The suburban citizen., 1901-07-27
ORIGIN OF SURNAMES
CONFUSION INCIDENT TO EARLY
FLOOD OF SIMILAR NAMES.

The Roots of Our Family Names Nav,
Sprung From Among Many Nation,
and Many TOngues--Some Quaint Cor
ruptions-The Use of Place Names.
There is no very clear record OF the
time when surnames first came into
regular use. No doubt the process was
very gradual one, and its epoch
varied in different countries, but that
they were general at a comparatively
early period Of civilization OF each ma
ton needs no insisting on.
To give but a single instance. in the
year 1887 Christianity first became
widespread in Poland and great mum.
bers of men and women were baptized
at one time. To simplify and expedite
matters with so large a concourse. II
became the custom Of the officiating
clergy to bestow the same name upon
whole patches Of people who came to
be admitted into the church. At one
baptism, for example, the name Peter
was conferred upon all the men and
Catherine upon all the women. On
another occasion they would all be
Pauls and Margarets, and so on.
Great confusion must inevitably
have been the result, and the rapid
adoption of a system of patrOnymics
: was the only escape from the difficulty.
The origin of our word surname form
| erly occasionally spelt "slrname," is
often supposed to be ''sirename," and
| it was indeed only in the nature of
! things that the earliest kind of distin-
! gushing second name should have ref
erence to the parent Our English
RObinsons. JOhnsOns Wilson's, and so
forth are common. ancient, and char
acteristic as the Scotch Macs and the
Irish O's, which mean the same thing.
The Mac, it need scarcely be said,
though often considered essentially
Scotch is common to the two nations,
as witness the well known dOggerel:
By Mac and o. yov'H always know
True lr!shmen, they say;
But if they lack both o. and Mae
No lrishmen are they.
While Mae may be translated son,
"O' IS more properly grandson The
Norman equivalent is "Fltz," a cor
ruption Of ifs" The Russian term
ination witt" signifies the same word,
as also the Polish SKY" With regard
to the Welsh "ap," which also means
son, matters stand rather differently;
for in this case zap" is a separate !
word, and is not incorporated in the |
whole name except as a corruption;
also it may be introduced an ndehn- !
ite number of times in the same ap- |
pellation, so that a Welsh surname |
can convey a complete genealogy, and |
be, moreover, one Of the longest words |
in civilization. 1t is a common joke
TO laugh at a Welshman for his long |
list of ancestors with the connecting
"aps."
There is an old story of an English
man, foreign 10 the princpality and
its ways, riding after dark near a raw
inc from which issued a cry for as
sstance from one who had fallen in.
who's there" should the English
man. p-Gritth-ap- -Rees-ap-
Evan-ap. Robin" came the reply.
A4uAg LNAlOMEs nan -d-uONGlA VI JDus
why can't you help each other out"
exclaimed the Englshman, ignorant of
the fact that he was addressing but
one man.
The corruption of the "ap' has led
to a number of common notifications
of old Welsh names, as Price, for
ap-Rhys, Pritchard for ap-Richard
Powell for ap-Howell; and many 9th
ers, Probert, Probly, 'Pugh Penny, as
also the ''b' being similar to the ''p''
Bevan, Barry and the like. Another
Welsh form Of family name-that
which simply puts the Christian name
into the genitiye case-has contributed
many of our commonest surnames, as
Jones, t. e., Johns Harry s-Harris,
Williams Hughes, etc.
The roots Of our family names, as
of our families themselves, have
sprung from among many nations and
many tongues. There are well nigh
cases in England Of sur
names which point unmistakably to
the foreign country, and frequently {
too, actual neighborhood or town even, 5
from which the family originally mi !
grated, though no other kind of rec
ord may exist to prove that in far-off
time they came from over seas. OF
the original AnglO.Saxon there are
some few suryivals. Some can be
traced in the termination ing" which
among Teutonic people sgnihed off l
spring" Browning and Whiting in l
this way would mean the dark or fair Z
Place names from Normandy and Z
Brittany are very common, as might
be supposed Darcy, Neyill, Ferrers,
DevereuX, Warren, Percy, Marmion,
st. Aubn, Lascelle, Nor Il
Iey-all these and many others can Il
readily be referred to their original I
birthplace In others. through corrup- t
tion Of the word, the locality is not n
easy to trace, though stlll there-at for Il
example, the name st. Maure, which, a
by process Of time. has come to stand c
IS Seymour; Valoins, which we know p
)nly in its English surname as Val {