Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

with our Saxon forefathers. The method of its employment is still common in Lancashire and Yorkshire.The poorer classes still speak of a neighbour as dwelling ' at the street end;' they never by any chance use the fuller phrase ' the end of the street.'Chaucer uses it as a familiar mode of expression. The Friar, in the preface to his story, says slightingly —

A Sompnour is a rener up and doun

With mandments for fornication, And

is beaten at every tounes ende.

In the 'Persones Prologue,' too, the same poet says —

Therewith the moons exaltation

In mene Libra, alway gan ascende

As we were entring at the thorpes ende.

How colloquial it must have been in his day we may judge from the following list of names I have been enabled to pick up from various records, and which I could have enlarged had I so chosen: —

John ate Bruge-ende.

Walter atte Townshende.

John de Poundesende.

Margaret ate Laneande.

William atte Streteshend.

John atte Burende.

Adam de Wodeshende.

Martin de Clyveshende.

John de la Wykhend.

William de Overende.

John de Dichende.

Thomas atte Greaveshende.

Besides these we have such a Latinized form for 'Townsend,' or 'Townshend,' as 'Ad finem villae,'or ' End' itself without further particularity, in such a

LOCAL SURNAMES.

sobriquet as 'William atte-Nende.' t The several points of the compass, too, are marked in 'Northende,' ' Eastende,' and 'Westende,' the latter having become stereotyped in the fashionable mouth as the quarter in which the more opulent portion of the townreside, whether its aspect be towards the setting sun or the reverse — but an exaggeration of this kind is a mere trifle where fashion is concerned.

But these Saxon compounded names, numerous as they are, are but few in comparison with the simplelocative itself, without prefix, without desinence, 'Geoffrey atte Style,' 'Roger atte Lane,' 'Walter atteWater,' 'Thomas atte Brooke;' or in the more Norman fashion of many of our rolls, 'John de la Ford,' ' Robert del Holme,' 'Richard de la Field,' 'Alice de la Strete:' all these might linger for awhile, but in the end, as we might foresee, as well in the mouths of men as later on in the pages of our registers, they became simple 'Geoffrey Styles' and 'Roger Lane,' 'Walter Waters' and 'Thomas Brookes,' 'John Ford' and 'Robert Holmes,' 'Alice Street' and 'Richard Field.' Here, then, is an endless source of surnames to our hands. Here is the spring from which have issued those local sobriquets which preponderate so largely over those of every other class. To analyse all these were impossible, and the task of selection is little less difficult. But we may give the preference to such leading provincialisms as are em-bodied in our personal nomenclature, or to such termsas by their existence there betoken that, though not

1 This name thus formed existed till the sixteenth century, at least, for 'Christopher Nend' is set down in the Corpus Christi Guild, York, 1530.