YOUR NAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 160, 8 July 1922, Page 21

YOUR NAME.

Surnames were not known in England until after the Norman Conquest, and even then it took hundreds of years before the peasantry assumed them (says a "Daily Mail" writer). They took them more or less by chance, and the numbers of Johnsons, Thomsons, and similar names go to prove how many began by simply adding their father's name to their own.

„ T^, c s ? ottißu '|Macs" and the Irish "O's" gained their surnames in similar fashion, for Macdonald merely means

"son of Donald" and O'Donnell the same thing.

Some, no doubt, took their names from their overlords, a custom which has prevailed in the United States in quite recent times. The Negroes, slaves up to 60 years ago, practically all assumed the names of their former masters, though sometimes oddly eorruDted. A Negro who once worked for mc signed himself "Cicero Mack," and I happen to know that the name of the family who owned his father was Mackay.

In former times, when spelling was not an exact science, names became similarly corrupted in our own country, In an old book on the subjedt of surnames, I find that a certain Mr. Half-, penny, an Irish grocer, who prospered in business gradually changed his own name to Halpen. His son, who grew richer than his father and had been christened Kenny, went farther, and eventually hlossoaed out as Kenneth Macalpih.

Many of the original NoTman names borne by the followers of William the Conqueror have changed with the passage of centuries. De l'lsle, for instance, has become Lyell or I/yle, de Vesci Veitch, and de Vere Wear. *

Some of our most valuable immigrants were driven here by religious persecutions abroad. Spiller, Brock, Raymond are the English versions of names borne by Flemish settlers. This also applie? to Guppy, which -was originally de Goupe, and Bridges, once de Bruges.

In 1655 came the great influx of Huguenots, flying in consequences of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Paget, Payne, Jlaturin, Martineau, Romilly, Labouchere, and Garrick (originally Garrique) are all names of Huguenot origin. Others of these names have become completely Anglicised. One might instance Mullins, OTiginally de Moulins; Dillon, which was once Delaine; Taylor, from Letellier; Butcher, from Bouchier. Le Cog has become Layeock; Mahieu, Mayhewj Le Maitre, Masters. The commonplace Higgins was once de Hugghens, and many Smiths had ancestors known as Lefevre.

The process eontimies to this day, for we all know what numbers of people with German names Anglicised them at the beginning of the Great War. Some of the oldest names in the kingdom, which still remain unchanged belong to Scottish families. Bruee and Wallace, Dundas, Fraser, and Stewart are instances of names of which the origin is lost in the mist of centuries.