Surnames as a Science

Robert Ferguson

Surnames as a Science

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 pronounce an opinion.

This work is of the nature of a supplement to one which I published some time ago under the title 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.

CHAPTER I.

THE ANTIQUITY AND THE UNSUSPECTED DIGNITY OF SOME OF OUR COMMON NAMES

As some things that seem common, and even ignoble, 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 shore, "Hnaf ruled the Hôcings."1 Moll, Betty, Nanny, and Pegg sound rather ignoble 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 kinship with Billing, the "noble 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 associations 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 sturdy 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 Wessex, 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 shores, and such as we find whenever history gives us a yet earlier glimpse of the Teuton in his home. Bass, 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 asserted 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 passed away, his trade-mark would remain to attest his nationality.

But to return to Bass, 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 Bass as a mass-priest, and Bassus as a valiant soldier of King Edwin in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as also a Bassa in the genealogy of the Mercian kings. Basing, the Anglo-Saxon patronymic, "son of Bass," occurs about the twelfth century, in the Liber Vitæ. And Kemble, in his list of Anglo-Saxon "marks," or communities of the early settlers, finds Bassingas, i. e. descendants or followers of Bass, in Cambridgeshire 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 Bass, and its High German form Pass, from the seventh century downwards. And in the neighbourhood of the Wurm-See, in Bavaria, we find, corresponding with our Bassings, a community of Pasings, i. e. descendants or followers of Pass. We may take it then that our name Pass is only another form of Bass, 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 Bass as a name of Teutonic origin. But it appears to have been a Celtic name as well, for Bassa, 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 Bass, then, or Pass, on Roman pottery might be either that of a German or of a Gaul, but more probably the former, especially as we find also Bassico, a form more particularly German, and some other forms more probably Teutonic.

Before parting with Bass, 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 mediæval 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 assumed 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 Vitæ, 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 classed 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 manû." 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 assists 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 Vitæ 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. "Nay! but what better origin can we have," I can fancy the reader saying at starting, "than our own word 'gay', French gai?" I would not undertake to say that our name is not in any instance from this origin, but what I say is that a proved Anglo-Saxon name is better than any assumed word, however suitable its meaning may seem to be. Moreover, the same Anglo-Saxon word will account, not only for Gay, but for a whole group of names, Gay, Gye, Gedge, Gage, Kay, Key, Kegg, Kedge, Cage, – all variations, according to my view, of one original name. It must inevitably be the case that a name dating back to a remote antiquity, and in use over a wide area, must be subject to many phonetic variations. And it matters nothing to etymology, so long as her own strict rules are complied with, if some of these names have not a single letter in common. Given, then, an Anglo-Saxon name Gagg, Gegg, with its alternative form Cagg, Keg, and we get from it all the forms that are required. For the English ear is averse, as a matter of euphony, to a final g, and while it most commonly changes it into y (which is in effect dropping it), as in A.S. dag, Eng. day, A.S. cæg, Eng. key, it also not unfrequently changes it into dg, as in A.S. bricg, Eng. bridge, &c. To come, then, to the Anglo-Saxon names concerned, Kemble, in his list of original settlers, has both Gagingas, i. e. descendants or followers of Gag, and Cægingas, i. e. descendants or followers of Cæg. And the Anglo-Saxon names cited below, one of them the exact counterpart of Gay, are deduced from place-names of a later period. The Old German names do not, in this case, throw any light upon the subject, as, on account of the stem not being so distinctly developed as it is in Anglo-Saxon, they have been placed by Foerstemann to, as I consider, a wrong stem, viz. gaw, patria.

Anglo-Saxon names.– Gæcg, Geagga, Geah, Cæg, Ceagga, Ceahha (Gæging, Gaing, patronymics).

Old German names.– Gaio, Geio, Kegio, Keyo, Keio.

Present German.– Gey, Geu.

Present Friesic.– Kay, Key.

English surnames.– Gay, Gye, Gedge, Gage, Kay, Key, Kegg, Kedge, Cage.

As to the origin and meaning of the word, I can offer nothing more than a somewhat speculative conjecture. There is a stem gagen, cagen, in Teutonic names, and which seems to be derived most probably from O.N. gagn, gain, victory. We find it in Anglo-Saxon in Gegnesburh, now Gainsborough, and in Geynesthorn, another place-name, and we have it in our names Gain, Cain, Cane. It is very possible, and in accordance with the Teutonic system, that gag may represent the older and simpler form, standing to gagen in the same relation as English ward does to warden, and A.S. geard (inclosure), to garden.

As in the two previous cases, so also in this case, there is an ancient Celtic name, Geio, to take into account, and to this may be placed the names Keogh and Keho, if these names be, as I suppose, Irish and not English. Also the Kay and the Kie in McKay and McKie. Lastly, in this, as in the other two cases, there is also a name on Roman pottery, Gio, which might, as it seems, be either German or Celtic. Can there be any connection, I venture to inquire, between these ancient names, Celtic or Teutonic, and the Roman Gaius and Caius? Several well-known Roman names are, as elsewhere noted, referred by German writers to a Celtic origin.

It will be seen then that, in the case of all the three names of which I have been treating, there is an ancient Celtic name in a corresponding form which might in some cases intermix. And there are many more cases of the same kind among our surnames. Wake, for instance, may represent an ancient name, either German or Celtic; for the German a sufficient etymon may be found in wak, watchful, while for the Celtic there is nothing, observes Gluck, in the range of extant dialects to which we can reasonably refer it. So Moore represents an ancient stem for names common to the Celts, the Germans, and the Romans, though at least as regards the Germans, the origin seems obscure.3

Now it is quite possible, particularly in the case of such monosyllabic words as these, that there might be an accidental coincidence between a Celtic and a Teutonic name, without their having anything in common in their root. It is possible, again, that the one nation may have borrowed a name from the other, as the Northmen, for instance, sometimes did from the Irish or the Gael, one of their most common names, Niel(sen), being thus derived; while, on the other hand, both the Irish and the Gael received, as Mr. Worsaae has shown, many names from the Northmen. So also the Romans seem to have borrowed names from the Celts, several well-known names, as Plinius, Livius, Virgilius,4 Catullus, and Drusus, being, in the opinion of German scholars, thus derived.

But though no doubt both these principles apply to the present case, yet there is also, as it seems to me, something in the relationship between Celtic and Teutonic names which can hardly be accounted for on either of the above principles. And I venture to throw out the suggestion that when ancient Celtic names shall have been as thoroughly collected and examined as, by the industry of the Germans, have been the Teutonic, comparative philology may – perhaps within certain lines – find something of the same kinship between them that it has already established in the case of the respective languages. Meanwhile, I venture to put forward, derived from such limited observations as I have been able to make, certain points of coincidence which I think go some way to justify the opinion expressed above. In so doing I am not so much putting forward etymological views of my own, as collecting together, so as to shape them into a comparison, the conclusions which have, in various individual cases, been arrived at by scholars such as Zeuss. There are, then, four very common endings in Teutonic names, —ward, as in Edward, ric, as in Frederic, mar, as in Aylmar, and wald, as in Reginald (=Reginwald). The same four words, in their corresponding forms, are also common as the endings of Celtic names, ward taking the form of guared or guaret, the German ric taking generally the form of rix (which appears also to have been the older form in the German, all names of the first century being so given by Latin authors), wald taking the form of gualed or gualet, and mar being pretty much the same in both. Of these four cases of coincidence, there is only one (wald = gualet) which I have not derived from German authority. And with respect to this one, I have assumed the Welsh gualed, order, arrangement, whence gualedyr, a ruler, to be the same word as German wald, Gothic valdan, to rule. But we can carry this comparison still further, and show all these four endings in combination with one and the same prefix common to both tongues. This prefix is the Old German had, hat, hath, signifying war, the corresponding word to which is in Celtic cad or cat. (Note that in the earliest German names on record, as the Catumer and the Catualda of Tacitus, the German form is cat, same as the Celtic. This seems to indicate that at that early period the Germans so strongly aspirated the h in hat, that the word sounded to Roman ears like cat, and it assists perhaps to give us an idea of the way in which such variations of tongues arise.)

I subjoin then the following names which, mutatis mutandis, are the same in both tongues, and which, judging them by the same rules which philology has applied to the respective languages, might be taken to be from some earlier source common to both races: —

In comparing Catualda with the British Cadwalladyr I am noting an additional point of coincidence. Catualda is not, like other Old German names, from wald, rule, but from walda, ruler. There is only one other Old German name in the same form, Cariovalda,5 also a very ancient name, being of the first century. This then may represent the older form, though this is not what I wish at present to note, but that Catualda is the counterpart of the British Cadwalladyr, which also is not from gualed, rule, but from gualedyr, ruler.

In suggesting that this coincidence may be confined within certain lines I mean to guard against the assumption that it would, as in the case of the language, be found to pervade the whole system, many of the formations of which may be of a more recent time. There are some other stems, considered by the Germans to be in coincidence, to only one of which I will refer at present, the Old Celtic tout, Welsh tûd = the Gothic thiuda. Hence the name Tudric, of a British king of Glamorgan, would be the counterpart of that of the Gothic king Theuderic, or Theoderic. I will take one more instance of a name presumed to be common to the Germans and to the Celts as an illustration of the manner in which – men's names being handed down from generation to generation without, even in ancient times, any thought of their meaning – a name may survive, while the word from which it was originally derived has perished out of the language, or is retained in a sense so changed as hardly to be recognised. The German name in question is that of Sigimar, the brother of Arminius, dating from the first century of our era, a name which we still have as Seymore, and in its High German form Sicumar we have as Sycamore, intermediate Anglo-Saxon names being found for both. The prefix sig is taken, with as much certainty as there can be in anything of the kind, to be from sig, victory; the ending mar, signifying famous, is a word to which I have already referred as common both to the Germans and to the Celts. Segimar was also an ancient Celtic name, but while the ending mar has a meaning to-day in Celtic speech, the prefix seg is a word of which they are hardly able to render any account. Only in the Old Irish (which seems to contain some of the most ancient elements) Gluck, finding a word seg with the meaning of the wild ox, urus, deduces from it the ancient meaning of strength (Sansc. sahas, vis, robor), and infers an original meaning akin to the German.