Various - Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 691

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 levées 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 Grossetête 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.