Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

PATRONYMIC SURNAMES.

IT is impossible to say how important an influence have merely personal names exercised upon our nomenclature. The most familiar surnames we can meet with, saving that of 'Smith,' are to be found in this list. For frequency we have no names to be con-pared with 'Jones,' or 'Williamson,'or 'Thompson,'or ' Richardson: How they came into being is easily manifest. Nothing could be more natural than that children should often pass current in the community in which they lived as the sons of 'Thomas,' or 'William,' or 'Richard,' or 'John;' and that these several relationships should be found in our directoriesas distinct sobriquets only shows that there was a particular generation in these families in which this title became permanent, and passed on to future descendants as an hereditary surname.1 The interest that attaches to these patronymics is great — for it is by them we can best discover what names were in

1 The following extract will show how patronymic surnames changed at first with each successive generation: — 'Dispensation for Richard Johnson, son of John Richardson, of Fishlake, and Evott daug: of Robert Palmer, who have married, although related in the fourth degree. Issued from Rome by Francis, Cardinal of St. Susanna, 30th March, 13th Boniface IX. (1402).' Test. Ebor. vol. iii. p. 318.