Some methodological considerations in studying family names

1. Some methodological considerations in studying family names Patrick Hanks University of the West of England, Bristol ***

2. FaNUK • ‘Family names in the United Kingdom’ • AHRC grant £849,000 + PhD studentship • Purpose: to establish a well-researched, publicly available database of family names in the UK • xml relational database: • Entry name, early bearers, sources and references, explanation(s), geographical distribution, comments, • Facility ro research and edit enties in related groups • By agreement with OUP, FaNUK will supersede the ‘Reaney revision’ project

3. The team • Richard Coates (PI) • Peter McClure • Patrick Hanks • Kay Muhr • 2 RAs • 1 PhD student • Consultants: Prys Morgan, Oliver Padel, Carole Hough, Alison Grant, Nollaig O Muraile, and others

4. The state of the art • Dictionary of British Surnames (1958) by P. H. Reaney • A heroic, pioneering work • Well founded on a large collection (card file) of evidence of medieval bearers • Revised by R. M. Wilson (1984, 1991) • Many problems – [see next slides] • English surnames series (led by R. McKinley) • Monographs and Yorkshire studies by G. Redmonds • Welsh Surnames (1985) by T. J. and Prys Morgan • Black’s Surnames of Scotland (1946) • A few research papers by McClure, Redmonds, and others

5. Some problems with Reaney (1) • The inventory: • Over 20,000 current surnames in Britain are not explained by Reaney and Wilson – names like: • Alderson, Blair, Critchley, Perks, Pringle, Sneddon, …. • Approximately 4,000 of R&W’s entries have no modern bearers – names like: • Dodell, Dogood, Dogshanks, Domesday, Dottle, Douceamour, … • Almost no Jewish names: • no entry for Cohen; until 1991, Levy was only lsited as a variant of English Leavey • Garbled and sporadic coverage of Irish names • Haphazard use of Black for Scottish names

6. Some problems with Reaney (2) • The explanations: • Many explanations are guesses, often wrong [McClure]. • Insensitive to date. • Insensitive to geographical distribution; largely ignored Guppy (1891). • Literally thousands of heterogeneous groupings and fudges. Here’s one: Ravenshaw, Ravenshear, Ramshaw, Ramshire, Ranshaw, Renshaw, Renshall, Renshell. … ‘Dweller by the raven wood’ as at Ravenshaw (Warwicks) or Renishaw (Derbys). • David Hey has shown that Renshaw is from a place so called near Bishop Auckland (Durham)

7. Some problems with Reaney (3) • A big collection of medieval surnames • Linked, often wrongly, to modern family names • Does not attempt to show continuity from the medieval forms to the modern forms • Many fudges • Reaney had no way of measuring probability and statistically significant associations • With modern resources, we can do better.

8. Some issues in surnames research • Source data • Date of origin • Etymology vs. history • Statistical associations between surnames and localities • Variants; literacy (lack of) • Migration • Polygenesis

9. Surnames and Place-names

10. Seminal historical moments • Laidlaw (= Ludlow) a Scottish surname? – No surprise. ___ Ramsey, Lindsay, Coventry, Barclay, Hamilton, etc.: Scottish names derived etymologically from toponyms in England • A seminal moment in Scottish surname history: • King David I was brought up at the English court; • Married Matilda, Countess of Huntingdon; • After three older brothers predeceased him, he succeeded to the throne of Scotland; set about ‘Normanizing’ his administration; • An ensuing steady flow of Norman barons, knights, adventurers, and fortune seekers northwards (then and later)

11. Surnames and Family History Rootham • Statistically, a Bedfordshire surname. • Derived from Wrotham in Kent. • Geoffrey de Wrotham (12th century) was a domestic servant of successive archbishops of Canterbury • His son William de Wrotham, became sheriff of Devon (1198) • and grandson William de Wrotham, archdeacon of Taunton, was active in the creation of a navy temp. King John. • Another (or the same) William de Wrotham is mentioned in the records of Harrold Priory (Beds.), 1206. This is the earliest Bedfordshire record of the family.

12. Polygenesis and Monogenesis • Smith, Jones, and Johnson are polygenetic. • Sykes, Hanks, and Pulvertaft are monogenetic • All modern bearers get the name from a single original bearer • But what about Pardoe and Pardey? • Identical etymology (an oath name: par Dieu ‘by God’), • Reaney lumps them together in a single entry, but: • Pardoe is significantly associated with S. Staffs. • Pardey with Dorset • Almost certainly unrelated independent coinages • Other names, e.g. Faber and Mawde, are lexically as well as genealogically polygenetic • they have different etymologies in different localities

13. Name death and migration • Tens of thousands of extinct names are recorded in ME sources (and reproduced in MED, Fransson, Löfvenberg, etc.). See handout for examples. • The death of a surname is not a rare event. • Prediction of Sturges and Haggett (1987): of every surname borne by one individual in 1350, over half would have died out by 1950. • Quite a few British surnames are extinct in Britain but continue to thrive in the USA and/or Australia etc. • Examples: Throckmorton, Algeo, ....

14. Surnames in Britain and Ireland • Constant interchange of family names across the Irish Sea since the 12th century • Names like Walsh, Bermingham, Staunton, Stapleton are culturally Irish, despite their English etymologies • Ideally, we need parallel research projects on both sides of the Irish Sea.

15. Recent immigrant names • Britain is now a multicultural society. • A database that is planned as a public resource cannot simply ignore this fact • FaNUK will include ‘stub’ entries for recent immigrant names down to a certain frequency threshold • headword, frequency, and (if known) etymon • but not fully researched entries • to function as pointers to local resources (or the need to develop local resources)

16. Principles of FaNUK • Computational processing of resources and records, to support scholarly interpretation • Scrutinize the explanations of earlier researchers • Correlate surnames and localities (across time, if possible) • Entries for all names down to agreed frequency threshold • Give equal attention to surnames of Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and Cornish origin • Co-operation with GOONS and genealogists • Explanations to be written in clear, concise English (not telegraphese)