The Romance of Names Part 24

NAMES FROM WARES

Such names as Ginger, Pepper, may however belong to the cla.s.s of nicknames conferred on dealers in certain commodities; cf. Pescod, Peskett, from pease-cod. Of this we have several examples which can be confirmed by foreign parallels, e.g. Garlick, found in German as k.n.o.blauch, [Footnote: The cognate Eng. Clove-leek occurs as a surname in the Ramsey Chartulary.] Straw, represented in German by the cognate name Stroh, and Pease, which is certified by Fr. Despois. We find Witepease in the twelfth century.

Especially common are those names which deal with the two staple foods of the country, bread and beer. In German we find several compounds of Brot, bread, and one of the greatest of chess-players bore the amazing name Zuckertort, sugar-tart. In French we have such names as Painchaud, Painleve, Pain-tendre--

"Eugene Aram was usher, in 1744, to the Rev. Mr. Painblanc, in Piccadilly"

(Bardsley).

Hence our Cakebread and Whitbread were probably names given to bakers.

Simnel is explained in the same way, and Lambert Simnel is understood to have been a baker's lad, but the name could equally well be from Fr. Simonel, dim. of Simon. Wastall is found in the Hundred Rolls as Wasted, Old Fr. gastel (gateau). Here also belongs Cracknell--

"Craquelin, a cracknell; made of the yolks of egges, water, and flower; and fas.h.i.+oned like a hollow trendle" (Cotgrave).

Goodbeer is explained by Bardsley as a perversion of G.o.dber (Chapter VII), which may be true, but the name is also to be taken literally.

We have Ger. Gutbier, and the existence of Sourale in the Hundred Rolls and Sowerb.u.t.ts at the present day justifies us in accepting both Goodbeer and Goodale at their face-value. But Rice is an imitative form of Welsh Rhys, Reece, and Salt, when not derived from Salt in Stafford, is from Old Fr. sault, a wood, Lat. saltus. [Footnote: This is common in place-names, and I should suggest, as a guess, that Sacheverell is from the village of Sault-Chevreuil-du-Tronchet (Manche).] It is doubtful whether the name Cheese is to be included here. Jan Kees, for John Cornelius, said to have been a nickname for a Hollander, may easily have reached the Eastern counties. Bardsley's earliest instance for the name is John Chese, who was living in Norfolk in 1273. But still I find Furmage as a medieval surname.

We also have the dealer in meat represented by the cla.s.sical example of Hogsflesh, with which we may compare Mutton and Veal, two names which may be seen fairly near each other in Hammersmith Road (but for these see also Chapter XXIII), and I have known a German named Kalbfleisch. Names of this kind would sometimes come into existence through the practice of crying wares; though if Mr. Rottenherring, who was a freeman of York in 1332, obtained his in this way, he must have deliberately ignored an ancient piece of wisdom.

CHAPTER XVI. A SPECIMEN PROBLEM: RUTTER

"Howe sayst thou, man? am not I a joly rutter?"

(Skelton, Magnyfycence, 1. 762.)

The fairly common name Rutter is a good example of the difficulty of explaining a surname derived from a trade or calling no longer practised. Even so careful an authority as Bardsley has gone hopelessly astray over this name. He says, "German ritter, a rider, i.e. a trooper," and quotes from Halliwell, "rutter, a rider, a trooper, from the German; a name given to mercenary soldiers engaged from Brabant, etc." Now this statement is altogether opposed to chronology. The name occurs as le roter, rotour, ruter in the Hundred Rolls of 1273, i.e. more than two centuries before any German name for trooper could possibly have become familiar in England. Any stray Mid. High Ger. Riter would have been a.s.similated to the cognate Eng.

Rider. It is possible that some German Reuters have become English Rutters in comparatively modern times, but the German surname Reuter has nothing to do with a trooper. It represents Mid. High Ger.

riutaere, a clearer of land, from the verb riuten (reuten), corresponding to Low Ger. roden, and related to our royd, a clearing (Chapter XII). This word is apparently not connected with our root, though it means to root out, but ultimately belongs to a root ru which appears in Lat. rutrum, a spade, rutabulum, a rake, etc.

There is another Ger. Reuter, a trooper, which has given the sixteenth-century Eng. rutter, but not as a surname. The word appears in German about 1500, i.e. rather late for the surname period, and comes from Du. ruiter, a mercenary trooper. The German for trooper is Reiter, really the same word as Ritter, a knight, the two forms having been differentiated in meaning; cf. Fr. cavalier, a trooper, and chevalier, a knight. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Ger.

Reiter was confused with, and supplanted by, this borrowed word Reuter, which was taken to mean rider, and we find the cavalry called Reuterei well into the eighteenth century. As a matter of fact the two words are quite unrelated, though the origin of Du. ruiter is disputed.

The New English Dictionary gives, from the year 1506, rutter (var.

ruter, ruiter), a cavalry soldier, especially German, from Du. ruiter, whence Ger. Reuter, as above. It connects the Dutch word with medieval Lat. rutarius, i.e. ruptarius, which is also Kluge's view.

[Footnote: Deutsches Etymologisches Wrterbuch.] But Franck [Footnote: Etymologisch Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal.] sees phonetic difficulties and prefers to regard ruiter as belonging rather to ruiten, to uproot. The application of the name up-rooter to a lawless mercenary is not unnatural.

But whatever be the ultimate origin of this Dutch and German military word, it is sufficiently obvious that it cannot have given an English surname which is already common in the thirteenth century. There is a much earlier claimant in the field.

The New English Dictionary has roter (1297), var. rotour, rotor, and router (1379), a lawless person, robber, ruffian, from Old Fr. rotier (routier), and also the form rutar, used by Philemon Holland, who, in his translation of Camden's Britannia (1610), says "That age called foraine and willing souldiours rutars." The reference is to King John's mercenaries, c. 1215. Fr, routier, a mercenary, is usually derived from route, a band, Lat. rupta, a piece broken off, a detachment. References to the grander routes, the great mercenary bands which overran France in the fourteenth century, are common in French history. But the word was popularly, and naturally, connected with route, Lat. (via) rupta, a highway, so that G.o.defroy [Footnote: Dictionnaire de rancien Francais.] separates routier, a vagabond, from routier, a bandit soldier. Cotgrave has--

"Routier, an old traveller, one that by much trotting up and down is grown acquainted with most waies; and hence, an old beaten souldier; one whom a long practise hath made experienced in, or absolute master of, his profession; and (in evill part) an old crafty fox, notable beguiler, ordinary deceiver, subtill knave; also, a purse-taker, or a robber by the high way side."

It is impossible to determine the relative shares of route, a band, and route, a highway, in this definition, but there has probably been natural confusion between two words, separate in meaning, though etymologically identical.

Now our thirteenth-century rotors and rulers may represent Old Fr.

routier, and have been names applied to a mercenary soldier or a vagabond. But this cannot be considered certain. If we consult du Cange, [Footnote: Glossarium ad Scriptures medics et inflows Latinitatis.] we find, s.v. rumpere, "ruptarii, pro ruptuarii, quidam praedones sub xi saeculum, ex rusticis. . . collecti ac conflati,"

which suggests connection with "ruptuarius, colonus qui agrum seu terram rumpit, proscindit, colic," i.e. that the ruptarii, also called rutarii, rutharii, rotharii, rotarii, etc., were so named because they were revolting peasants, i.e. men connected with the roture, or breaking of the soil, from which we get roturier, a plebeian. That would still connect our Rutters with Lat. rumpere, but by a third road.

Finally, Old French has one more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, Chaucer says of his Frere--

"Wel koude he synge and playen on a rote."

(A, 236.)

The word is possibly of Celtic origin (Welsh crwth) and a doublet of the archaic crowd, or crowth, a fiddle. Both rote and crowth are used by Spenser. Crowd is perhaps not yet obsolete in dialect, and the fiddler in Hudibras is called Crowdero. Thus Rutter may be a doublet of Crowther. There may be other possible etymologies for Rutter, but those discussed will suffice to show that the origin of occupative names is not always easily guessed.

Since the above was written I have found strong evidence for the "fiddler" derivation of the name. In 1266 it was decided by a Lancas.h.i.+re jury that Richard le Harper killed William le Roter, or Ruter, in self-defence. I think there can be little doubt that some, if not all, of our Rutters owe their names to the profession represented by this enraged musician. William le Citolur and William le Piper also appear from the same record (Patent Rolls) to have indulged in homicide in the course of the year.

CHAPTER XVII. THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS

"In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage, To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, At nyght were come into that hostelrye Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye Of sondry folk, by aventure y-falle In felawes.h.i.+pe, and pilgrimes were they alle, That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde."

(Prologue, 1. 20.)

This famous band of wayfarers includes representatives of all cla.s.ses, save the highest and the lowest, just at the period when our surnames were becoming fixed. It seems natural to distinguish the following groups. The leisured cla.s.s is represented by the Knight (Chapter XV) and his son the Squire, also found as Swire or Swyer, Old Fr. escuyer (ecuyer), a s.h.i.+eld-bearer (Lat. Scutum), with their attendant Yeoman, a name that originally meant a small landowner and later a trusted attendant of the warlike kind--

"And in his hand he baar a myghty bow"

(A, 108.)

With these goes the Franklin (Chapter XV), who had been Sherriff, i.e.

s.h.i.+re-reeve. He is also described as a Vavasour (p. ii)--

"Was nowher such a worthy vavasour" (A, 360.)

From the Church and the professions we have the Nunn, her attendant priests, whence the names Press, Prest, the Monk, the Frere, or Fryer, "a wantowne and a merye," the Clark of Oxenforde, the Sargent of the lawe, the Sumner, i.e. summoner or apparitor, the doctor of physic, i.e. the Leech or Leach--

"Make war breed peace; make peace stint war; make each Prescribe to other, as each other's leech"

(Timon of Athens, v. 4)--

[Footnote: The same word as the worm leech, from an Anglo-Saxon word for healer.]

and the poor parson. Le surgien and le fisicien were once common surnames, but the former is almost swallowed up by Sargent, and the latter seems to have died out. The name Leach has been reinforced by the dialect lache, a bog, whence also the compounds Blackleach, Depledge. Loosely attached to the church is the Pardoner, with his wallet--

"Bret-ful of pardon, comen from Rome al hoot."

(A, 687.)

His name still survives as Pardner, and perhaps as Partner, though both are very rare.

Commerce is represented by the Marchant, depicted as a character of weight and dignity, and the humbler trades and crafts by--