There is wide variation in the terminology used in writing about names – both in the terms used and in their exact application, but this glossary seeks to represent some of the most generally used. It is based on a glossary originally compiled as an aid to studying the place-names of England, and examples are mainly drawn from there, but it is hoped that it might be more widely useful, and that in time further examples from Ireland, Scotland and Wales might be added, as well as further terms, especially anthroponymic and linguistic ones. The glossary includes links that will take you to other entries in the glossary and to information elsewhere on this website or further afield.
References throughout are to counties below are to historic, pre-1974 counties.
accusative
affix (place-names)
In toponymic usage, affix most often refers to an additional element, usually a separate word or phrase, which is added to a primary or pre-existing place-name, e.g. Chipping (Norton) in Oxfordshire, (Blandford) Forum in Dorset, or Market (Harborough) in Leicestershire, all referring to a market. This usually happened after the Norman Conquest. Manorial affixes, designating post-Conquest landowners or feudal tenants, are especially numerous, though unevenly distributed, e.g. (Acton) Burnell in Shropshire or the Essex name (Shellow) Bowells. Affixes are most often added to primary names that are extremely common, e.g. Stoke, Thorpe or Norton, and they serve to distinguish identically named places, or to distinguish different parts of a divided estate. The affix is sometimes referred to as an addition and by some older writers such as Ekwall as a surname; a name incorporating one is sometimes referred to as double-barrelled. Some affixes are hard to detect because they have formed a compound with a simplex name. Nantwich (Cheshire), for instance, looks like a normal compound but was only Wich in 1086, before a form of Middle English named ‘famous’ was added, so it could be regarded as affixed. It is therefore important to check the early spellings of a name in tracing its history. Affixed names are usually major names, referring to estates, villages or towns, and they differ in that respect and others from secondary names.
affix (linguistics)
Note that usage in place-name studies is different from usage in linguistics and in common usage. In linguistics and in common usage, the term affix is used for structural units which form parts of words but which cannot occur independently (for example, the prefix un- in unpleasant and the suffix -ness in happiness).
anthroponym
A personal name. Hence anthroponymy — a system or corpus of personal names, and (sometimes) the study of it, though anthroponymics is the more usual term for the study of personal names. Anthroponymic is the adjective, ‘relating to personal names’.
appellative
A common noun, referring to a member of a class e.g. ash or town, as distinct from a name referring to a particular place e.g. Ashton. See also lexical word.
back-formation
Names, especially river-names, extrapolated from a settlement name, often by a misunderstanding. E.g. the river-name Chelmer was extrapolated from Chelmsford (Essex). The first element of Chelmsford was in fact an Old English personal name, Cēolmǣr, but it was misinterpreted as a river-name.
binomial system
The system of personal naming common throughout most of Europe and in other parts of the world, whereby people are identified by two categories of name: one or more forenames (or given names)and a family name or surname (e.g. Walter Scott, Jean-Paul Sartre).
byname
A characterising name used in addition to a personal name, as in twelfth- and thirteenth century records of Tove fox and Hugo le Fox.
(1) Some writers apply byname to any such name, whether it refers to a personal characteristic (and hence is a nickname) or to a relationship, place or occupation connected with the individual.
(2) Others use byname solely to mean nickname.
Christian name
See forename. The terms baptismal name and font-name are sometimes also used.
cognate (noun and adjective)
If words in different languages are cognate, they descend historically from the same original, though sound-changes in the respective languages usually give them superficial differences. E.g. Old Norse hryggr and Old English hrycg are cognate words, or cognates, giving rise to –rigg and –ridge respectively in place-names.
collocation
The co-occurrence of elements, e.g. Old English tūn often collocates with personal names to form names such as Edgbaston (Warwickshire), ‘Ecgbald’s farmstead/estate’. The verbs combine and compound are often found in the same sense.
commemorative name
A place-name commemorating an event, for instance a battle in the Napoleonic Wars (Trafalgar Square (London), Waterloo (several)) or in the Crimean War (several instances of Alma (Plantation) or Sebastopol (Road)), or else a person (Telford in Shropshire, Nelson in Lancashire (via a pub-name)). Commemorative names that consist solely of a pre-existing place-name can also be considered as transferred names. See also incident name.
compound
A name formed from two or more elements (constituent words or names) in the order specific + generic, e. g. Dunstable in Bedfordshire and several Newcastles, as opposed to a simplex name such as Goole (Yorkshire West Riding), Poole (Dorset), Wells (Somerset) and or several Stokes. Normally, the second element is a common noun referring to some kind of natural (topographical) feature or habitation; this is often termed a generic or generic element. The first element usually defines or characterises the second element; this is the specific or specific element, also commonly called the qualifier or qualifying element. Oxford (Oxnaforda c. 925) is the ford associated with oxen, for instance. Some pairs of elements co-occur frequently both in place-names and as lexical words, and can be regarded as compound elements, e.g. Old English bere-tūn ‘barley farm’ or ‘outlying grange’, hence numerous places called Barton. See also inversion compound, dithematic and trithematic.
Some names in Celtic languages, especially very old names, are compounds with the element order specific + generic. However, many names in Celtic languages, such as Aberdeen or more than one Brynmawr, also consist of two elements but are name phrases rather than compounds.
dative
See grammatical case.
dependent name
See secondary name.
dithematic
Applied to a compound consisting of two elements or themes; most commonly used of personal names, e.g. the Old English name Beowulf, literally ‘bee-wolf’, in contrast with the monothematic (single element) Ælle.
double-barrelled name (referring to a place-name)
See affix.
dual name
(1) Two independent place-names, often themselves compounds, brought together to form a new name, e.g. Nempnett Thrubwell in Somerset. They may be linked by a preposition such as the English with or by or their Latin counterparts cum ‘with’ and juxta ‘next to’, e.g. Chorlton-cum-Hardy. Where there is no linking preposition there often was one previously, e.g. Ingleby Arncliffe NRY was Engleby juxta (‘beside’) Arneclif in 1285. Such names often reflect an amalgamation of two parishes.
(2) Dual name/naming can also refer to the co-existence of names in different languages, e.g. Welsh and English in Wales or Maori and English in New Zealand.
element
(1) A constituent part of a name, also known as a theme especially in relation to personal names. See also compound. In discussions of individual place-names, an ‘element’ may be a word or a pre-existing place- or personal name, but lists of elements normally contain only lexical words.
(2) The body of English place-names associated with a language or ethnic group, e.g. ‘The Scandinavian element’.
elliptical name
Elliptical because ‘place’ seems implied, e.g. Byfield in Northamptonshire = ‘(place) by open ground’, Twyning in Gloucestershire = ‘(land) between the rivers’. As in these cases, the structure is often preposition + noun.
epexegetic element
An explanatory addition, as in Pen(n) Hill (several examples), where Modern English hill has been added to Brittonic penn ‘head, top, end, promontory’. This probably means ‘hill called Pen(n)’, where Penn is an existing name, rather than ‘hill hill’, with pen(n) as an appellative, as often supposed. See also hybrid. Names such as Penn Hill are sometimes termed tautological although they are only superficially so.
etymon
The root or original word from which a name or element is derived, e.g. Old English bere-tūn ‘barley-farm’ is the etymon of the place-name Barton. Etymology is hence an account of linguistic roots, e.g. the etymology of Barton has just been given.
excrescent –s
A final –s without grammatical function which has been added to an already complete family name or surname, usually in the post-medieval period. It occurs often in locative (topographical) surnames such as Brooks and Mills, but also in other types such as Eames (‘uncle’, hence a relationship name), Cootes (nickname) and Balls (various possible origins and types). In some names such as Woods it could be either excrescent or a genuine plural -s.
ex nomine
Literally ‘from a name’. A compound incorporating an existing name, such as the names of former Roman forts e.g. Manchester (‘Roman fort called Mamucium’) or place-names containing river-names such as Exmouth in Devon or Yarmouth in Norfolk.
family name
A hereditary surname. The term ‘draws attention to the fact that the origins of modern hereditary surnames lie as much in the history of the families that bore them as in the history of the languages in which they were coined and developed’ (Harry Parkin, Concise Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain (2021), page xiii).
field-name
A name of a field. E.g. Paul Cavill, A New Dictionary of English Field-Names (2018) is a compendium of these names, and they are defined in Rebecca Gregory’s Introduction (page v) as ‘names of pieces of land, whether enclosed or unenclosed, which form part of the agrarian economy’.
The Survey of English Place-Names presents the names of parishes or townships in a hierarchy of major names, minor names and field-names. The field-names may include items whose generics denote other minor topographical features, e. g. A. M. Armstrong et al., Place-Names of Cumberland (1950), p. 305 includes names in –cotes, –gill, –sike, –mosse and –pyke denoting habitations, streams, bogs and hills, but if they feature as pieces of land in the source document they count as field-names.
folk etymology (or popular etymology)
The re-forming of a name by speakers, taking a name that has become opaque in the direction of more familiar words. For instance, Leatherhead in Surrey and Rosedale in the West Riding of Yorkshire have nothing to do with leather, head or roses. The place-name York and the river-name Coquet have layered histories where the names have been re-formed by successive groups; see York (place-name) and River Coquet (place-name).
folk-name (or group-name)
The name of a tribe or people and hence of the place or territory they occupied (in Old English texts, such names may refer to people, place or both). Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon are of this type; also Essex, Sussex, Middlesex (from East Seaxe 894 etc.). Ripon (Yorkshire West Riding) is Old English Hrypum ‘(among) the Hrype’ – a tribal name also found in the name Repton (Derbyshire). Folk-names deriving from Old English –ingas mean ‘people associated with X’, e.g. Barking (Essex) was Berecingas 695, presumably ‘the people associated with Berica’. Hastings (Sussex) and Woking (Surrey) are further examples. Folk-names are usually contrasted with habitative and topographical names: see types of place-name.
forename (or given name)
A name given to an individual, usually at or soon after birth; often known as a Christian name or occasionally baptismal name or font-name. In the binomial system it normally precedes the family name or surname and is hence sometimes known as a first name, though many individuals have middle names which may be additional forenames or else surnames, for instance those of godparents or maternal grandparents. In contexts such as Anglo-Saxon England where people normally had only one name, the term given name or baptismal name is usually more appropriate than forename.
generic
A common noun denoting a recurrent and relatively unspecific type of place, such as a farmstead or hill. It may stand alone in a simplex name (e.g. Poole in Dorset) or as the final element in English or Old Norse compounds, qualified by a specific (e.g. Basingstoke in Hampshire). Generics and place-names containing them are frequently classified as either habitative (a village, farm etc.) or topographical (a wood, hill, stream, ford etc.), with folk-name (or group-name) as a further possibility: see types of place-name.
genitive
See grammatical case.
given name
See forename.
grammatical case
Many languages, including the Celtic languages of Britain, and Old English, make extensive use of a grammatical category known as case. This refers to endings and other variations in the form of nouns and related words which indicate their function in a clause or sentence. Today, personal pronouns still change their form depending on their function, as in the following examples with they:
- they drink coffee [subject: nominative case]
- she sees them [object: accusative case]
- that is their car [possessor: genitive case]
‘Grammatical case’ applies to the system in general but also to individual cases such as nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. All these are relevant to place-names. In Old English, for example, the common place-name element burh ‘stronghold’ takes the form burh when the subject of a clause (nominative case) or the object (accusative), but is byrig (dative case) when following a preposition such as æt ‘at’. Hence burh gives rise to modern place-names containing -borough or -brough while byrig gives us –bury. The genitive case is used mainly to indicate possession or association and is especially common in place-names where the specific or qualifier is a personal name, for instance Tottenham is from Tottan hām ‘Totta’s homestead’, where -an (later modified to -en) is a genitive ending.
group-name
See folk-name.
habitative element
Most generic place-name elements can be classified as habitative, denoting types of settlement (e.g. Old English hām ‘homestead’ or tūn ‘farmstead, village, estate, settlement’, Old Norse bý ‘farmstead, village’ or þorp ‘outlying settlement’) or topographical, denoting landscape features. Some elements are difficult to classify, especially ones denoting a structure, but those that can be lived in are perhaps best classed as habitative (e.g. Old English burh ‘stronghold’) while those that cannot are best classed as topographical (e.g. Old English brycg ‘bridge’. For quasi-habitative elements, see topographical element.
habitative name
Habitative place-names contain generic elements denoting settlements; see habitative element and types of place-name.
hybrid
A name composed of elements from more than one language, also known as a bilingual name. E.g. Flixborough in Lincolnshire and Membury in Devon are suggested to be compounds of Old English burh ‘stronghold’ with Old Norse personal name Flík and Brittonic maen ‘stone’ respectively. True hybrids normally date from a period of some sort of bilingualism, when speakers of language Y are settling in areas already occupied by speakers of language X, and place-names are formed from a blend of the two. However, true hybrids appear to be quite rare, and even the famous ‘Grimston/Toton hybrids’ containing Old English tūn qualified by an Old Norse personal name are capable of alternative explanations.
Some combinations of words or names originating in different languages may appear to be hybrids, but may have arisen at a later period when words or names from language Y have become absorbed into local dialect, and hence they are not true hybrids. Uncertainties of dating might make classification difficult here.
Further, in some place-names, a pre-existing place-name in language X has an explanatory element in language Y added to it. E.g. the Penn Hill type is etymologically a Brittonic word penn meaning ‘head, end, promontory’ and hence taken to mean ‘hill’ + Old English hyll ‘hill’, but is probably better regarded as ‘Hill called Penn’. If so it can be called an ex nomine compound (a compound formed from an existing name). See also epexegetic element.
Although affixed names often contain elements from more than one language they too have formed in multiple stages so it is not useful to count them as hybrids.
The difficulties of the term hybrid are explored by Richard Cox in a 1988–89 article on the value and validity of the term ‘hybrid’.
hydronym
Name of a water feature – a lake, river or other watercourse.
hypocoristic
An informal, ‘pet’ version of a personal name, e.g. Dob for Robert, Hodge for Roger, Harry for Henry.
incident name
A place-name referring to a specific event. These are rare among the major names of England, but Battle in Sussex, an abbey and then settlement, was named from the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Many minor names such as the Northumbrian Percy’s Leap and Jack’s Leap have local stories attached, though these cannot usually be verified.
inversion compound
A term that has been used for place-names (mainly) in England which contain a specific or qualifying element and a generic, with the generic first, using the pattern of a standard name phrase (also called a phrasal name) in the Celtic languages. Examples include Aspatria ‘Patrick’s ash’ (literally ‘Ash Patrick’) or Brotherilkeld ‘Ulfkell’s booths’ (‘Booths Ulfkell’), both in Cumberland. Names of this type are most frequently found in north-west England, and typically contain Old Norse generics with Old Norse or Gaelic specifics, often personal names, while the word order is characteristic of Gaelic. They therefore strongly suggest close contact between Celtic (Gaelic) and Scandinavian speakers, though the exact time, place and nature of their genesis has been much debated. The term inversion compound is also problematic: these names are ‘inverted’ only from a Germanic point of view, since the word order differs from the normal Old English and Old Norse order, where the specific comes first, as in Ouston in Northumberland (‘Ulfkell’s farmstead’), and rather than being true compounds they have the pattern of Celtic name phrases. David Parsons discusses these names in a 2011 article on ‘inversion compounds’.
In the context of Welsh place-names, the term inversion compound can refer to a place-name with specific or qualifier first, e.g. Rhuddlan in Flintshire (‘red bank’; Owen and Morgan 2007, page ix). There are some specifics that always or often precede the generic including adjectives such as Welsh hen ‘old’ and colour terms.
lexical word or significant word
A word that is not a place-name or personal name. It can be an adjective, adverb, noun etc., and hence is similar to an appellative, but includes words of any word class, not only nouns.
locative surname
An extremely prolific type of English family name or surname, referring to a person’s place of origin or residence; or a place owned by them. There are various sub-groups:
(a) Toponymic surnames
The largest sub-group, consisting of place-names for specific settlements (towns, villages, hamlets, even farmsteads), e.g. Ainsworth, Birtwistle, Burton, Ford, Rigby (England) or Balfour, Dunbar, Dunlop (Scotland). Although internal migration throughout the centuries means that many toponymic names are found far from their places of origin, especially in London and other major cities, they still tend to be concentrated near their original epicentres, as seen, for instance, in the 1881 census data in the British 19th Century Surname Atlas, available from Archer Software. For detailed case studies, see Attenborough (surname), Hamilton (surname), and Starbuck (surname).
External migration has given rise to toponymic surnames from continental Europe, especially from Normandy after the Norman Conquest in 1066 (e.g. Glanville, Lacey; see Mills & Boon (surnames) and to a lesser degree from countries like Germany, from where Jewish families migrated especially in the late 19th and 20th centuries (e.g. Berlin, Hamburg).
(b) Topographic surnames
Common nouns or phrases referring to landscape or townscape features near which people lived and/or worked, e.g. Brook, Clough, Hill, Meadow, Wood, and Hall, Kirk, Mill, Townsend. In medieval documents they are often preceded by atte ‘at the’ or similar. In Brooks, Mills etc. there is an excrescent -s, added usually in the post-medieval period and without grammatical function. (For more detail on Mills, see Mills & Boon (surname).)
In some parts of England, such as Devon, Cornwall and Lancashire, there are many small, dispersed settlements or farmsteads named from a Middle English topographic word, e.g. Ford (Devon) and Birch (Lancashire). These gave rise to surnames with documentary forms beginning with atte or Anglo-Norman del or dela. The distinction between a topographic and a toponymic surname can be fuzzy and unhelpful in cases like this.
Some modern forms retain a preposition, e.g. Attlee (at the woodland clearing), Underwood, though some of these may rather be place-names: Byfleet looks like ‘by the river’, but its distribution suggests the Surrey place-name.
Somewhat similar are names referring to people as living in a particular part of a settlement, e.g. Norrington, from Old English norð in tūne ‘to the north of the village’, or Sotheby, from Old Norse suðr í bý ‘south in the village’.
(c) Ethnic and regional surnames
Names of countries or regions such as Burgoyne (Burgundy), Brabin (Brabant), Flanders, Ireland, Cornwall, or adjectives such as Welsh/Walsh/Wallis/Wallace, English, Fleming, Tyas (German), Scott, Devenish (belonging to Devon) or Western (from the west).
lost
A lost place-name is one that has gone out of use. The location may or may not be known, i.e. it is the name that is lost, not the place. In some cases the place may be known but has entirely disappeared, e.g. a depopulated village or a farm lost through coastal erosion.
major names
Place-names are designated as major or minor partly (1) according to the importance of the place named, but also (2) according to the antiquity and perceived interest of the names themselves. Major names (sometimes called macrotoponyms, or macrotoponymy for a corpus or system of such names) are normally names of places which were relatively important (and often still are): administrative units such as hundreds, wapentakes or parishes; features such as rivers, forests and larger hills; other sizeable or early-recorded settlements or topographical features.
manorial affix
See affix.
metonymy
A figure of speech in which a person, place or thing is referred to via a distinctive attribute or something associated with them, as when ‘the stage’ is substituted for acting or the theatre. Some family names such as Hood and Garlick may have originated as metonymic nicknames denoting people who made or traded in those products, or were associated with them for some other reason. These names are sometimes termed metonymics. Certain types of place-name may be regarded as metonymic, e.g. those formed from terms for topographical features such as ford or burn but referring to settlements.
metronymic
A metronymic (or metronym, matronymic or metronym) is a name that originally referred to a person as the child of their mother. These are far less common than those from the father (see patronymic), but examples include these, all formed from pet forms of the names in question: Annett (Agnes), Beacok (Beatrice), Ibbotson (Isabel), Mallinson (Middle English Mald, i.e. Maud) and Marriott (Margery or Mary). These are thought to arise especially where a woman is widowed.
microtoponym, microtoponymy
See minor names.
minoritized
The term is used of languages, as well as of people, groups, concepts, etc. The Oxford English Dictionary defines minoritized as ‘made into, treated as, or placed in a minority; forced to the periphery of a dominant group; marginalized’. A language that is minoritized may be (or have been) spoken by a majority of a population yet be marginalized or even banned, while the dominant language, that of the socially and politically dominant group, is favoured. In Britain and Ireland, Scots Gaelic, Irish, Welsh, Cornish and Scots have all been subject to minoritization by English-speaking authorities.
minor names
These are distinguished from major names and include names of minor hamlets, farms, bridges, woods, streams etc. In some works they also include field-names. The term microtoponym is often used for the name of a minor feature and microtoponymy for a corpus or system of such names.
monothematic
Consisting of only one theme or element, as opposed to compound (or dithematic or trithematic). The terms monothematic and dithematic are often applied to personal names, e.g. Wulf compared with Beowulf.
name phrase (or phrasal names)
In Celtic languages, a combination of elements in the order generic + specific. Among very numerous examples are Bryn-mawr (Breckonshire), literally ‘Hill big’ and Llandudno ‘Church of Tudno’ (Caernarfon).
nature-name
See types of place-name.
nickname
An additional name that refers to an event, habit or object with which an individual was associated or that denotes a distinctive physical or moral characteristic, either literally or figuratively (via references to animals, etc.). Some nicknames took over the role of a given name (e.g. Old Norse Bróklauss ‘breechless’, suggested in Brocklesby in Lincolnshire).
Many family names or surnames originated as nicknames, and though less common than other types, they are among the most fascinating, but also the most enigmatic, with uncertain connotations and overlapping with other categories. In certain instances of the surname Brown, for example, the source could be either a nickname (from the Middle English colour term) or a given name. These are some informal sub-groups:
(a) physical attributes
These include references to size, e.g. Grant (great), Large, Long, Little, Small; to colour (of hair or complexion), e.g. Black (which can also be a patronymic), Blunt ( Old French blund, blond ‘blond, fair’), Brown, Read/Reid (see Fox (surname)), White (also a patronymic), Wynne/Gwynne (Welsh gwyn ‘fair’); or to distinctive parts of the body e.g. Armstrong (strong in the arm), Broadhead (but also a minor place-name), Cruickshank (crooked leg), Foot(e), Head, Kay (left-handed), Longbone (for one with long legs), Sheepshanks. Such descriptions are assumed to have been applied literally, unless ironic (as in the extra-tall Little John).
(b) personality traits
Usually adjectives, e.g. Brainwood (mad in the brain, furious), Follett (foolish), Humble, Kind, Lovely (loving), Moody (proud, brave), Sharp, Wild, Wise, Witty, again assumed to be literal. Characterful names such as Do(o)little, Makepeace, Scattergood (a squanderer or philanthropist) and Tiplady (a womaniser) are both of human interest and of grammatical interest since, unusually, they contain verbs.
(c) status terms used figuratively
High-status terms such as Abbot, Bishop, King and Sheriff are usually assumed to have been used as nicknames, possibly alluding to a person’s behaviour, their role in local ceremonies or pageants, or their parentage.
(d) animal terms used figuratively
These are mostly metaphorical. Heron and Crane could suggest long legs (though Heron can also be a locative name derived from Harome in the North Riding of Yorkshire), Pye (i.e. magpie) a loud chatterbox, and Wren a small, shy, quick-moving person. Fox is especially common, probably alluding to red hair or to cunning behaviour; see Fox (surname). Chubb and Gudgeon, from names of easily caught fish, are recorded in the 16th century as words for gullible people; see Sturgeon (surname). Bull will often have been metaphorical for someone of strong physique or forceful temperament, but may also have been metonymic for a bull-herd
(e) product names used figuratively
References to food, clothing, footwear, tools etc. are clearly metonymic, identifying a person via an object associated with them, e.g. Cheese, Garlick, Hood, Boot, Dagger. Surnames referring to items worn or carried on the person probably alluded to a distinctive aspect of the individual’s appearance but in some cases to the person’s trade in manufacturing and selling such goods.
(f) phrases
Oaths and habitual expressions, such as Debney (Old French dieu (le) benie ‘God bless (him)’), Godsave (Middle English (on) Godes half ‘(on) God’s behalf, (for) God’s sake’), Goodspeed (Middle English ‘(I wish you) good success’), Pardoe (Old French par dieu ‘by God’).
nominative
See grammatical case.
occupational surname
A type of family name or surname which reflects medieval trades.
(a) Most refer to an occupation directly, e.g. Baker, Barber, Carter, Clerk/Clark, Cook, Goldsmith, Hayward, Miller, Plowright, Sadler, Shepherd, Smith, Tanner, Taylor, Webster, Wright. (See Smith (surname).) In numerous cases occupational terms or their medieval senses have not survived in Standard English or Scots, including Arkwright (chest-maker), Bicker (bee-keeper), Chapman (merchant), Dubber (renovator of old clothes), Hillier (roofer), Lister (dyer), Naismith (knife-maker, Scottish), Phimister (one in charge of livestock, from Older Scots fe-maister), Stoddard (one who herds a stud of horses). Many such names refer to the cloth trade, and there is a great deal of regional variation. Fuller, for instance, refers to someone who cleans and thickens cloth, and in medieval records it appears mainly in southern and eastern England, while Tucker and Walker derive respectively from south-western and northern English terms for a fuller (see Walker, Tucker & Fuller (surnames)).
(b) Some probably refer to a trade by metonymy, e.g. Call (a close-fitting cap worn by medieval women), Cheese, Coney (rabbit skin), Garlick (garlic), perhaps for sellers and/or makers of these products, although they are better classified as nicknames arising from their calling.
(c) Status names such as Burgess or Freeman are sometimes regarded as a sub-group of occupational names. See Bond (surname).
onomastics
The study of names, from Greek onoma ‘name’ + -stikos ‘pertaining to’. Occasionally known as onomatology. An onomasticon is a collection of names, often in dictionary form, or the stock of elements available for creating names in a given time and period. Toponymics deals with place-names; anthroponymics with personal names.
patronymic
Also patronym; a name originally referring to a person as the child of their father.
In English surnames patronymics may contain the father’s name in its full form (Richard) or in its hypocoristic or pet form (Dick, Hick, Rick), and it may end in (a) –son (Richardson, Hickson, Rixon); (b) –s (Richards, Hicks) or (c) zero, no suffix (Richard, Hick). As another example, Rogerson, Hodgson, Rogers, Hodgkiss and Dodge are all from Roger.
Terms for ‘son’ in other languages featuring in the surnames of Britain and Ireland are Anglo-Norman fitz in Fitzpatrick, Fitzwilliam and Gaelic Mac in MacDonald/McConnell, McMullen etc. Irish surnames such as Ó Laoghaire and Ó Fionnagain (anglicised O’Leary/Leary, O’Finnegan/Finnegan) are closely similar, containing Ó ‘grandson, descendant of’.
In the surnames of Wales, where patronymics dominate, many contain ap/ab (from mab ‘son’ via its lenited form fab), e.g. Bevan (from ap Iefan) and Bowen (from ap Owain), or Pugh, Pritchard and Probert (from ap + the non-Welsh Hugh, Richard and Robert). Also numerous in Wales are –s and ‘zero’ patronymics such as Evans and Morgan (with Welsh forenames) or Williams and Thomas (with non-Welsh forenames). (For detailed case studies of patronymic surnames, see Elgar (surname), Herrick and Gamble (surnames), and Tom Jones.)
See patronymic system on the shift from genuine patronymics to hereditary surnames originating in patronymics.
patronymic system
A patronymic contains the name of a person’s father, e.g. Robertson, McAdam, Fitzpatrick. By origin these names truly identified people’s fathers, but they ceased to once they became hereditary. In a true patronymic system each individual has a second name referring to their actual father, as with present-day Icelanders such as Jón Sveinsson or Helga Sveinsdóttir, both children of Sveinn. This system was widespread in medieval Europe, including Britain (surviving in Wales into the modern period), but tended to be replaced by a binomial system and in multicultural communities by several other systems.
In Ireland, patronymics containing Ó were already being formed in the first millennium and began the transition to hereditary surnames exceptionally early, before 1000. The practice of giving names additional to forenames, and their transition to hereditary names, evolved somewhat later in Gaelic-speaking Scotland, and still later in England and Lowland Scotland, where the Anglo-Norman development of hereditary naming spread down the social scale at different rates in different regions. It was normal among all classes of people in southern and midland England by the end of the fourteenth century but it was another century or more before it became the general practice in all of northern England and Lowland Scotland.
In Wales, non-hereditary patronymics were the norm until at least the sixteenth century, when they began to be adopted as hereditary family names, especially among the wealthier classes and among more ordinary folk who lived close to the English border. However, many Welsh-speaking families only abandoned genuine patronymic surnaming for a fixed hereditary surname in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
personal name
This has broader and narrower usages:
(1) Names of persons, as opposed to place-names and all other names.
(2) Sometimes more strictly applied to a person’s forename (or given name) as opposed to hereditary family names or surnames.
popular etymology
See folk etymology.
phrasal name
See name phrase.
qualifier, qualifying element
See compound.
quasi-habitative element
reflex
The descendant or later stage of a word or sound, e.g. Modern English oak is the reflex of Old English āc.
relationship names
The second largest category of English family name or surname. Most contain the forenames of relatives, usually fathers.
(a) Most are patronymics, originally referring to a man as the son of his father.
(b) Metronymics, containing a mother’s names, occur more rarely.
(c) Other relationships were encapsulated in medieval and early modern names, but few survive, e.g. Watmough (Walter’s kinsman-in-law).
(d) Some consist of relationship terms without reference to named individuals, e.g. Cousin(s), Eames (uncle) or Neave/Ne(e)ve (nephew).
replacement name
A new name that completely supersedes a previous one, and is not developed from it. E.g. Derby replaced Old English Norðworðig, St Albans (Hertfordshire) replaced Old English Werlamaceaster (Latin Verulamium) or Wæclingaceaster, and Peterborough (Northamptonshire) replaced Old English Medeshamstede.
secondary name or dependent name
One formed from a primary, pre-existing name, e.g. Heaton Park (Newcastle) from Heaton. A new generic (Y, here Park) is added to the primary name (X, here Heaton), which thus becomes the specific of the new, secondary, name. The primary name will no longer have its etymological meaning but simply identifies a place: it is ‘Heaton’, not ‘the high settlement’. Secondary names are typically the names of minor places located in or near the place designated by the specific (Heaton Park is the park in Heaton, the Y in X; locals will tend to say ‘I’m going to the park’). They differ from affixed names: High Heaton is a major place, and it’s still Heaton, with an affix or additional element (‘I’m going to High Heaton’). Finally some compound names of important and long-established places contain pre-existing names, e.g. Tynemouth, but these are probably better regarded as ex nomine compounds.
significant word
See lexical word.
simplex
A place-name containing a single place-name element. See also compound.
specific (or qualifier)
The qualifying element in a place-name with more than one element. Specifics typically precede generics in compound names formed in Germanic languages, and follow generics in name phrases, which are common in Celtic languages. Specifics are more diverse than generics: they may be personal names, pre-existing place-names, descriptive adjectives, or nouns referring to some kind of vegetation, animal, human activity, etc.
status names
Terms such as Burgess (a freeman of a borough), Franklin and Freeman (a free tenant) gave rise to surnames and were probably applied correctly and literally. These may be regarded as a sub-group of occupational names (see the surname Bond, a tenant owing services to his lord). On the other hand, names from words denoting high ranks such as King, Sheriff, Lord, and religious offices such as Pope, Bishop, Monk, Nunn, Priest (all commonly recorded as surnames of secular folk) probably originated as nicknames.
surname
(1) Now used in the same way as family name, to mean a hereditary name used in addition to a person’s forename (or given name) within a binomial system.
(2) Originally, however, a surname was no more than a potentially transient additional name, otherwise known as a byname, that distinguished an individual from others with the same forename and was not, or not necessarily, hereditary. This usage remains current in some academic discussions.
tautological names
See epexegetic element.
theme
See element.
topographical element
An element denoting a topographical (landscape) feature, e.g. Old English burna ‘stream’, ford ‘ford’, hyll ‘hill’ or lēah ‘woodland clearing’. Man-made structures in the landscape that are not habitable, such as bridges or roads, can be included in this category; see also habitative element. Many of these elements, such as ford or lēah, occur so frequently in names of settlements that they can be called quasi-habitative, and the whole names they form, like Bradford or Burnley, can be called topographical settlement names.
topographical name (or nature-name)
Topographical place-names contain generic elements denoting landscape features; see types of place-name. An important sub-type of surname or family name is known as topographic (see locative surname).
topographical settlement name
The name as a whole designates a settlement, but its second, generic element refers to a feature in the landscape, e.g. Liverpool ‘pool with thick water’ or Oxford ‘ford associated with oxen’; see types of place-name.
toponym
A toponym is a place-name; toponymy refers to a corpus of place-names, as in ‘the toponymy of East Lothian’, or the system of naming places, or the study of place-names, though toponymics or toponomastics may be preferable as a term for the study. The adjective is toponymic ‘relating to place-names’. An important sub-type of surname or family name is known as toponymic (see locative surname).
transferred name
A name transplanted from one place to another. E.g. Richmond was transferred to the North Riding of Yorkshire from France and from there further transferred to Richmond, Surrey. ‘New’ is sometimes added, as in New Birmingham (Tipperary). Some transferred names are also commemorative, though it may be uncertain whether the transfer is motivated by a specific event or by a general resemblance, for instance a perception of remoteness (as in instances of Nova Scotia) or grimness (Botany Bay).
trithematic
Applied to a compound consisting of three themes or elements.
types of family name or surname
Surnames are notoriously difficult to interpret and classify. Many are of uncertain origin, often because there are multiple possibilities, and even if the linguistic origin of a name is certain, it may be less clear how it is to be classified. For instance, Lamb might have denoted the son of Lamb, a pet form of Lambert (hence a relationship name), someone who was lamb-like (nickname), or possibly someone who lived at the sign of the lamb (locative name); it has also been adopted as an anglicised form of an Irish name (by a mis-translation of Ó Luain) and as a romanised and anglicised spelling of a Chinese name. As seen here, names can be transformed, sometimes beyond recognition, in situations of language contact, but even without that complication, many family names have changed over the centuries, such that their modern appearance can be very misleading as to their original category or meaning. Nevertheless, some clear categories can be recognised and these are widely if not universally accepted:
(1) locative names
(3) occupational names and status names
(4) nicknames
Please see individual entries for more detail, including sub-categories. All four types are well represented in English- and Scots- speaking communities. In Ireland, Gaelic-speaking Scotland and Wales, patronymics as the main sub-group of relationship names have dominated; they arose and then became hereditary at very different times (see patronymic system). It should be noted that some names that look English and appear to belong to particular categories are in fact anglicisations of Gaelic names. Thus some instances of Cook are anglicised versions of a Gaelic relationship name and some of Brown are translations of a Gaelic nickname or relationship name.
types of place-name
It is customary to distinguish three types:
(1) folk-names, e.g. the county-name Essex or Jarrow in County Durham, from the tribal names Ēast Seaxe and Gyrwe, hence the territories occupied by those tribes.
(2) habitative names. Here the generic is a habitative element such as Old English hām ‘homestead’ in Birmingham or Old English tūn ‘farmstead, village, estate’ in Luton (the town and airport in Bedfordshire, and two villages in Devon).
(3) topographical names (or nature names). Here the generic is a topographical element.
(a) Some remain as the names of landscape features and not of settlements, e.g. Steel Rigg on the Hadrian’s Wall scarp, Northumberland (containing Old English hrycg ‘ridge, spine’ or its reflex).
(b) Others, however, are the names of settlements, and these can be called topographical settlement names. The name as a whole designates a settlement, but its second element refers to a landscape feature, e.g. Liverpool ‘pool with thick water’, or Oxford ‘ford associated with oxen’.
So all three types of place-name occur as the names of places/settlements, but the folk-names originated as names of peoples, and the topographical names make reference to landscape features, and both those roles continued, at least potentially and in some cases, alongside their use as settlement names.
verbal place-name
One containing a verb, e.g. Clickemin (‘Pull them in’), Makemerich or Pity Me; see Pity Me (place-name). Such names are typically given to fields or to relatively modest and often remote dwellings in the early modern period.
© Diana Whaley, with Eleanor Rye and Peter McClure; revised August 2023