1. Names having the prefix _Le_ and ending in _er_ or _re_. They are
undoubtedly Norman or French, and generally relate to personal trade or
employment, as _Le Mesurier_, _Le Tellier_, _Le Tanneur_, _Le Fevre_.
Another class with the prefix _Le_, but of various terminations, are
obviously of French origin, as _Leblanc_, _Lenoir_, _Lebreton_,
_Lechaplin_, _Lemarchant_. All these came to us by the French Protestant
refugees, or from Jersey and Guernsey.
2. The meaning of _worth_. This word generally implies a _military work_,
and, I think, an _earth-work_; and I doubt whether _worth_ and _earth_ are
not from the same root; I personally have been able to trace _works_ in
many places whose names end in _worth_. I am satisfied all such surnames
were _local_, that is, derived from _places_ so named from military mounds
or _earth-works_.
3. The meaning of _Le Chaloneur_. It is evidently the same as our English
name _Challoner_, which Cole admits into his dictionary as "the name of an
ancient family." It means in old French either the _boatman_, from
"chalun," a boat; or a _fisherman_, from "chalon," a kind of net. As we
have in English _Fisher_, in modern French _Lepécheur_, in Italian
_Piscatory_.
4. _Le Cayser._ The same as _Cæsar_, a name now, we believe, extinct
amongst us, but preserved in our literature by Lord Clarendon and Pope. I
suspect that it was of a class of _fancy_ names which I shall mention
presently.
5. Baird and Aird are Scotch names, and probably local. Jameson (whose
authority is very low with me) derives _Baird_ from _bard_, and _Aird_ he
does not mention. _Aird_ or _ard_ is Celtic for _high_, and is a common
local denomination in Scotland and Ireland.
6. For the rest of the out-of-the-way names MR. LOWER mentions I can give
no more explanation than of many thousands others which have been probably
produced by some peculiarity or incidents in the first nominee, or some
corruption of a better known name. As to this class of fancy names, I can
give MR. LOWER a hint that may be of use to him. It used to be the custom
at the old Foundling Hospital and in all parish workhouses, to give the
children what I venture to call _fancy_ names. I remember being shocked at
the heterogeneous nomenclature that was outpoured on fifty or a hundred
poor babes at the Foundling. I happened once to accompany a noble lady--the
daughter of a great sea officer--to one of these Foundling christenings,
when the names of Howe, Duncan, Jervis, and Nelson, were in fashion, and
they were each given to half-a-dozen children; and while this was going on,
my fair and noble friend whispered me, "What a shame! all these poor little
creatures will grow up to be our cousins." Sometimes the names given were
grotesque, such as ought not to have been permitted; and sometimes the
children brought into the hospital, pinned to their clothes, names in which
I suppose the poor mother may have had a meaning, but which seemed to us
fantastical and extravagant.
Illegitimacy is a considerable source of strange names. I could give some
droll instances. Corruption is another; there are half-a-dozen names of
labourers in my village which are mere corruptions by vulgar pronunciation
of some of the noblest names of the peerage.
MR. LOWER cannot have failed to observe the {593} great tendency in the
United States to vary the orthography, and of course, I suppose, the
pronunciation of some of their old English patronymics; not from any
dislike to them, for the contrary sentiment, I believe, is very prevalent,
but the emigrants who carried out the names were ignorant or indifferent as
to the true orthography or pronunciation, and in time the departure grows
more wide. Instances of this may be also found in the small towns of
England, where MR. LOWER will find on the signs frequent deviations from
the usual spelling of the commonest as well as of the rarer names.