Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

This at once explains such a name as 'Peter in le Hawe' found in the Hundred Rolls. But Chaucer has a prettier use of it than this, a use still abiding in our 'Churchays,' relics of the mediaeval ' de Chirche-hay.' He speaks twice of the 'Churchhawe,' or grave-yard. How pretty it is! almost as pretty as its Saxon synonym ' Godsacre,' only that is more endeared to us, inasmuch as since the acre always denoted the sowed land (Latin ' ager '), so it whispers to us hopefully of the great harvest-tide to come when the seed thus sown in corruption shall be raised an incorruptible body. Our 'Goodacres' are doubtless thus derived — and with such names as 'Acreman' or

Akerman,' 'Oldacre' or 'Oddiker,' 'Longacre' and 'Whittaker' (or 'Whytacre' or 'Witacre,' as I find it in the thirteenth century), help to remind us how in early days an acre denoted less a fixed measure of land than soil itself that lay under the plough. But this by the way. I have just mentioned 'Hayworth.' A name like 'William de la Worth' (H.R.) represented our 'Worths' in the thirteenth century. Properly speaking, any sufficiently warded place — it had come to denote a small farmstead at the time the surname arose. 'Charlesworth' is the 'churl's worth,' the familiar metamorphosis of this name being identical with that of the astronomic 'Charles Wain,' and with such place-names as 'Charle-wood,' 'Charlton,' 'Carlton,' and 'Charley: Our various ' Unsworths,' 'Ainsworths,' 'Whitworths,' 'Langworthys,' 'Kenworthys,' 'Wortleys,' and others of this class are familiar to us all. Surnames like 'Roger de la Grange,' or 'Geoffrey de la Grange,' or 'John le

LOCAL SURNAMES.

Granger,'1remind us that grange also was commonly used at this time for a farmstead, it being in reality nothing more than our granary. 2 Piers Plowman portrays the good Samaritan thus

His wounds he washed,

Enbawmed hym, and bound his head,

And ledde hym forth on 'Lyard'

To 'Iex Christi,'a graunge

Wel sixe mile or sevene

Beside the newe market.

Our 'Barnes,' I need not say, are of similar origin. The Celtic 'booth,' a frail tenement of ' boughs,' whose temporary character our Biblical account of the Iraelitish wanderings so well helps to preserve, has given birth to our 'Booth's' and 'Boothmans,' once written 'de la Bothe ' and 'Botheman.' They may possibly have kept the stall at the fair or market. Comparisons we know are ever odious, but set beside the more Saxon ' Steads ' and 'Steadmans' the former inevitably suffer. The very names of these latter betray to us the well-nigh best characteristics of the race whence they are sprung. To be steady and stedfast are its best and most inherent qualities — qualities which, added to the dash and spirit of the Norman, have given the position England to-day occupies among the nations of the world. Our 'Bowers ' and 'Bowermans,'when not occupied in the

1 'His tenants, the graingers, are tyed to come themselves and winde the woll, they have a fatte weather and a fatte lambe killed, and a dinner provided for their paines.'(Henry Best's FarmingBook (1641), P.97.)

2 'John Orangeman' occurs in the Proc. in Chancery. (Elizabeth.)