Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

quently met with at this time. To the former title of this official duty it is we owe the fact of our still terming any company of night serenaders ' waits,' and especially those bands of strolling minstrels who keep up the good old custom of watching in Christmas morn. A good old custom, I say, even though it may cost us a few pence and rouse us somewhat rudely, maybe, from our slumbers. 'Wait,' 'Waite,'1 'Wayt,' and 'Whaite,' with ' le Geyt,' are the forms that still exist among us. 'Trumper,' too, has its place equally assured in our nomenclature.

Such names as we have just dwelt upon, however, remind us of other municipal authorities, higher in position than these, to whom, indeed, these were but servitors. A sobriquet like 'Richard le Burgess' or ' John le Burges' reminds us of the freemen of the borough towns, while ' le Mayor,' or 'Mayer,' or 'Maire,' or ' Mair,' or 'Meyre,'2 or 'Mire,' for all these different spellings are found, is equally suggestive of the chief magistracy of such. Piers, to quote him once more, speaks of

The maistres,

Meirs and Jugges,

That have the welthe of this world.

The feminine form of this sobriquet appears in the early but obsolete 'Margaret la Miresse.' Speaking

1 'Thomas le Await' occurs in the Rot. Curia Regis. This reminds us that our ' waiter' was once prefixed with 'a' likewise — ' xii. esquiers awaiters.' (Ord. Household of Duke of Clarence, 1493.)

2 'And to meyris or presidentis and to kyngis ye shall be led for me in witnessyng to them.' — Matt x. 18 (Wicklyffe). In a Petition to Parliament, dated 1461, the following varieties of spelling occur within the space of thirty lines: — 'Maier,' 'Mayer,' 'Mayre,' and 'Maire.' (Rot. Parl, Ed. IV.)

SURNAMES OF OFFICE.

of mayors, some lines written some years ago on the proposed elevation of a certain Alderman Wood as Lord Mayor are not without humour, nor out of place, perhaps, here

In choice of Mayors 'twill be confest,

Our citizens are prone to jest:

Of late a gentle 'Flower' they tried —

November came and checked its pride.

A 'Hunter' next, on palfrey grey,

Proudly pranced his year away.

The next, good order's foes to scare,

Placed 'Birch' upon the civic chair.

Alas ! this year, 'tis understood,

They mean to make a mayor of 'Wood!'

As a fellow to 'Meir' we may cite 'Provost,' or 'Prevost,' or 'Provis,' a term still used of the mayoralty in Scotland. 'Councellor' and 'Councilman' are still familiar terms in our midst. 'Clavenger,' 'Claver,' and ' Cleaver' we will mention last as filling up a list of civic offices entirely, so far as the language is concerned, the property of the dominant power. A 'Robert Clavynger' occurs in the Parliamentary Rolls. Its root is ' claviger,' the 'key-bearer,' one whose office it was at this time to protect the deposits, whether of money or parchments, be-longing to the civic authorities. The more common term was that of 'Clavier,' such entries as 'Henry le Claver,' or 'John le Clavour,' or 'John le Clavier,' 'being of familiar occurrence at this time. Thus in a treaty agreed upon between the Mayor, sheriffs, and commonalty of Norwich in 1414, it was declared that

1 I suspect the difference between the ' claviger' and the 'clavier' lay in that the former bore the key, and perhaps even the mace, in all the many public processions and pageants of the day.