Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

nomenclature. Nor must we forget 'Joan,'until Tudor days the general form of the present 'Jane.'Then ' some of the better and nicer sort,' as Camden saith, ' misliking the former, turned it into ' 'Jane' '; ' and in testimony of this he adds that 'Jane 1 is never found in older records. This is strictly true. There can be little doubt that when the fair queen of Henry VIII. gave distinction to the name it became a courtly fashion to give it a different form from that borne by the multitude, and thus 'Jane' arose. Thus 'Joan' was left, as Miss Yonge says, 'tothe cottage and the kitchen; ' and there, indeed, it lingered on for a long period.' Of many another could Shakespeare have sung:

Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-who.

To-whit, to-who, a merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

Previously to this, anyway, both queens and princesses had been content with 'Joan.' I doubt not, with regard to several of the surnames above-mentioned, 'John' must, if the truth be told, share the honours of origination with 'Joan;' nor do I think 'Jennison' peculiar to the latter. What with 'John ' and 'Jean' for the masculine, and 'Joan' and' Jenny'

1 Thus Thomas Hale, a Puritan, writing in 1660 against May Games, has some verses in which the Maypole is represented as saying

I have a mighty retinue,

The scum of all the raskall crew

Of fidlers, pedlers, jayle scaped slaves,

Of tinkers, turncoats, tospot knaves,

Of theeves and scape-thrifts many a one,

With bouncing Besse and jolly Jone.

PATRONYMIC SURNAMES.

for the feminine, I do not see how the two could possibly escape confusion. 'Jones' and 'Joanes,' and 'Jane' and 'Jayne,' to say nothing of 'Jennings,' seem as like hereditary from the one as the other.' Two feminines. from 'Jack,' viz. 'Jacquetta' and 'Jacqueline,' were not unknown in England; 'Jacquetta Knokyn' (AA 3), ' Jackett Toser' (Z). The latter was the more common, and bequeathed us a surname 'Jacklin,' which still exists. It is found on an old bell:

This bell was broke and cast againe, as plainly doth appeare,

John Draper made me in 1618, wich thyme churchwardens were,

Edward Dixson for the one, who stood close to his tacklin,

And he that was his partner there was Alexander Jacklin.
(Book of Days, i. 303.)

The peasant's leather jerkin, corresponding to the more lordly coat of mail, was a jack whence the diminutive jacket. The more warlike dress gave rise to the name of 'Jackman,' of which more anon.

1 In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a popular sobriquet for Jane or Joan was 'Jugg.' In Espinasses' 'Lancashire Worthies,' Joan, the daughter of the celebrated Dr. Byrom, is familiarly styled ' Jugg.'A song of James I.'sreign says

'Joan, Siss, and Nell, shall all be ladified,

Instead of hay carts, in coaches shall ride.'

This is Mr. Chappell's version. (English Songs, i. 327.) In Hunter's Hallamshire,'it runs

'Jugg, Cis, and Nell, shall all be ladifed.'

A ballad of Queen Anne's reign represents John, the swain, as singing

'My heart and all's at thy command,

And tho' I've never a foot of land,

Yet six fat ewes and one milch cow,

I think, my Jug, is wealth enow.'
(Pills to Purge Melancholy, i. 293.)