Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

where it simply means 'William of Trent.'1 This, of course, is met in France by 'de,' as it was also on English soil during early Norman times. If, on the other hand, the situation only of the abode gave the personality of the nominee, the connecting link was varied according to the humour or caprice of the speaker, or the relative aspect of the site itself. Thus, if we take up the old Hundred Rolls we shall find such entries as 'John Above-brook,' or 'Adelina Above-town,' or 'Thomas Behind-water,'or 'John Beneath-the-town.' Or take a more extended in-stance, such as 'Lane.' We find it attached to the personal name in such fashions as the following:

CeciIia in the Lane.

Emma a la Lane.

John de la Lane.

John de Lane.

Mariota en le Lane.

Philippa ate Lane.

Thomas super Lane.

'Brook,' again, by the variety of the prefixes which I find employed, may well be cited as a further example.We have such entries as these:

Alice de la Broke.

Andreas ate Broke.

Peter ad le Broke.

Matilda ad Broke.

Reginald del Broke.

Richard apud Broke.

Sarra de Broke.

Reginald bihunde Broke.

"Whatis your name?' then said Robin Hood,
'Come, tell me, without any fail;'

'By the faith of my body,' then said the young man,
'My name it is Allan a Dale.'
(Robin Hood, vol. ii. 261.)

LOCAL SURNAMES.

These are extracts of more or less formal entries, but they serve at least to show how it was at first a mere matter of course to put in the enclitics that associated the personal or Christian name with that which we call the surname. Glancing over the instances just quoted, we see that of these definitive terms some are purely Norman, some equally purely Latin, a few are an admixture of Norman and Latin, a common thing in a day when the latter was the language of indenture, and the rest are Saxon, 'ate' being the chief one. This ' atte ' was 'atthe,' answering to the Norman 'de la,' 'del,' or 'du,' and was familiarly contracted by our forefathers into the other forms of 'ate' and ' att;' or for the sake of euphony, when a vowel preceded the name proper, extended to 'alter]: In our larger and more formal Rolls these seldom occur, owing to their being inscribed all but invariably in the Norman-French or Latin style I have instanced above, but in the smaller abbey records, and those of a more private interest, these Saxon prefixes are common. In the writers of the period they are familiarly used. Thus, in the 'Coventry Mysteries,' mention is made of

Thom Tynker, and Betrys Belle,

Peyrs Potter, and Watt at the Well; 1

1 One of the best puns extant is put to the credit of the Duke of Buckingham by Walter Scott, in his Peveril of the Peak. A Mrs. Cresswell, who had borne anything but a creditable character, bequeathed 10l.. for a funeral sermon, in which nothing ill-natured was to be said of her. The duke wrote the following brief but pointed discourse: 'All I shall say of her is this: she was born well, she married well, she lived well, and she died well; for she was born at "Shad-well,' 'married to ' 'Cress-well,"lived at ' 'Clerken-well,' 'and died in ' 'Bride-well.' ''