Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

very likely he was one of those who caused a law to bepassed in 1463 forbidding any knight, or any one beneath that rank, to wear any shoes or boots having pikes passing the length of two inches ! Even this curtailment, I imagine, would astonish the weak minds of pedestrians in the nineteenth century. Of a similar craft with the shoemaker came 'the hosier' orChaucer,' the latter of which has become, surnominally, so famous in English literature. Though now obsolete, such a name as 'Robert le Chaucer' or 'William le Chaucier' was anything but uncommon at this time. Like 'Suter,' above mentioned, it has a Latin source, its root being ' calcearius.'Chausses, however, were not so much boots as a kind of leathernbreeches worn over mail armour. There is probably, therefore, but little distinction to be made between them and the 'hose' of former days, though it is somewhat odd that leather, which once undoubtedly was the chief object of the hosier's attention, should now in his shop be conspicuous by its absence. While 'Chaucer' has long ago become extinct, 'Hosier' or 'Hozier' is firmly established in our nomenclature. Thus we see that clothing is not without its mementoes.

A curious surname is presented for our notice in our 'Dubbers,' not to be confounded with our 'Daubers' already mentioned. To 'dub' was to dress, or trim, or decorate. Thus, with regard to military equipment, Minot says in .one of his political songs--

Knightes were there well two score

That were new dubbed to that dance.

It is thus we have acquired our phrase ' to dub a knight' The term, however, became very general in

SURNAMES OF OCCUPATION (TOWN).

the sense of embellishing, rather than mere dressing, and it is to this use of the word we owe the surname. Thus, in the 'Liber Albus ' we find a 'Peter le Dubbour' recorded, whose trade was to furbish up old clothes ; he was a fripperer in fact. In the York Pageant, already referred to more than once, we see the 'Dubbers' walking in procession between the 'Bookbinders' and 'Limners,' and here they were evidently mere trimmers or decorators externally of books. In another register we find a ' dubbour,' so called because as a hawker of fish he was in the habit of putting all the fine ones at the top of his basket, a trick still in vogue in that profession, I leantIn all these cases we see that 'adornment' or 'embellishment ' is the main idea. I need not remind my more North-country readers how every gardener still speaks of ' dubbing' when he heaps up afresh the soil about his flowers and plants. The old forms of the name were 'Jordan le Dubber,' 'Payen le Dubbour,' and 'Ralph le Douber,' which last most nearly approaches its root, the old Norman-French ' adouber,' to arrange.

A curious occupation is preserved from oblivion inour somewhat rare 'Raffmans.' We have the root meaning of the word in our ' reft ' and 'bereft,' implicative of that which is snatched away or swept off. Thus we still use 'riff-raff' in regard to the off-

1 It is evidently in a depreciatory sense that Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons makes use of this word, while his very employment of it shows how familiar was its meaning as a term of occupation, even in the sixteenth century. He says, speaking of a certain bishop, 'There stood by him a dubber, one Doctor Dubber: he dubbed him by and by, and said,' &c. Second Sermon before Edward VI.