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From: "Barbara Humphreys" <>
Subject: [LAN] Fw: Dotty British Surnames - Origins
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 1999 12:26:39 +1000


This was on the genbrit list - thought some of you might find it
interesting.

Regards
Barbara in sunny Sydney



> Transcript of an article in The Daily Mail of 28th Sept 1999, written
> by Rebecca Fowler.
>
> AS A SURVEY REVEALS BRITAIN'S SILLIEST SURNAMES, WE LOOK AT THE
> HISTORY BEHIND THEM
>
> The Daft truth behind Dotty names
>
> So the ONIONs are in Durham, the HONEYBUNs in Dorchester and the
> SQUELCHYs occupy Romford. Most of the CRANKs still live in Crewe, the
> DAFTs make do in Nottingham and the IDLEs rest in Wakefield, while the
> GOTOBEDs are slumbering in Cambridge.
>
> Before you stifle your giggles, spare a thought for the most
> unfortunately named families in Britain.
>
> For generations they have tried to hold up their DOTTY, DAFT, IDLE,
> SQUELCHY heads. But for generations there has been no let-up.
> If you're a SOWERBUTT, a TOTTY, or a BLINKINSOP, not to mention
> a DUMPER, a SHUFFLEBOTTOM, or a CRUMPER, it just gets worse.
> Now they are being hit by another round of all too familiar jokes,
> following a marketing survey of names and addresses that reveals the
> most curious.
>
> But how on earth did they get stuck with such names in the first
> place? While first names come and go with the fashion (as the Kylies,
> Keanus and Leonardos) will tell you - it is almost impossible to
> escape the surnames that have been handed down to us. The earliest
> family names began as a guide for busy peasants and lords needing to
> keep tabs on each other. If there were two Peters in a village, then
> the older might be Peter WHITE HEAD, while the other might be Peter
> SMALL FOOT. The names were formed haphazardly from people's
> occupations, their physical features, nicknames, and the places where
> they lived. This worked out very well for the SMITHs, the GOODs and
> the YORKs - and their children, who often just added 'son' to the end
> of these names.
>
> It was not so straightforward for Henry BY THE WELL AND NEXT TO THE
> GREEN, or John WITH THE LARGE WART ON HIS NOSE, or even the FOOLISH,
> the UGLY, and the SICKLY OF FACES - all of which have been documented
> names. Add a series of messy foreign invasions to the equation, and
> you have even more scope for potential disasters.
>
> Between 1066 and 1399, not one king of England spoke English. Local
> surnames were often so mis-pronounced and misspelt by the
> French-speaking rulers that they evolved into new names - and the
> mostly illiterate peasants were not in a position to argue. The
> turning point for surnames was the introduction of a poll tax in 1379.
> Medieval bureaucrats went across the country, noting down the name of
> every person over the age of 16 for their new records, to ensure
> everybody paid up.
>
> "Once you start writing things down, you need more precise ways of
> referring to people," says Malcolm Godden, Professor of Anglo-Saxon at
> Oxford University. "That really marked a formal beginning of surnames
> that would be passed down the line. An awful lot of those names stuck,
> but so, too, have the mistakes made when they were first written down.
> GOTOBED was presumably a corruption of something else. It could come
> from a foreign word, Dutch or German. And a whimsical scribe, not
> knowing how to spell it, came up with the nearest English phrase he
> could think of. Most people with surnames didn't have the faintest
> idea how to spell them, so they were relying on whoever was sent to
> collect the information."
>
> Some of the less flattering names got lost along the way. The GOTOBEDs
> and SOWERBOTTOMs can be grateful, at least, that they are not
> HAIRYBREECHES, DRAWBACKs, MILKSOPs, FLATNOSEs, BLOODAXEs, or
> WASTEPENNYs. But many stuck, as the DEADMANs, GRUDGINGs and
> DUNGWORTHs in the phone directory will tell you.
>
> The Norman invasion also led to a French flourish being added to many
> Saxon names. One by one, English earls and bishops were replaced by
> Normans. They in turn doled out Franglais names to those in their
> favour - Par Dieu became PURDY, Bon Homme became BONHAM and Beau Champ
> became BEACHAM. Soon surnames were part of a clearly defined class
> system. Peasants kept Anglo-Saxon names - MILLER, ARCHER, BAKER, and
> the like. The skilled tradesmen got more French sounding names - MASON
> and TAILOR among them. And the newly appointed aristocrats had
> French-sounding family names, which they combined with Saxon titles,
> and kept for hundreds of years.
>
> They would simply keep adding to them. Take the First World War
> Admiral LEONE SEXTUS DENYS OSWOLF FRADUATI TOLLEMARCHE-TOLLEMACHE-DE
> ORELLANDA-PLANTAGENET-TOLLEMACHE-TOLLEMACHE. Try getting that on your
> chequebook. But through the centuries, names continued to be
> corrupted, lose a letter here and gain another there. By SHAKESPEARE's
> day, spelling was still fairly random. More than 80 spellings of his
> name have been found. In his own will, he spelled it two different
> ways on the same document. "Curiously, the one spelling he never
> seemed to use himself was SHAKESPEARE", says the American writer Bill
> Bryson, author of 'Mother Tongue', which colourfully document s the
> history of the English language. "People's names in former times were
> rendered in a bewildering variety of ways - some of which bore scant
> resemblance to the owner's preferred name".
>
> "A little known fact about Shakespeare", Bryson says, "is that his
> parents moved to Stratford-upon-Avon from a nearby village shortly
> before his birth. Had they not done so, the Bard of Avon would instead
> be known as the rather less ringing Bard of Snitterfield". Even some
> of the more innocent-sounding names have unsavoury roots. KENNEDY
> comes from 'ugly head'; in Gaelic, BOYD translates as 'sickly' or
> 'yellow face'; and GOLDWATER is a synonym of urine. At least the
> British are not alone in absurd names. A number of other countries
> followed the practise of forming surnames from nicknames. In Russia,
> the glamorous sounding TOLSTOY translates as fat, and GORKY means
> bitter. In Italy, CICERO comes from 'wart on the nose', and in Greece,
> the unpopular surname KOLOKOTRONIS came from 'bullet in the backside'.
> A survey in France revealed that a host of unfortunately named
> families have spent the past century trying to gat rid of their
> less-than-glamorous titles. More than 200,000 surnames have vanished,
> as their owners exchange them for something more suave. Names like
> CORNICHON, which translates as gherkin, MERDIER, which means 'muck up'
> and COCU, meaning cuckold, are among those to have been discreetly
> dropped. And there are no longer any Monsieur or Madame PUANTs,
> meaning stinky. The last members of the PUANT family to bear the name
> changed it in 1914. And the last French-born HITLER became a MONNOT in
> 1946.
>
> For those who ask 'What's in a name?', the answer may be quite a lot,
> which will bring little comfort to the PRATTs and the DAFTs.
> Researchers investigating the possible link between name and
> character, in which we are influenced by the power of suggestion of
> our titles, have found some startling results. What led Sir Hugh FISH
> to become a pollution and fisheries inspector and a water sports
> enthusiast? Why did Pippa GREENWOOD and Bob FLOWERDEW both choose
> gardening? Why did Dr KIDD opt for paediatrics? In Britain there is an
> eye surgeon called Mr IBALL and in Tasmania there is a policewoman
> called Lauren ORDER. No doubt, the ONIONs of Durham, the DAFTs of
> Nottingham and the CRANKs of Crewe, listed in the last research, have
> overcome their names. Perhaps they are even better people for it. Let
> us hope the same is true of the TOTTYs of Chester, not to mention the
> BOGIEs in Kirkcaldy. They could always follow the example of the
> American pizza delivery boy, formerly known as David HUNSINGER, who
> last year decided to change his name because he craved anonymity.
> He chose - Just A. NAME.

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