce. But the Brians and 
 Greggs have rarely intermarried, and strange to 
 say their descendants have been as gentle as the 
 children of other men. 
 
 There is an interesting and famous legend rela- 
 tive to the Neil family. Phenius, the progenitor 
 of the Neils, taught the Phoenicians letters, who, out 
 of gratitude for his great work, adopted his name 
 as their national appellation. The son of Phenius, 
 Niul, as the name is written in the old legends, 
 was sent by his father to Egypt on an embassy to 
 one of the Egyptian kings. This Niul, from 
 niahd, a champion, married Scota, whence Scot- 
 land gets her name, the daughter of that Pharaoh 
 who perished in the Red Sea while in pursuit of 
 the Israelites. This famous son of Phenius named 
 the river Nile, in honor of himself to emulate his 
 father, who had given his name to a nation. The 
 course of friendship, however, did not continue 
 unbroken between Niul and his adopted country- 
 men. A dispute arose between him and the 
 Egyptians, which resulted in Niul's migration to 
 Spain. This renowned son of Phenius became 
 
l82 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 ttie progenitor of the whole legion of Niales, Nails, 
 Neils, McNiels, and O'Neils, who have been scat- 
 tered to the four corners of the earth. 
 
 It will be remembered that James I. gave the 
 shield of the O'Neils of Ulster, upon which was 
 engraved a red hand, "to the knights baronets, 
 whom he created as undertakers of the new 
 colony of English, which he wished to found in 
 Ulster." This red hand has a history. 
 
 Neill of the Nine Hostages was one of the 
 greatest of the pagan kings of Ireland. He was 
 next to the last of that name, who ruled ancient 
 Hibernia, and was assassinated about the year 
 405. His children, however, known as the Hy- 
 Niel, became the most noted of all the clans of 
 Northern Ireland. Of them the story is told that 
 on going to settle on the Ulster coast one of them 
 resolvsd to take seisin of the new country by 
 touching the shore before any one else, and find- 
 ing his boat outstripped, he tore out his dagger, 
 cut off his right hand at the wrist, and threw it on 
 the beach, so that his fingers were the first laid on 
 the domain." The war cry of the O'Neill's was, 
 therefore, '■^ Lamhdeary Aboo," red hand set on. 
 
 It was this renowned Neill of the Nine Hos- 
 tages who unconsciously planted the Church in 
 Ireland. His clan made a piratical descent on the 
 Romans at Valentia, and among the captives car- 
 ried away was the boy who afterward became the 
 Apostle of Ireland. 
 
 Fingal is a Scotch surname, and means the 
 
A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. 183 
 
 white stranger, and Finlay, from Fionnlaoch, sig- 
 nifies the white soldier. Fion or Finn was " the 
 grand center of ancient Gaelic giant lore." Fion 
 is the same as the Cymbric names Gwynn or 
 Wynn, and means white or fair. He was called 
 by the name of Finn in the Saxon Chronicle, and 
 is there said to have been Odin's fourth forefather. 
 
 Beath, signifying life, was a saint sometimes 
 called Hien or Hayne. She was born in Ireland, 
 and in 620', or about that time, she was consecrated 
 at Whitby, in the North of England, as the first 
 nun of Northumbria. As the names of saints 
 were particularly sought and applied as Christian 
 names, the name Beath passed into the surname 
 Bethea. But we are told that this saint left North- 
 umbria in charge of St. Hilda, and " founded the 
 abbey known by her English name of St. Bees." 
 Hence we have the surname McBee, in which the 
 final s has been dropped, and which in the Teu- 
 tonic tongue means the son of prayer, or in its 
 Gaelic signification the son of life. Whatever the 
 old saint did beside, it must be admitted that she 
 gave the world two surnames. Macbeth, son of 
 life, is from this saint. 
 
 Mears is properly an Irish name, from mear, 
 merry. The Scotch surname Gillies is from Gi- 
 olla losa, the servant of Christ, a homely contrac- 
 tion. The Scotch Catholics bestowed much wor- 
 ship on the archangel St. Michael. Hence we 
 have the surname Carmichael, the friend of Mi- 
 chael, and Gilmichael, the servant of Michael. 
 
184 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Gilmory and Gilmour are the same name, and 
 mean the servant of Mary, the Virgin. GioUa-na- 
 naonih, servant of all the saints, was a very fre- 
 quent Irish name during the Middle Ages in the 
 Highlands. It passed into Gille-ne-ohn, and was 
 finally contracted into the modern surname Niven, 
 and of course since there were Nivens there must 
 needs be MacNivens. 
 
 When Neill of the Nine Hostages made his pi- 
 ratical descent on the Roman colony at Valentia, 
 and carried off to Ireland the young Roman, 
 British Calpurnius, he and his clan jestingly named 
 the boy captive Patricius, the noble. That name 
 was destined to cling forever to Ireland and Scot- 
 land. St. Bridget (strength), the pupil of St. 
 Patrick, has had many votaries. Gilbrtd, servant 
 of Bridget, has been corrupted into the Scotch 
 Gilbert, while Maelbridh, the pupil of Bridget, 
 has became MacBride. " The great object of Kel- 
 tic veneration was, however, St. Patrick," says 
 Charlotte M. Yonge. " Nobody ventured to be 
 Patrick alone, but many were Giolla Phadraig 
 (servant of Patrick) or Mael Phadraig (pupil of 
 Patrick), and the descendants were Mag Giolla 
 Phadraig (son of the servant of Patrick), whence 
 arises the surname Fitzpatrick, translating the 
 Mac and omitting the Gillie. Others again were 
 Kilpatrick, but it is not easy to tell whether this 
 Kil is the contraction of Gille or territorial, from 
 the cell or church of St. Patrick." Afterward, 
 however, the prefixes were left off, and many 
 
A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. 1 85 
 
 persons in Scotland inherited the surname Patrick 
 and Pate or Patie, which are contractions of the 
 former. 
 
 The great missionary to Ireland, St. Columba, 
 had many namesakes. It is interesting to observe 
 the changes in that name brought about by the di- 
 alects of the Gael and Kelt. In the Latin tongue 
 it signifies a dove. Gillie and mael are met with 
 as prefixes, as Gillecolumb and Maelcolum. The 
 latter has become the very common Scotch name 
 Malcolm, pupil of the dove. Malcolm Kenmore 
 (great head) was the grandson of Duncan (brown 
 chief), and was the first to lift Scotland out of a 
 state of barbarism. Perhaps he did more for his 
 country than any other king that ever ruled over 
 it. Malcolm in the Highlands became Galium. 
 Hence the surnames CoUum and McCoUum. The 
 a has been corrupted into o. Columba was cor- 
 rupted into Colin in the Lowlands, but passing 
 into the Highlands it was subjected to another di- 
 alectic change, and was called Cailein, whence 
 we derive the surname Kilian. 
 
 "There are some curious memorials," says 
 Isaac Taj'lor, "of that influx of Anglo-Norman 
 nobles into Scotland, which took place during the 
 reign of David I. and Malcolm Canmore. In an- 
 cient records the name Maxwell is written in the 
 Norman form of Maccusville. The name of Rob- 
 ert de Montealt [literally steep mountain] has 
 been corrupted into Mowatt and Moffat, and the 
 families of Sinclair, Frazer, Baliol, Bruce, Camp- 
 
l86 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 bell, Colville, Somerville, Grant (le grand), and 
 Fleming are all, as their names bear witness, of 
 continental ancestry. Richard Waleys, that is, 
 Richard the foreigner, was the ancestor of the 
 great Wallace." Hence that surname is a corrup- 
 tion of Waleys. 
 
 Clyde is from the Gaelic clith, strong. Kin- 
 ard is from Kinnaird, high head, or more prop- 
 erly, high peak. Charlotte M. Yonge accounts 
 for the surname Kelley in this way: " Giolla 
 Cheallaigh was common in honor of Ceallach, a 
 very local saint of royal birth, who was educated 
 by St. Kieran. On his father's death he was 
 about to ascend the throne, when his tutor inter- 
 fered, probably considering this an infraction of 
 his vows, and on his persisting, laid him under a 
 curse after the usual fashion of Irish saints. He 
 lost his kingdom and became a bishop, but re- 
 signed his see for fear of his enemies, and retired 
 to a hermitage on Lough Con, where, however, he 
 was murdered by four ecclesiastical students, 
 whose names all began with Maol. His corpse 
 was hidden in a tree, where for once it did not 
 show the incorruptibility supposed to be the prop- 
 erty of sanctity. The murderers were all put to 
 death on an eminence, called from them Ardna- 
 maol, or hill of the shavelings, and his admirers 
 have resulted in the surname O'Killy-kelly, or for 
 short, Kelly" — that is, Kelly is a corruption of 
 Ceallach, which simply meant a devotee, and was 
 applied to one living in a cell. A liberal transla- 
 
A FEW GAELIC SURNAMES. 1 87 
 
 tion of the whole name would, therefore, be 
 " grandsons of the servant of the cell." 
 
 Toole and O' Toole are derived from Tuathal, 
 lordly. Kean is from cian, vast or large. The 
 surname Tiernay is derived from Tighearnach, 
 kingly, an Irish saint who died about the end of 
 the fifth century. Lachlan or Loughlan is said by 
 etymologists to be derived from laochail, warlike. 
 
 Ferguson is a very interesting Scotch surname. 
 It is claimed by etymologists that Fear is analo- 
 gous to the Latin vir. The Gaelic for man is 
 fear, and the plural \s, fir. Thus Fear-co-hreith, 
 the man who judges, was Latinized by the old 
 Romans and became Vergobretus, the magistrate, 
 it will be remembered, of the ^dui. From the 
 Gaelic gus, or deed, and fear, a man, we have 
 Fearghus, which, as a surname, was as prevalent 
 among the Gael as Smith is among the English. 
 The Fergusons, the descendants of the Fearghus, 
 a race of kings like the O'Neils, are the sons of 
 the man of deeds. 
 
 Buchanan simply means a washer of linen. It 
 is the Scotch form of the English name Buckner. 
 
 Gillespie is from the Scotch Gillaspick, the 
 bishop's servant, which, it is probable, is a con- 
 traction of the Celtic Giolla Easbuig, the last 
 word being the Celtic form of the Latin efiscofus. 
 Gill and McGill mean the servant and the son of 
 the servant. 
 
 We have rambled far enough over Scotch terri- 
 tory to be impressed with the beauty and trans- 
 
l88 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 cendent interest of Gaelic surnames. An open 
 field full of surnominal curiosities, but very diffi- 
 cult to traverse, lies before any one who may un- 
 dertake to trace the meaning and history of Scotch 
 names. We conclude this stroll over Gaelic terri- 
 tory in the hope that some Scotchman will give to 
 the world a work embodying the meaning, history, 
 and the traditions of Gaelic names, for no people 
 have a richer store of legendary lore than the 
 Scotch. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Do not fear; 
 We shall reach our home to-night. 
 
 WE have sought recreation in the rural dis- 
 tricts; no high mountain has been eluded; 
 no beautiful river, placid lake, or prattling stream 
 has been avoided. We have plunged into the 
 forest, and traversed the beautiful plains and val- 
 leys; and now, as we turn our feet toward home, 
 it may be necessary that we take in the place 
 where John Clothier stands with smiling counte- 
 nance, ready to replace our tattered garments for a 
 moderate remuneration. Henry Gaylord and 
 William Lovelace, who are now somewhat crest- 
 fallen because of the havoc the brushwood has 
 made of their elegant suits, will no doubt hail this 
 proposition with delight. Richard Barefoot 
 may heave a sigh, however, when he learns that 
 our pathway leads directly across that territory 
 that gave the progenitors of the Rockwoods and 
 Rockhills their surnominal appellations. The 
 way we have chosen is unavoidable, however; and 
 if any are tired and foot-sore, our genial compan- 
 ion, George Lively, will inspire courage with many 
 songs, and his cheerful deportment, together with 
 the jests of Richard Gleeman, will keep us in a 
 hopeful mood till we reach our journey's end. We 
 
 (189) 
 
ipO A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 will take the red way which leads by the ancestral 
 home of the Radways, and thence across the 
 Westwood, where the ancestors of those in our 
 company who bear that appellation, once lived. 
 If our way leads us by some steep declivity over- 
 grown with ferns, it will impress us with the ear- 
 liest associations of the Furnside family. But 
 here is a crude hut in need of repairs. Perhaps 
 the owner would recover his cot if he could think 
 of the necessary work when it was not raining. 
 Verily, he has very much the same spirit that the 
 pioneer interviewed by the Arkansaw Traveler had. 
 John Overstreet, who boasts of having a long line 
 of city-bred ancestors, may twit George Needham 
 as we pass by the decaying cottage, but even that 
 will add to the fun by the way. Now our path- 
 way divides: one prong leads over the hill where 
 that John whose progeny took the name Overhill 
 once lived, and Richard, whose descendants are 
 called Dickover, may have been John's neighbor, 
 or brother so far as we know. The other prong 
 leads up the murmuring brook which flows out 
 from an ancient hog pasture. Hence its name 
 Hardenbrook.* Here the progenitor of the fam- 
 ily which has taken the name of the brook as a 
 surname once lived. The Beckwiths may have 
 been his nearest neighbors, for that name was ap- 
 plied to one who lived by a rivulet. If we con- 
 tinue our journey along this murmuring brook, we 
 shall pass, cropping out from the hillside, a deposit 
 
 * See page 107. 
 
A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. I9I 
 
 of chalk, popularly known as white acre, contract- 
 ed into the surname Whitaker. Longacre and 
 Foraker may have been originally town lots, and 
 one may have been in front of the other ; at least 
 the For(e)aker was in front of some man's landed 
 possessions, whether or not it was the oblong 
 shaped lot which has given us a surname. 
 
 But we have not noticed the numerous play- 
 grounds by the way. May day was a great day 
 in mediaeval England. Mayfields are numerous 
 because there were many places where games 
 were celebrated on the first day of this month. 
 Those of our progenitors who may have loved syl- 
 van retreats built their cottages by the side of 
 large bodies of woodland. Hence the name 
 Woodside. Those who thus reared their crude 
 buildings in the dark shadow of the wood may 
 have been freemen or they may have been Saxon 
 thralls who ran away from their Norman masters. 
 Hence we have the names Bond and Freeman. 
 
 But as we have talked and rambled we have 
 drawn near to the site of an old mill. The pro- 
 genitors of the Millhouse family once lived here. 
 They arrested the water that rushed over these 
 rocks, turned it into flues, and poured its concen- 
 trated force on the great driving wheel, and thus 
 made for themselves an honest living, and the 
 place without even a very great "local habita- 
 tion" has given many a man a name. But do 
 you hear Robert Gritman singing? His ancestors 
 furnished sand to put where we place carpets. 
 
192 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Why does he sing? Because the site of this old 
 mill is picturesque, and he is like a pilgrim seeking 
 rest and shelter. What does he say? 
 
 Mine be a cot beside the hill ; 
 
 A beehive's hum shall soothe my ear. ; 
 A willowy brook that turns a mill 
 
 With many a fall shall linger near. 
 
 The swallow oft beneath my thatch 
 Shall twitter from her clay -built nest; 
 
 Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, 
 And share my meal, a welcome guest. 
 
 Around my ivied porch shall spring 
 
 Each fragrant flower that drinks the dew ; 
 
 And Lucy, at her wheel, shall sing 
 In russet gown and apron blue. 
 
 But hold your tongue, Robert Gritman! Her 
 name may not be Lucy, after all. Who knows 
 but that you may persuade some ill-omened Jane 
 to share your humble cottage? Ill-omened, did I 
 say? Why, yes. Was not Lady Jane Grey be- 
 headed for treason ? Was not Jane Beaufort, the 
 wife of James I. of Scotland, cruelly murdered? 
 Jane Seymour was one of the victims of old King 
 Hal. And was not Jeanne de Valois, wife of 
 Louis XII., repudiated for her lack of personal 
 beauty? Was not Jeanne d' Albret, the mother of 
 Henry IV., poisoned by Catharine de' Medici? 
 Did not Jane of Castile lose her reason through 
 the neglect of her husband, Philip the Handsome, 
 Archduke of Austria? Did not Jane I. of Naples 
 cause her husband to be murdered? and did she 
 not afterward marry his assassin? And was not 
 
A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. I93 
 
 Jane II. of Naples one of the most wanton of 
 women? But here is William Jaynes, of our 
 company of ramblers, and a noble fellow he is! 
 Such progeny of some Scottish dame who bore 
 that unfortunate name redeems the ill-omened 
 name from all of its curses. 
 
 Did Jeremiah Alderman say he had lost his hat? 
 Such is the luck of ramblers; tired, hungry, foot- 
 sore, ragged, and hatless, we return. But the • 
 lights of the city stream out through the twilight ; 
 the Hatmaker is there, and over the place where 
 his products are sold may hang a sign such as 
 could have been seen in the staid old city of 
 Charleston some years ago: "/. Ketcham & U. 
 Cheatham." 
 
 We love home, the home of this nineteenth cen- 
 tury, with whatever defect, however, it may have, 
 better than any home we have seen in our ram- 
 bles. We will rest now. Adieu! 
 13 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Abbot 171 
 
 Acker 89 
 
 Acton 89 
 
 Acworth 89 
 
 Adair 89 
 
 Agricola 161 
 
 Aiken 134 
 
 Albret, Jeanne d' 192 
 
 Alden 103 
 
 Alderman 193 
 
 Aldrich 171 
 
 Aldridge 1 70 
 
 Alexander 180 
 
 AUamong 33 
 
 Allerdale 98 
 
 Allerton 98 
 
 Anderson 163 
 
 Andrew 168 
 
 Andrews 168 
 
 Appleby 98 
 
 Applegarth 152 
 
 Appleton 98 
 
 Archer 22, 65 
 
 Arden 107 
 
 Arding 40 
 
 Ardington 40 
 
 Arkwriglit 80 
 
 Arley 92 
 
 Armstrong 49 
 
 Arnold 102 
 
 Arring 102 
 
 Arrington 102 
 
 Ash 90 
 
 (194) 
 
 Page. 
 
 Ashburn 155 
 
 Ashburner 25 
 
 Ashby 90 
 
 Ashfield go 
 
 Ashingham 146 
 
 Ashington 146 
 
 Ashland go 
 
 Ashley 89 
 
 Ashmore go 
 
 Ashton go 
 
 Attaculaculla 30 
 
 Attaway 138 
 
 Atwell g6 
 
 Atwood g6 
 
 Awataluywwe 25 
 
 Bacon 80 
 
 Bacot no 
 
 Badger 74 
 
 Baldridge 44 
 
 Baliol 185 
 
 Bancroft 89 
 
 Barber 65 
 
 Barefoot 189 
 
 Barham 1^2 
 
 Barron 176 
 
 Barrow 120 
 
 Barton 142 
 
 Baskerville 173 
 
 Bass 47 
 
 Baxter 69 
 
 Beasley g2 
 
 Beaufort, Jane 192 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 195 
 
 Page. 
 
 Beavers 8i 
 
 Beck , 97 
 
 Beckett 97 
 
 Beckham 152 
 
 Beckwith 190 
 
 Bedford 157 
 
 Bedgood 32 
 
 Bee 183 
 
 Bell SO 
 
 Belling loi 
 
 Bellinger loi 
 
 Beltings 40 
 
 Bennington 100 
 
 Benton loi 
 
 Beresford 156 
 
 Berkeley 89 
 
 Bethea 183 
 
 Beveridge 155 
 
 Beverly 92 
 
 Bicker 30 
 
 Bickersdike 30 
 
 Bickersteth 30 
 
 Bigham 152 
 
 Billings 164 
 
 Binfield loi 
 
 Birbeck 100 
 
 Birch 91 
 
 Birchholt 100 
 
 Birchley 89 
 
 Birmingham loi 
 
 Bishop 171 
 
 Black 25, 131 
 
 Blackburn 158 
 
 Blackhead 26 
 
 Blackman 25 
 
 Blackmer 159 
 
 Bloodaxe, Eric 55 
 
 Bluetooth, Harold 27 
 
 Boardman 80 
 
 Page. 
 
 Boatwright 79 
 
 Bobo 174 
 
 Bodfish 47 
 
 Boggs 98 
 
 Bold 57 
 
 Bolt 50 
 
 Bond 191 
 
 Bookhammer 72 
 
 Bookstaver 72 
 
 Bosomworth 150 
 
 Bower 77 
 
 Bowman 80 
 
 Bo wy er 65 
 
 Br^dbrook 158 
 
 Bradford 156 
 
 Bradlaw 95 
 
 Bradpole 159 
 
 Bradwell 117 
 
 Breakspear 34 
 
 Brewer 68 
 
 Brewster 68 
 
 Brian 180 
 
 Bridgeman , 155 
 
 Bridges 155 
 
 Bridget 187 
 
 Bristow 153 
 
 Briton 39, 146 
 
 Brock 34 
 
 Brockman 34 
 
 Broadhurst 155 
 
 Broadf ord 1 56 
 
 Broadwater 157 
 
 Bromley 101 
 
 Brookover 158 
 
 Brown 131 
 
 Bruce 185 
 
 Bryan 180 
 
 Bry tford loi 
 
 Buchanan 187 
 
196 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Buck 52 
 
 Buckhalter 100 
 
 Buckhurst 100 
 
 Buckland 100 
 
 Buckley 100 
 
 Buckner 74 
 
 Bull 52 
 
 Bullfinch S3 
 
 Bullock 52 
 
 Burnham 152 
 
 Burnley 158 
 
 Burns 109 
 
 Burnside 109 
 
 Burton 142 
 
 Butler 69 
 
 Caldwell 118 
 
 Galium 185 
 
 Cambeck 158 
 
 Camden 103 
 
 Camlin 158 
 
 Campbell 185 
 
 Candbeck 97 
 
 Candler 75 
 
 Canning 103 
 
 Capet 56 
 
 Caraway ^2 
 
 Carden 108 
 
 Carlisle 108 
 
 Carlton 146 
 
 Carmichael 183 
 
 Carpenter 64 
 
 Carr 108 
 
 Carrier 72 
 
 Carson 108 
 
 Carstairs 122 
 
 Carswell 158 
 
 Carter 79 
 
 Cartwright 79 
 
 Page. 
 
 Carwell 158 
 
 Carver 64 
 
 Castile, Jane of 192 
 
 Castles S7 
 
 Centings loi 
 
 Chamberlain 63 
 
 Chandler 75 
 
 Chapman 54 
 
 Charford 157 
 
 Charlton 146 
 
 Chatialwocke 148 
 
 Chaucer 60 
 
 Cheesman 72 
 
 Chester 142 
 
 Chichester 142 
 
 Child 34 
 
 Chosen, Edred 26 
 
 Churchill 122 
 
 Clark 171 
 
 Clarkson 169 
 
 Claybourn 109 
 
 Claybui-n 109 
 
 Cleveland 121 
 
 Clifford 157 
 
 Clifton 121 
 
 Cline 147 
 
 Clinton 147 
 
 Clock S9 
 
 Clothier 189 
 
 Clyde 186 
 
 Cobden 107 
 
 Coeur-de-Lion $(> 
 
 Coffin 23 
 
 Colchester 143 
 
 Colden 108 
 
 Colin 185 
 
 Collier 69 
 
 Collum 185 
 
 Columha 185 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 197 
 
 Page. 
 
 Colville 186 
 
 Comton 119 
 
 Constable... 176 
 
 Consaponalieso 148 
 
 Cook , 70 
 
 Cookson 70 
 
 Cooper 79, 134 
 
 Copeman ...........; 84 
 
 Corane j 25 
 
 Cornish 96 
 
 Cornwall 97 
 
 Cotes Ill 
 
 Cotgrave 147 
 
 Cotingham , 147 
 
 Cotton 147 
 
 Coulter 49 
 
 Covington 145 
 
 Coward 80 
 
 Cowley 89 
 
 Crabb 58 
 
 Crabtree 98 
 
 Crane 32 
 
 Craneshaw 123 
 
 Crenshaw 123 
 
 Craven 32 
 
 Crier 83 
 
 Crissman 82 
 
 Croft 88 
 
 Cromwell 123 
 
 Cross 57 
 
 Crosswell 118 
 
 Crowe 58 
 
 Cunningham 152 
 
 Cushman 80 
 
 Cutler 80 
 
 Dalton 146 
 
 Daniel 176 
 
 Daniels 177 
 
 Page. 
 
 Dare 48 
 
 Darby 90 
 
 Darr 48 
 
 Davis 168 
 
 Davids 168 
 
 Davidson 168 
 
 Davies 168 
 
 Dean 63, 171 
 
 Deed-doer, Edmund 26 
 
 Denton 147 
 
 Derby .. 90 
 
 Dexter 70 
 
 Dickover 190 
 
 Dicksoa 163 
 
 Dillbeck 158 
 
 Dingman 21 
 
 Dixon 163 
 
 Dodd 119 
 
 Doddridge 119 
 
 Donald 179 
 
 Donghal 179' 
 
 Dorchester 142 
 
 Dorr 48 
 
 Dougal 179 
 
 Dougall 179 
 
 Douglas i8o 
 
 Dove 53 
 
 Dowal 179 
 
 Dowden 108 
 
 Downer 77 
 
 Downham 106 
 
 Drake 53 
 
 Draper 80 
 
 Drayton 97 
 
 Drinkwater 158 
 
 Dryden 108 
 
 Dudley 95 
 
 Dugald 179 
 
 Duke 94, 176 
 
198 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Dunham 106 
 
 Dunn 106 
 
 Dunstan 106 
 
 Dunton 106 
 
 Dutton 106 
 
 Durr 48 
 
 Duty 32 
 
 Dyer 80 
 
 Earl 176 
 
 Earnsley 92 
 
 Eason 145 
 
 East 145 
 
 Easterling 42 
 
 Easton 145 
 
 Eastwick 116 
 
 Elder 26 
 
 EUerton 98 
 
 Elwell 118 
 
 Endicott 109 
 
 English 39 
 
 Erringham 41 
 
 Errington 41 
 
 Eston 145 
 
 Evershaw 123 
 
 Eversley 92 
 
 Ewer 58 
 
 Fabricius 1 26, 161 
 
 Fair 56 
 
 Fairbeard, Baldwin 27 
 
 Fairchild 24 
 
 Fairey 154 
 
 Fairhair, Harold 54 
 
 Falconer 82 
 
 Falkner 82 
 
 Farmer 65 
 
 Farnborough 100 
 
 Farnham 100 
 
 Page. 
 
 Ferguson 187 
 
 Fielder 73 
 
 Fields 73, 170 
 
 Fingal 182 
 
 Finlay 183 
 
 Finn 183 
 
 Fitzpatrick 184 
 
 Fitzwater 32 
 
 Fitzwilliam , 164 
 
 Finch S3 
 
 Fish 47 
 
 Fisher 47 
 
 Flagg s8 
 
 Fleming 39 
 
 Foraker 191 
 
 Ford 15s 
 
 Forkbeard, Sweyn 27 
 
 Forest 171 
 
 Forester 76 
 
 Foster 76 
 
 Foulbeck 97 
 
 Fowler 80 
 
 Fox 52 
 
 Francis 39 
 
 Frank 39 
 
 Franks 39 
 
 Frazer 185 
 
 Freasley 92 
 
 Freeman 191 
 
 French 39 
 
 Friday 41 
 
 Fulbeck 97 
 
 Fuller 69 
 
 Furnside 190 
 
 Galloway 43 
 
 Ganger 54 
 
 Gardner 64 
 
 Garfield ,.. 117 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 199 
 
 Page. 
 
 Garland 117 
 
 Gatcombe 119 
 
 Gates 104 
 
 Gaylord 189 
 
 Geat 43 
 
 German 83 
 
 Gilbert 184 
 
 Gilbrid 184 
 
 Gilder 64 
 
 Gildersleeve 83 
 
 Gilhousen 34 
 
 Gill 187 
 
 Gillaspick 187 
 
 Gillespie 187 
 
 Gillies 183 
 
 Gilling 103 
 
 Gilmichael 183 
 
 Gilraan 34, 184 
 
 Gilmary 184 
 
 Gilmory , 184 
 
 Gilmour 184 
 
 Gladen 107 
 
 Gleeman 189 
 
 Glenn 1 70 
 
 Glover 69 
 
 Goddard 173 
 
 Godfrey 173 
 
 Goforth 25 
 
 Golden 108 
 
 Goldsmith 131 
 
 Golightly 25 
 
 Good 56 
 
 Goodenough 29 
 
 Goodman 78 
 
 Goodnow 34 
 
 Gorman 38 
 
 Gothman 43 
 
 Grafton 147 
 
 Grant 186 
 
 Page. 
 
 Graybill 32 
 
 Great, Alfred 26 
 
 Greenwich 117 
 
 Gregg 181 
 
 Grey, Lady Jane 192 
 
 Greyfell 54 
 
 Grigg 181 
 
 Griggs 181 
 
 Gritman 191 
 
 Groves 147 
 
 Guildford 175 
 
 Gulley 173,174 
 
 Gulliver 174 
 
 Gunhouse 87 
 
 Gunner 22 
 
 Gwynn 183 
 
 Hagood 95 
 
 Haley 95 
 
 Halliford 157 
 
 Hamlin 158 
 
 Hammersmith 49 
 
 Hampton 175 
 
 Harald 107 
 
 Harden 106 
 
 Hardenbrook 190 
 
 Harding 102 
 
 Harefoot, Harold 27 
 
 Hargrave 151 
 
 Hargrove 151 
 
 Harivald 107 
 
 Harley 95 
 
 Harman 107 
 
 Harper 66 
 
 Harrison 168 
 
 Harrington 103 
 
 Hartford 156 
 
 Hartley 92 
 
 Haselhurst 155 
 
200 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Hastings 40, 93 
 
 Hatcher 70 
 
 Hathaway 138 
 
 Hatmaker 193 
 
 Haughton 95 
 
 Hawes 95 
 
 Hawkes S3 
 
 Hawkins 168 
 
 Hawley 95 
 
 Hawthorn 95 
 
 Hayes 95 
 
 Hayne 183 
 
 Haynes 183 
 
 Hay ward 79 
 
 Haywood 95 
 
 Hay worth 95 
 
 Heath 170 
 
 Heaton 147 
 
 Hedgecock 53 
 
 Hedgepath 173 
 
 Hedges 95, 170 
 
 Hedgewood 95 
 
 Hellier 118 
 
 Hendricks 168 
 
 Hennings 168 
 
 Henley 93 
 
 Henney 154 
 
 Henshaw 53 
 
 Hentley 92 
 
 Herring 49, 103 
 
 Hertford 156 
 
 Hien » 183 
 
 Highto wer 87 
 
 Hill 97 
 
 Hilburn 158 
 
 Hillborough 121 
 
 Hillhouse 87 
 
 Hinds 53 
 
 Hinkley 93 
 
 Page. 
 
 Hinsha w 123 
 
 Hinton 88 
 
 Hobkirk 105 
 
 Hogmire 35 
 
 Hogwood 34 
 
 Holbeck 97 
 
 Holcombe 119 
 
 Holder 82 
 
 Holland 39 
 
 Holmes 154 
 
 Hooper 79 
 
 Hopper 79 
 
 Horn 52 
 
 Hornblower 51 
 
 Horsley 89 
 
 Hosier 61 
 
 Houlbeck 97 
 
 Houghton 95 
 
 Howard 79 
 
 Howel 169 
 
 Hunter 62 
 
 Huntley 92 
 
 Hurst 98, 155 
 
 ICELING 40 
 
 Ingham loi 
 
 Ingrove loi 
 
 Ireland 39 
 
 Iring 40 
 
 Isaac 161 
 
 Jackson 165 
 
 Jacob 161 
 
 Jameson 163 
 
 Jay S3 
 
 Jaynes 193 
 
 Jenkins i6s 
 
 Jenks 165 
 
 John 166 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 20I 
 
 Johns 
 
 John-Smith 
 Johnson . . . 
 Johnsrud . . 
 
 Joiner 
 
 Jonas 
 
 Jones 
 
 Jordan 
 
 Joshua .... 
 
 Page. 
 .. i66 
 
 129, 
 
 Kaufman 
 
 Kean 
 
 Kell 
 
 Kelley 
 
 Kenmore 
 
 Kerr 
 
 Kershaw 123, 
 
 Kerton 
 
 Ketcham 
 
 Kilbu'-n 
 
 Kilgo 
 
 Kilgore 
 
 Killian 
 
 Kilpatrick 
 
 Kinard 
 
 Kinden 
 
 King 
 
 Kinton 
 
 Kirk 
 
 Kirkby 
 
 Kirkland 
 
 Kirksey 
 
 Kirton 
 
 Knight 
 
 Klein 
 
 Koh-toeh-s-lioh--wch 
 
 Lachlan . 
 Lackland . 
 Lake 
 
 Page. 
 
 Lamb 52 
 
 Lamprey 49 
 
 Lander 74 
 
 Langford 156 
 
 Langley 93 
 
 Langwick. 117 
 
 Lardner 80 
 
 Lastwlck 117 
 
 Law 95 
 
 Lawson 96 
 
 Ledyard 116 
 
 Lee , 89 
 
 Leech 83 
 
 Lincoln 157 
 
 Linder 77 
 
 Lindfield 98 
 
 Llndley 89 
 
 Lindsey 154 
 
 Ling 49 
 
 Links 50 
 
 Little 147 
 
 Littlejohn 41, 165 
 
 Littleton 147 
 
 Lively 189 
 
 Livingood 35 
 
 Long 56 
 
 Longfellow 26 
 
 Longacre 191 
 
 Longwick 117 
 
 Longstreet 122 
 
 Lookabill 35 
 
 Lord 176 
 
 Loughlan 187 
 
 Lovejoy 31 
 
 Lovelace i8g 
 
 Loveman 30 
 
 Low 95 
 
 Lowson , 96 
 
 Ludlow 96 
 
202 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Lynch 114 
 
 Lynn 98, I57 
 
 Lyndhurst 98 
 
 MacAdam 138 
 
 MacBeth 183 
 
 MacBride 184 
 
 McBee 183 
 
 McCoUum 185 
 
 McNiven 184 
 
 McDonald 179 
 
 McDougal 179 
 
 McGill 187 
 
 McNeil 181 
 
 McWilliams 164 
 
 Malcolm 185 
 
 Manchester 142 
 
 Manship 122 
 
 Marbrook 94 
 
 Marbury 94 
 
 Markley 93 
 
 Marlborough -. . . 120 
 
 Marsh 170 
 
 Marshal 77 
 
 Martyr, Edward 26 
 
 Mason 64 
 
 Maurice 174 
 
 Maurits 174 
 
 Mauritz 174 
 
 Maurizio 174 
 
 Maxwell 96 
 
 Mayfield 191 
 
 Mercer 64 
 
 Merchant 64 
 
 Meadows 170 
 
 Mears 183 
 
 Mersey 159 
 
 Middleton 145 
 
 Milhouse 191 
 
 Page. 
 
 Miller 79 
 
 Miner 83 
 
 Moab 161 
 
 Mobley 95 
 
 Mofiat 185 
 
 Moorer 79 
 
 Moorman 79 
 
 More 17 
 
 Morehead 18 
 
 Morehouse 87 
 
 Moriertagh 175 
 
 Morris ' . . . 174 
 
 Morton 144 
 
 Moses 161 
 
 Motes 96 
 
 Mountford 156 
 
 Mowatt 185 
 
 Mundenhall 118 
 
 Munhall 118 
 
 Musgrave 147 
 
 Musgrove 147 
 
 Nail 1S2 
 
 Nasby 91 
 
 Nash 90 
 
 Neal i8i 
 
 Needham 190 
 
 Neil 181 
 
 Neill 181 
 
 Netley 95 
 
 Netherwick 116 
 
 Nevil . , 145 
 
 Neville 145 
 
 Newberry 43 
 
 Newbury 43 
 
 Newby 43 
 
 Newcomb 33 
 
 Newcomer 41 
 
 Newland 43, 122 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 203 
 
 Page. 
 
 Newport 43 
 
 Newton 145 
 
 Nial ..'. 182 
 
 Nightingale 53 
 
 Niul 181 
 
 Niven 184 
 
 Nivens 184 
 
 Norleigh 95 
 
 Norman , 39 
 
 Norris 39 
 
 Northwick 116 
 
 Norton 145 
 
 Norwood 44 
 
 Nutford 156 
 
 Oakley 89 
 
 Ockley 89 
 
 Ogden 107 
 
 Oglethorpe 148 
 
 O'Kelley 186 
 
 Oldham 152 
 
 Olney 98 
 
 O'Neil 182 
 
 Original 29 
 
 Osborne 55 
 
 O'Toole 187 
 
 Overall 29 
 
 O verbeck 97, 190 
 
 Overbrook 158 
 
 Overcash 33 
 
 Overhill 190 
 
 Overstreet 190 
 
 Outlaw 27 
 
 O wley 89 
 
 Oxford 156 
 
 Page 176 
 
 Pain , 112 
 
 Painter 64 
 
 Palmer 77 
 
 Page. 
 
 Parker 76 
 
 Parkham 155 
 
 Parkhurst 155 
 
 Parks 155 
 
 Parson 171 
 
 Partridge 53 
 
 Pate 185 
 
 Pathfinder , 138 
 
 Patie 185 
 
 Patricius , 184 
 
 Patrick 184 
 
 Patterson 84 
 
 Payen m 
 
 Payne 113 
 
 Paynim m 
 
 Peabody 31 
 
 Peacewinner, Edgar 26 
 
 Peacock 53 
 
 Pear 58 
 
 Pearson c8 
 
 Pennypacker 34 
 
 Pictor 161 
 
 Pickler 82 
 
 Pike 47 
 
 Pitcher jy 
 
 Pitman 29 
 
 Plantagenet 56 
 
 Plater 69 
 
 Plumer 65 
 
 Poole 159 
 
 Poorman 35 
 
 Pope 171 
 
 Porter 65 
 
 Potomac 
 
 144 
 
 Potter 65 
 
 Powel 169 
 
 Prescott no 
 
 Price 169 
 
 Prichard 169 
 
204 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Priest 171 
 
 Prior 171 
 
 Proctor 84 
 
 Pryor 171 
 
 QUACKENBOX 32 
 
 Quarreler 56 
 
 Queen 176 
 
 Radway 190 
 
 Ra(w)leigh 95 
 
 Ramsey 1 54 
 
 Ratcliff e 44 
 
 Ravenscrof t 88 
 
 Rawdon 104 
 
 Redford 100 
 
 Redheifer 35 
 
 Redman 25 
 
 Redmon 25 
 
 Reece 169 
 
 Reed 83 
 
 Reeder 83 
 
 Rees 169 
 
 Retford 100 
 
 Rice 169 
 
 Richberg 1 20 
 
 Ridgeway ii5 
 
 Richards 163 
 
 Richardson 163 
 
 Rickman 80 
 
 Ridpath 138 
 
 Rivers 170 
 
 Roach 47 
 
 Rockwell 34 
 
 Rockwood 189 
 
 Rockhill 189 
 
 Robert 167 
 
 Roberts 167 
 
 Robertson 167 
 
 Robeson 168 
 
 Page. 
 
 Robinson 168 
 
 Rodney 100, 1 54 
 
 Roe 52 
 
 Romney 159 
 
 Roper 65 
 
 Rose 31 
 
 Rosewater 31 
 
 Roundtree 34 
 
 Rugby ; 90 
 
 Rutledge 139 
 
 Saddler 65 
 
 Sampson 175 
 
 Samson 1 75 
 
 Sanders 78 
 
 Sandford 155 
 
 Sandwich 81 
 
 Saunders iSo 
 
 Sawyer 65 
 
 Saxon 38 
 
 Saxton 146 
 
 Scales 152 
 
 Scamp 1 78 
 
 Scarborough 122 
 
 Schoolcraft 82 
 
 Scott 39 
 
 Scribner 63 
 
 Scrivener 69 
 
 Semple 88 
 
 Sevenoke 88 
 
 Sexton 64, 171 
 
 Seymour 88 
 
 Sharp 27 
 
 Shaw 123 
 
 Shears 59 
 
 Shelton 145 
 
 Shepherd 70 
 
 Sherburn 1 58 
 
 Shipley 92 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 20S 
 
 Page. 
 
 Shipton 145 
 
 Shipp 57 
 
 Shirley . , 92 
 
 Shockley 92 
 
 Shoemaker 36 
 
 Short 26 
 
 Shorthouse 122 
 
 Short-mantle 56 
 
 Sickles 59 
 
 Sillinger 88 
 
 Silverwood 44 
 
 Simcoe 175 
 
 Simon 162 
 
 Simmonds 175 
 
 Simmons 175 
 
 Simpkins 175 
 
 Simpson 175 
 
 Simson 175 
 
 Sinclair 185 
 
 Singleton 146 
 
 Sinnavja 25 
 
 Skinner 33 
 
 Smart 27 
 
 Smith 127, 166 
 
 Smithers 131 
 
 Smithson 131 
 
 Smyth 131 
 
 Snooks 88 
 
 Sommerville 186 
 
 Spain 39 
 
 Sparrow 56 
 
 Spears 50 
 
 Spencer 81 
 
 Spinster 68 
 
 Springer 83 
 
 Springs 83 
 
 Squiers 176 
 
 Squire 176 
 
 Squires 176 ) 
 
 Page. 
 
 Stabler 77 
 
 Stackhouse 87 
 
 Staffoi-d 156 
 
 Stancil 106 
 
 Standish 
 
 57 
 
 Stanford 156 
 
 Stanhouse 87 
 
 Stanley 93 
 
 Stanning 103 
 
 Stanton 106 
 
 Stany ard 152 
 
 Starkweather 35 
 
 Steadfast, Ethelstan 26 
 
 Steelsmith 84 
 
 Stenhouse .- 87 
 
 Stephens 167 
 
 Stephenson 167 
 
 Stewart 71 
 
 Stickaway 36 
 
 Stickler 73 
 
 Stickwell 30 
 
 Stillwell 170 
 
 Stinson 167 
 
 Stockwell 158 
 
 Stokes 152 
 
 Stoneman 80 
 
 Stout 26 
 
 Stowe 152 
 
 Stradley 95 
 
 Strafford 156 
 
 Stratford 156 
 
 Strathaven 139 
 
 Strauss 162 
 
 Streatley 95 
 
 Strieker 79 
 
 Stuart , 176 
 
 Sturgeon 49 
 
 Sudley 95 
 
 Sumpter 82 
 
2o6 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Sumter 82 
 
 Sutton 145 
 
 Swaneck 3i 
 
 Swann S3 
 
 Swan's-neck, Edith 31 
 
 Swift 33 
 
 Swinburn 34, 109 
 
 Swindler 33 
 
 Swinford 156 
 
 Swinton 145 
 
 Swords S° 
 
 Sydney 88 
 
 Sykes I7S 
 
 Taffy 158 
 
 Tallman 26 
 
 Tanner 24 
 
 Tarleton 105 
 
 Taylor 79 
 
 Templeton 172 
 
 Tewesley 92 
 
 Thacker 76 
 
 Thomason 163 
 
 Thompson 163 
 
 Thrower 21 
 
 Thurlow 96 
 
 Thursley 93 
 
 Tibbs 32 
 
 Tierney 187 
 
 Tilden 107 
 
 Tillman 107 
 
 Tinsley 93 
 
 Todd 84 
 
 Todhunter 84 
 
 Toole 187 
 
 Toplady 29 
 
 Topman 29 
 
 Towns 96, 148 
 
 Townsend no 
 
 Page. 
 
 Trainer 84 
 
 Traywick 117 
 
 Trescot in 
 
 Triplett 41 
 
 Trosley 88 
 
 Truax 3° 
 
 Trueman 30 
 
 Trump 58 
 
 Trusler 81 
 
 Tucker 68 
 
 Turner 64 
 
 Tyerman 82 
 
 Tyler 69 
 
 Underbill 97 
 
 Unready, Ethelred 27 
 
 Vane 58 
 
 Vergobretus 187 
 
 Vintner 45, 64 
 
 Vintners 4S, ^4 
 
 Waddell 96 
 
 Wadley 92 
 
 Wadsworth 124 
 
 Wselsings 102 
 
 Wainwright 24 
 
 Waley 37 
 
 Waleys 37 
 
 Waling 102, 165 
 
 Walker 54 
 
 Walkup 32 
 
 Wallace 186 
 
 Waller 38 
 
 Walling 102 
 
 Walsh 37 
 
 Walsingham 102 
 
 Walter 167 
 
 Walther 167 
 
INDEX TO SURNAMES. 
 
 207 
 
 Page. 
 
 Walton 14S 
 
 Wansley 92 
 
 Ward 96 
 
 Wardlaw 96 
 
 Wardwell 158 
 
 Ware 87 
 
 Warner 84 
 
 Warren 83 
 
 Warrener 83 
 
 Warwick 177 
 
 Washburne 3° 
 
 Washington 143 
 
 Water 108 
 
 Waters 167 
 
 Waterson 167 
 
 Watson 167 
 
 Watts 167 
 
 Wayland 165 
 
 Weatherford 156 
 
 Weaver 66 
 
 Webb 66 
 
 Webber ■ 68 
 
 Weber 68 
 
 Webster 66 
 
 Weiland 165 
 
 Weland 165 
 
 Welborn 158 
 
 Welch 37 
 
 Weller 165 
 
 Wells 96, 117 
 
 Welsh 37 
 
 Wesson 14S 
 
 Westall 116 
 
 Westcott no 
 
 Westfield 89 
 
 Westley 89 
 
 Weston 145 
 
 Westwlck 116 
 
 Westwood 190 
 
 Page. 
 
 Wetherall 122 
 
 Wetherhall 122 
 
 Wheatley 95 
 
 Wheeler 65 
 
 Whetstone 31 
 
 Whitaker 191 
 
 White 131 
 
 Whitehead 26 
 
 Whitehurst 44 
 
 Whiteman 26 
 
 Whitesides 116 
 
 Whitington 144 
 
 Whitley 92 
 
 Whitman 26 
 
 Whitmarsh 98 
 
 Whitney 154 
 
 Wickham 117 
 
 Wicklow 117 
 
 Wight 43 
 
 Wightman 43 
 
 Wiht 43 
 
 Wildman 32 
 
 Wilkes 164 
 
 Wilkins 164 
 
 Wilier 164 
 
 Willingham 152 
 
 Wilmer 164 
 
 Wilmet 164 
 
 Wilmot 164 
 
 Williams 163 
 
 Williamson 164 
 
 Williamston 164 
 
 Willson 164 
 
 Wilson 164 
 
 Willis 164 
 
 Wims 164 
 
 Winchester 142 
 
 Winslo w 96 
 
 Winsor 1 59 
 
208 
 
 A RAMBLE AMONG SURNAMES. 
 
 Pagk. 
 
 Wise jy 
 
 Wishford 156 
 
 Wofford 156 
 
 Wolsingham 102 
 
 Wood xyo 
 
 Woodburn 109 
 
 Woodcock 53 
 
 Woodfolk 102 
 
 Woodford 156 
 
 Woodruff 70 
 
 Woodside igi 
 
 Woodward 70 ' 
 
 Page. 
 
 Wolsingham ^02 
 
 Woolpert "7 
 
 Woolwich i 117 
 
 Wren 53 
 
 Wrenn 53 
 
 Wright 84 
 
 Wylie 164 
 
 Wympler 6i 
 
 Wynn 183 
 
 Yarborough 120 
 
 Young, Arnulf ya