Helping To Identify The Bearer

Children whose fathers had died often assumed their mother's name. Thus, Bett and Betz are usually from Elizabeth. Among the most popular prefixes and suffixes showing this patronymic relationship are O', Mc, Mac, Fitz and so on. Harry, however, may have settled down near a brook running through a meadow. In such a case he might easily become Mr. Harry Brookman, or Brookover, Brookley, or something still different. Lee. or lea, a meadow land, appears today in such other forms as Leigh, Leighton, Brownlee, Crowley, Cowlev, Bradley, and so on. Bartley means a barley field; Harlev is hare lee. The name Burns is for a brook or little stream. Beck, usually an occupative surname for bake, is sometimes for brook, and is then a local or place name. Another form is Bach.

Etymologically, every family name is a nickname; that is, an "eke-name," intended to give auxiliary information that helps in identifying the bearer. These nicknames were first conferred on one because of some characteristic feature, either physical or moral, or because of some adjunct—often trifling—with which one's personality was associated. William of Orange i6 said to have remarked, when he lost the tip of his nose to the sword of a Saracen giant, that even though his nose was a little shortened, he knew well that his name would be thereby lengthened. So Guillaume Orange, with his court nez, or short nose has given us Courtney, or Courtnay. The greatest numbers of nicknames were taken from the names of animals, such as Fox; and from adjectives, either alone or accompanied by a noun, such as Long or Longfellow.

Martin is sometimes from the animal, the marten. However, it may be a personal name from Martin. Other popular names of today are derived from such personal names as Adam, Thomas, Peter, and many others. The present-day spelling of a name may be purely accidental. In England alone, until the latter half of the nineteenth century, a large proportion of the population did not spell their names at all. The parson and clerk were entrusted with the responsibility of recording these names when necessary, and they did their best with unfamiliar ones. We can easily understand why the same name might be spelled in more ways than one. Even today, especially in our rural districts, we may find half a dozen or so orthographic variants of a name among the few documentary records of an individual's life. Much of this early spelling was roughly phonetic. It was an attempt to reproduce the sound of a period and of a region.

By: davidbunch

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