Part 1 (1/2)
Surnames as a Science.
by Robert Ferguson.
PREFACE.
That portion of our surnames which dates back to Anglo-Saxon times, and so forms a part of the general system by which Teutonic names are governed, is distinctly a branch of a science, and as such has been treated by the Germans, upon whose lines I have generally endeavoured to follow.
It has been a part of my object to show that this portion of our surnames is a very much larger one than has been generally supposed, and that it includes a very great number of names which have hitherto been otherwise accounted for, as well as of course a great number for which no explanation has been forthcoming.
Nevertheless, while claiming for my subject the dignity of a science, I am very well aware that the question as to how far I have myself succeeded in treating it scientifically is an entirely different one, and one upon which it will be for others than myself to p.r.o.nounce an opinion.
This work is of the nature of a supplement to one which I published some time ago under the t.i.tle of _The Teutonic Name-system applied to the Family-names of France, England, and Germany_ (Williams and Norgate), though I have been obliged, in order to render my system intelligible, to a certain extent to go over the same ground again.
I will only say, in conclusion, that in dealing with this subject--one in which all persons may be taken to be more or less interested--I have endeavoured as much as possible to avoid technicalities and to write so as to be intelligible to the ordinary reader.
ROBERT FERGUSON.
MORTON, CARLISLE.
SURNAMES AS A SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANTIQUITY AND THE UNSUSPECTED DIGNITY OF SOME OF OUR COMMON NAMES.
As some things that seem common, and even ign.o.ble, to the naked eye, lose their meanness under the revelations of the microscope, so, many of our surnames that seem common and even vulgar at first sight, will be found, when their origin is adequately investigated, to be of high antiquity, and of unsuspected dignity. _Clodd_, for instance, might seem to be of boorish origin, and _Clout_ to have been a dealer in old rags.
But I claim for them that they are twin brothers, and etymologically the descendants of a Frankish king. _Napp_ is not a name of distinguished sound, yet it is one that can take us back to that far-off time ere yet the history of England had begun, when, among the little kinglets on the old Saxon sh.o.r.e, ”Hnaf ruled the Hocings.”[1] _Moll_, _Betty_, _Nanny_, and _Pegg_ sound rather ign.o.ble as the names of men, yet there is nothing of womanliness in their warlike origin. _Bill_ seems an honest though hardly a distinguished name, unless he can claim kins.h.i.+p with Billing, the ”n.o.ble progenitor of the royal house of Saxony.” Now Billing, thus described by Kemble, is a patronymic, ”son of Bill or Billa,” and I claim for our Bill (as a surname) the right, as elsewhere stated, to be considered as the progenitor. Among the very shortest names in all the directory are _Ewe_, _Yea_, and _Yeo_, yet theirs also is a pedigree that can take us back beyond Anglo-Saxon times. Names of a most disreputable appearance are _Swearing_ and _Gambling_, yet both, when properly inquired into, turn out to be the very synonyms of respectability. _Winfarthing_ again would seem to be derived from the most petty gambling, unless he can be rehabilitated as an Anglo-Saxon Winfrithing (patronymic of Winfrith.) A more unpleasant name than _Gumboil_ (_Lower_) it would not be easy to find, and yet it represents, debased though be its form, a name borne by many a Frankish warrior, and by a Burgundian king fourteen centuries ago. Its proper form would be Gumbald (Frankish for Gundbald), and it signifies ”bold in war.” Another name which wofully belies its origin is _Tremble_, for, of the two words of which it is composed, one signifies steadfast or firm, and the other signifies valiant or bold. Its proper form is Trumbald, and the first step of its descent is _Trumbull_. A name which excites anything but agreeable a.s.sociations is _Earwig_. Yet it is at any rate a name that goes back to Anglo-Saxon times, there being an Earwig, no doubt a man of some consideration, a witness to a charter (_Thorpe_, p. 333). And the animal which it represents is not the insect of insidious repute, but the st.u.r.dy boar so much honoured by our Teuton forefathers, _ear_ being, as elsewhere noted, a contraction of _evor_, boar, so that Earwig is the ”boar of battle.” Of more humiliating seeming than even Earwig is _Flea_ (vouched for by Lower as an English surname). And yet it is at all events a name of old descent, for Flea--I do not intend it in any equivocal sense, for the stem is found in Kemble's list of early settlers--came in with the Saxons. And though it has nothing to do with English ”flea,” yet it is no doubt from the same root, and expresses the same characteristic of agility so marvellously developed in the insect.
Even _Bugg_, if he had seen his name under this metaphorical microscope, might have felt himself absolved from changing it into Howard, for Bugg is at least as ancient, and etymologically quite as respectable. It is a name of which great and honourable men of old were not ashamed; there was, for instance, a Buga, minister to Edward of Wess.e.x, who signs his name to many a charter. And there was also an Anglo-Saxon queen, Hrothwaru, who was also called Bucge, which I have elsewhere given reasons for supposing to have been her original name. There are moreover to be found, deduced from place-names, two Anglo-Saxons named respectively Buga and Bugga, owners of land, and therefore respectable.
In Germany we find Bugo, Bugga, and Bucge, as ancient names of men and women in the _Altdeutsches Namenbuch_. And Bugge is at present a name both among the Germans and the Scandinavians, being, among others, that of a distinguished professor at Christiania. As to its origin, all that we can predicate with anything like confidence is that it is derived from a word signifying to bend, and of the various senses thus derived, that of ring or bracelet (O.N. _baugr_) seems to me the most appropriate. The bracelet was of old an honourable distinction, and the prince, as the fountain of honour, was the ”bracelet-giver.”[2]
My object then at present is to show that many of our short and unpretending names are among the most ancient that we have, being such as our Saxon forefathers brought with them when they first set foot upon our sh.o.r.es, and such as we find whenever history gives us a yet earlier glimpse of the Teuton in his home. _Ba.s.s_, for instance, whose red pyramid to-day stamps authenticity on many a bottle, was in ancient times a well-known potter's name on the beautiful red Samian ware of the Romans. The seat of this manufacture was on the banks of the Rhine, and in the long list of potters' names, mostly of course Roman, there are not a few that are those of Germans or of Gauls. And there is one interesting case, that of a lamp found along the line of the Roman wall, in which the German potter, one Fus, has a.s.serted his own nationality by stamping his ware with the print of a naked human foot, within which is inscribed his name, thus proving, by the play upon his name, that _fus_ meant ”foot” in the language which he spoke. Little perhaps the old potter thought, as he chuckled over his conceit, that when fifteen centuries had pa.s.sed away, his trade-mark would remain to attest his nationality.
But to return to Ba.s.s, let us see what can be done to bridge the gulf between the princely brewers of to-day and the old potter on the banks of the Rhine. And first, as to Anglo-Saxon England, we find Ba.s.s as a ma.s.s-priest, and Ba.s.sus as a valiant soldier of King Edwin in the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_, as also a Ba.s.sa in the genealogy of the Mercian kings. Basing, the Anglo-Saxon patronymic, ”son of Ba.s.s,” occurs about the twelfth century, in the _Liber Vitae_. And Kemble, in his list of Anglo-Saxon ”marks,” or communities of the early settlers, finds Ba.s.singas, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Ba.s.s, in Cambridges.h.i.+re and in Notts, while Mr. Taylor finds offshoots of the same family on the opposite coast in Artois. In Germany we find many instances of Ba.s.s, and its High German form Pa.s.s, from the seventh century downwards. And in the neighbourhood of the Wurm-See, in Bavaria, we find, corresponding with our Ba.s.sings, a community of Pasings, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Pa.s.s. We may take it then that our name _Pa.s.s_ is only another form of _Ba.s.s_, both names being also found at present in Germany. As to the origin of the name, for which no sufficient explanation is to be found in the Old German dialects, Foerstemann has to turn to the kindred dialect of the Old Northern, where he finds it in _basa_, anniti, to strive contend.
Thus far we have had to do with Ba.s.s as a name of Teutonic origin. But it appears to have been a Celtic name as well, for Ba.s.sa, a name presumably Welsh, occurs in the pathetic lament of Llywarch, written in the sixth century, the name being, on the authority of the late Dr.
Guest, still retained in Baschurch near Shrewsbury. The name Ba.s.s, then, or Pa.s.s, on Roman pottery might be either that of a German or of a Gaul, but more probably the former, especially as we find also Ba.s.sico, a form more particularly German, and some other forms more probably Teutonic.
Before parting with Ba.s.s, I may refer to one in particular of his progeny, the name _Basin_, formed from it by the ending _en_ or _in_, referred to in a subsequent chapter. The original of our Basin has been supposed to have been a barber, the mediaeval leech, but I claim for him a different origin, and connect his name, which is found as Basin in Domesday, with the name Basin of a Thuringian king of the fifth century.
Let us take another of our common surnames, _Scott_. This has been generally a.s.sumed to have been an original surname derived from nationality, and we need not doubt that it has been so in many, perhaps in most, cases. But Scott, as a man's name, is, not to say older than the introduction of surnames, but as old probably as the name of the nation itself. To begin with England, it occurs in the thirteenth century, in the _Liber Vitae_, where it is the reverse of a surname, Scott Agumdessune (no doubt for Agemundessune). I do not think, however, that Agumdessune is here a surname, but only an individual description, an earnest of surnames that were to be. For there is another Scott who signs about the same time, and it might be necessary to distinguish between these two men. There is in the same record yet another Scott, described as ”Alstani filius,” who, in the time of William the Conqueror, ”for the redemption of his soul, and with the consent of his sons and of all his friends,” makes a gift of valuable lands to the Church. Scott again occurs in an Anglo-Saxon charter of boundaries quoted by Kemble, ”Scottes heal,” _i.e._ ”Scot's hall.” And Scotta occurs in another in ”Scottan byrgels,” _i.e._ ”Scotta's burial mound.” In Germany Scot occurs in the ninth century in the Book of the Brotherhood of St. Peter at Salzburg, where it is cla.s.sed by Foerstemann as a German name, which seems justified by the fact that Scotardus, a German compound (_hard_, fortis), occurs as an Old Frankish name in the time of Charlemagne. In Italy, where, as I shall show in a subsequent chapter, the Germans have left many Teutonic names behind them, we find a Scotti, duke of Milan, in the middle ages, whose name is probably due to that cause. Scotto is a surname at present among the Frisians, while among the Germans generally it is most commonly softened into Schott.
Scot however, as a man's name, seems to have been at least as common among the Celts as among the Teutons; Gluck cites four instances of it from ancient, chiefly Latin, authors, in only one of which, however, that of a Gaul, is the particular nationality distinguished. As to the origin of the name, all that can be said is that it is most probably from the same origin, whatever that may be, as the name of the nation; just as another Celtic man's name, Caled, signifying hard, durus, is probably from the same origin as that of Caledonia, ”stern and wild.”
Lastly, among the names on Roman pottery, we have Scottus, Scoto, and Scotni, the last being a genitive, ”Scotni manu.” Of these three names the first is the Latinisation of Scott; the second has the ending in _o_ most common for men's names among the old Franks, but also found among the Celts; the third, as a genitive, presumably represents the form Scotten, the ending in _en_, hereafter referred to, running through the whole range of Teutonic names, but being also found in Celtic. Upon the whole, then, there does not seem anything sufficiently distinctive to stamp these names as either Teutonic or Celtic. I may observe that all these three forms, _Scott_, _Scotto_, and _Scotten_, are found in our surnames, as well as _Scotting_, the Anglo-Saxon patronymic, which a.s.sists to mark the name as in Anglo-Saxon use. We have also _Scotland_, which has been supposed to have been an original surname derived from nationality, and so I dare say it may be in some cases. But Scotland appears as a man's name in the _Liber Vitae_ about the twelfth or thirteenth century, and before surnames begin to make their appearance.
Scotland again occurs as the name of a Norman in the _Acta Sanctorum_, where it seems more probably of Frankish origin, and cannot at any rate be from nationality. The fact seems to be that _land_, terra, was formed into compounds, like _bald_, and _fred_, and _hard_, without reference perhaps to any particular meaning. Similarly we find Old German, apparently Frankish, names, Ingaland and Airland (more properly Heriland), which might account in a similar way for our surnames _England_ and _Ireland_.
Let us take yet one more name, _Gay_, a little more complicated in its connections than the others, and endeavour to trace it up to its origin.