Most Germanic names consist of two elements. All names come from two primary sources and are acceptable for use in documentation. The following are lists of names of early Germanic people compiled by Nicolaa de Bracton of Leicester. (London: Oxford University Press, 1932) DA 670 W3 D9 v.11Įarly Germanic Names from Primary Sources (London: Harrison and Sons, 1892) DA 670 S49S5 Feet of Fines for Somerset: Richard I-Edward I, E.(Colchester: Wiles and Son, 1899) DA 670 E7A12 The names given here are taken from four collections of legal documents from around England: A look through a book of documents will give you a host of different possible surnames. Eventually these, too, lost their original meanings and became merely surnames. Anglo-Norman occupational names evolved right alongside English ones neither was completely dominant. The other common type of surname was the occupational name or descriptive name: for instance: le Ferrier = "the smith", "Draper" = "The draper",etc. As families grew and migrated, many of these lost their place-meanings and simply evolved into family names. The first was used mostly by the upper classes and was originally a place-name describing where the family lived: de Quincy = "of Quincy", de Montfort = "of Montfort", etc. I will not say much about surnames except to note the two most common forms. Whether these names all actually ended in "a" is another matter, but it is clear that in many cases one may substitute "e" for "(i)a" and still have just as valid a name: Felicia => Felice Amicia => Amice (and later, Amy), etc. You will note that many of the femine names end in "a", which is merely the most common nominative feminine ending. When the names were rendered into Latin in charters, often they were changed to make them fit the language. Names of great leaders or heroes (Constantine, Alexander, etc) seem to have also been used for males, though not as frequently as saints' names. You will notice the popularity of saints' and Biblical names for both sexes. The male names Roger and Simon and the female names Juliana and Matilda are good examples of this while none of these names dropped completely out of use (though Matilda nearly did), they became far less frequent in later centuries after rivaling the Williams, Richards, Cecilys and Joans for popularity in the Anglo-Norman period. Furthermore, the popular names in the 13th century did not necessarily maintain their popularity in later years. While certain of these were more popular than others, they did not dominate naming practices to the extent that names such as John, Thomas, Richard, and William for guys and Anne, Elizabeth, Cecily, and Margaret for girls did in later centuries. While this is indeed true for the later medieval period, the Anglo-Norman period (which lasted from the Conquest on down to the beginning of the fourteenth century or so) provided a much larger variety of available and relatively common personal names. It is a common misconception that medieval English naming practices centred on a relatively small number of personal names. This question was first answered in the November 2015 issue of BBC History Revealed magazineīy the end of Chetwood’s period of study, the way in which the people of England used personal names had been completely transformed.Short Treatise on Anglo-Norman Personal Names So it is possible our names are likely to tell us something about one of our distant ancestors. From around the 1200s, a person’s adopted name was commonly passed on to the next generation and so the inherited surname was born. Others, now common, came from a child taking their father’s name – including Johnson (the son of John) and Macdonald (son of Donald).Īs travel began to grow and communities met with more strangers, the practice became more general. They were selected by making some reference to either their occupation (‘Taylor’ or ‘Smith’ for example), personal characteristics (such as ‘Strong’ or ‘Brown’), or location of their residence (like ‘Wood’ or ‘Marsh’). Surnames came into common use around the early Middle Ages so that people could distinguish between persons of the same given name.
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