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[Illustration: CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.


NO. 691.      SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1877.      PRICE 11/2_d._]




NAMES.


There might be much amusement in tracing the origin of family names.
Long ago--say about six or seven hundred years since--there were no
family names at all. People had Christian names and nothing more, and
of course there was often considerable difficulty in distinguishing
individuals. Such at present is the case in Turkey, where the old
eastern practice of using but a single name continues to be followed.
Surnames were not introduced into England until after the Conquest.
The fashion of using two names came to us from France, but for a time
was confined to families of distinction, and extended slowly over the
country. One thing is said to have promoted its use. Young ladies of
aspiring tastes declined to marry gentlemen who had only a Christian
name, such as John or Thomas, for they would necessarily have still
to be called by their own name, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it was.
Spinsters accordingly thought it to be a grand thing to form an
alliance with a person possessing the distinction of a family name, by
which they should ever after be called.

Curiously enough, so difficult is it to alter old usages, that until
very lately surnames were scarcely used among the humbler classes
of people in some parts of Great Britain remote from centres of
civilisation. In these places, a creditor would enter the name of
his debtor in his books as John the son of Thomas, just as you see
genealogies in the Old Testament. Only now, from improved communication
with the outer world, have practices of this kind gone out of use.
We can easily understand how the names ending in _son_, as Johnson,
Thomson, Manson (abbreviation of Magnusson), originated; and it is
equally easy to conjecture how names from professions, such as Smith,
Miller, or Cooper came into existence. It is equally obvious that
many family names are derived from the nature of the complexion of
individuals, as Black, Brown, and White.

At first sight, there is a mystery as regards the different ways in
which certain names are spelled. Smith is sometimes written Smyth;
and in some instances Brown has an _e_ at the end of it. We see the
name Reid spelled as Reade, Reed, and Rede. We see Long, Lang, and
Laing, all variations of one name. The same thing can be said of
Strong, Strang, and Strange; of Little and Liddle; of Home and Hume;
of Chambers and Chalmers; and so on with a host of surnames in daily
use. The mystery which hangs over various spellings is cleared up on a
consideration of the indifferent scholarship which prevailed until even
the middle of the eighteenth century. Names in old legal documents and
in the inscriptions on the blank leaves of family Bibles, are written
in all sorts of ways. A man seldom wrote his name twice in succession
the same way. Each member of a family followed the spelling suggested
by his own fancy, and added to or altered letters in his name with
perfect indifference. Eccentricities of this kind are still far from
uncommon in the signatures of imperfectly educated persons. There is,
in fact, a constant growth of new names, springing from ignorance and
carelessness, though also in some cases from a sense of refinement.

Perhaps there is a still more vigorous growth of names from foundlings.
Driven to their wits' end to invent names for the anonymous infants
thrown on their bounty, parish authorities are apt to cut the matter
short by conferring names that are suggested by the localities where
the poor children were picked up. A child found at a door will be
called Door, and so on with Street, Place, Steps, Basket, Turnstyle,
or anything else. Hundreds of droll names are said to have begun in
this way. Possibly it was from such origin as this that a respectable
citizen of Dublin, mentioned by Cosmo Innes in his small book on
Surnames, derived the name of Halfpenny. Mr Halfpenny, it is stated,
'throve in trade, and his children prevailed on him in his latter
years to change the name which they thought undignified; and this he
did chiefly by dropping the last letter. He died and was buried as Mr
Halpen. The fortune of the family did not recede, and the son of our
citizen thought proper to renounce retail dealing, and at the same
time looked about for a euphonious change of name. He made no scruple
of dropping the unnecessary _h_; and that being done, it was easy to
go into the Celtic rage, which Sir Walter Scott and the _Lady of the
Lake_ had just raised to a great height; and he who had run the streets
as little Kenny Halfpenny came out at the levees of the day as Kenneth
MacAlpin, the descendant of a hundred kings.'

The assumed name of MacAlpin brings us to the whole order of Macs, now
spread out in all directions. Mac is the Gaelic equivalent for son,
and accordingly Mr MacAlpin would in an English dress be Mr Alpinson.
There happen to be two distinct classes of Macs, those with a Highland
origin, such as Mackay, Macpherson, Macgregor, Macneil, Macfarlane,
Macleod, and Macdonald--all great clans in the olden time; and the Macs
of Galloway, where Gaelic is now extinct, and the races are somewhat
different from the Highland septs--perhaps with a little Manx and Irish
blood in them. Among the Galloway Macs are found the names Maclumpha,
Macletchie, and MacCandlish, which evidently do not sound with the true
Highland ring. The Irish have likewise their form of expression for
son. They use the single letter O, as O'Connell and O'Donell. The O,
however, signifies grandson, as it continues to do in the old Lowland
vernacular in Scotland, where an aged woman in humble life may be heard
saying of her grandchild, 'That is my O.' Prefixes or terminations for
son are common among names in every civilised country in Europe.

As is well known, the Norman Conquest gave a new character to English
names. From that time many of the most notable of our surnames are to
be dated, not only in England, where the Conquest made itself cruelly
felt, but in Scotland, where families of Norman origin gradually
effected a settlement by invitation and otherwise. Names traceable
to the Norman families are very commonly derived from heritable
possessions, and till this day bear a certain aristocratic air, though
altered in various ways. Doubtless in the lists of those 'who came over
with the Conqueror,' there are innumerable shams; but there are also
descendants of veritable invaders. We might, for example, instance the
late Sir Francis Burdett (father of the Baroness Burdett Coutts), who
traced his origin by a clear genealogical line to Hugh de Burdett, one
of the Norman soldiers who fought at Hastings in 1066. That gives a
pretty considerable antiquity to an existing family without change of
name. On the Scottish side of the Border, we could point to a family,
Horsbrugh of that Ilk, as being not less than eight hundred years old,
and always occupying the same lands and possessions. Wallace, Bruce,
Dundas, Fraser, Stewart, or to use its French form Stuart, are also
Scottish surnames of great antiquity. To these we might add two names
now ennobled, the Scotts, Dukes of Buccleuch, and the Kers, Dukes of
Roxburghe. We find these various names meandering through history for
six or seven hundred years.

On the original names borne by noted Norman families in England and
Scotland, time has effected conspicuous changes. The prefix _de_, which
was once held in high esteem, has been generally dropped. There has
likewise, in various cases, been what might be called a vulgarising of
the names. De Vesci is transformed into Veitch, De l'Isle into Lyle,
and De Vere into Weir. Through various changes De Montalt has become
Mowat, De Montfitchet sinks into Mushet, De Moravie into Murray, and
Grossetete into Grosart. We cannot speak with too much contempt of
the mythic fables invented to explain the origin of the names Forbes,
Guthrie, Dalyell, Douglas, Naesmyth, and Napier--grand old names, which
existed ages before the imaginary incidents that have been clumsily
assigned as their commencement.

Any one disposed to investigate the historical origin of British
surnames, would find not a little to amuse and instruct by making a
leisurely survey along the east coast from Shetland to the English
Channel. Every here and there he would alight upon patches of
population, whose descent from Norwegians, Danes, Jutes, Angles, and
other continental settlers in early times would be unmistakingly
revealed in their surnames, the colour of their eyes, their complexion,
and in their spoken dialect--the very pronunciation of certain letters;
for the lapse of centuries and innumerable vicissitudes have failed to
obliterate the normal peculiarities of their origin. Strange, indeed,
is the persistency of race. We have heard it stated as a curious
and little known fact, that on the west coast of Scotland there are
families descended from the wrecked crews of the Spanish Armada,
who scrambled ashore now nearly three hundred years ago. Herein, as
we imagine, lies a mine of ethnographic lore, which in the cause of
science and history would be not unworthy of exploration. A stretch
within the Scottish Border would likewise not be unproductive. On the
eastern and middle marches will still be found the descendants of the
Eliots and Armstrongs who are renowned in the _Border Min