Hitchcock

Hitchcock: a southern English family name

The film director Alfred (Joseph) Hitchcock (1899–1980) has made this a household name. Known as the ‘Master of Suspense’, he directed more than fifty thrillers from the late 1920s to the 1970s, many of them regarded as cinematic masterpieces. He was brought up in Leytonstone (Essex, now in east London) by Catholic parents. His mother’s family and his paternal grandmother’s family both came from Irish Catholic families (named Whelan and Mahoney respectively) that had settled in the east of London, seeking labouring work. But his father’s ancestors in the male line were English Protestants who had lived in Dedham in Essex from at least the early 17th century until Charles Hitchcock migrated to Stratford in London in 1824. He set up a fishmonger’s shop round the corner from where Irish-born labourer Sylvester Mahoney lived with his family. Charles’s son Joseph, Alfred’s grandfather, married Sylvester’s daughter Ann. It is a typical story of economic migrants from very different backgrounds seeking work in the big city and creating an ethnically and culturally hybrid family. The husband converted to Catholicism, but the wife and their children took his surname, illustrating the patriarchal domination of surname inheritance in England since the High Middle Ages.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock

Ante Brkan, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

As labels of identity and family history, surnames usually conceal more than they reveal, but what they reveal can be illuminating. This surname belongs largely to southern England and the Midlands, as shown on the map in Steve Archer’s British 19th Century Surname Atlas.

Map of Britain, with title "Hitchcock: actual numbers". Kent, Devon, Surrey and Somerset are shaded deep red and Derbyshire and Essex are mid-red. Manu other counties in central and southern England England are are orange. Only a few counties in Scotland or Wales are shaded.

Distribution and frequency of Hitchcock in 1881 (darker colours indicate higher numbers)

Hitchcock: a French connection

The name derives from the Middle English personal name Hichecok, and is itself a product of a much earlier assimilation and eventual integration of immigrants into English life. It is a hypocorism or pet-form of the baptismal name Richard, which the French-speaking Normans brought to England after the Conquest of 1066. Their most favoured men’s names were French forms of Continental Germanic names, such as Henry, Hugh, Ralph, Ric(h)ard, Robert and William, and French forms of ‘Christian’ names, such as Adam, James, Joh(a)n, Mark, Matthew, Peter (in the Old French form Per(es)), Stephen and Thomas from the Bible, and Laurence, Martin and Nicholas from non-biblical saints’ legends. By the early decades of the 13th century, continental names such as these were being widely adopted in English families of all social classes, including the peasantry, resulting in a rapid and massive abandonment of the pre-existing English name-stock (see Jones (surname), Elgar (surname), and Herrick (surname)).

Pet-forms of personal names

In ordinary familiar speech, these names of Norman introduction were commonly expressed in a wide variety of pet-forms (hypocorisms). The simplest move was to shorten a name back to its main-stressed syllable, as in Nick (or Col) for Nicholas, Rob, Tom, Will, and so on. To these were added diminutive suffixes, including Old French ‑et, ‑in, ‑ot and double diminutives such as ‑elin, ‑elet and ‑elot. These can be seen in Huet (Hugh), Willot, Raulin (Ralph), Robin, Colin, Perot, Tomelin, Robelet and Hughelot, from which come the modern surnames Hewitt, Willett, Rawlin, Robinson, Collins, Parrot, Tomlinson, Roblett and Hewlett. These were ready-made French pet-forms, borrowed into English from Norman usage along with the full name-forms. The most productive hypocoristic suffix in post-Conquest England was Middle Dutch ‑kin, which the Normans had picked up from their neighbours in Picardy and Flanders. Many Flemings and Picards also settled in England under the protection of Norman and later kings. Jankin, Jenkin, Jonkin (all for John), Larkin (Laurence), Perkin, Tomkin and Wilkin are common examples of the type in late medieval records and they survive in modern surnames.

Hitchcock, however, represents a peculiarly English way in which ordinary folk familiarised these new Norman names as pet-forms. The suffix ‑cok is not French but English, probably a double diminutive ‑k-oc, giving rise to pet-forms such as Hancock (Henry), Tomcock and Wilcock. An even more striking novelty was to play with the initial consonant to produce a rhyming form. Hitch and Hick are pet-forms of Richard (alias Rickard) and belong to a set that are rhymed on a name beginning with R-, such as Hob (Robert) and Hodge (Roger). An alternative was to rhyme these names with an initial D-, as in Dick, Dob and Dodge. These rhyming pet-forms, as well as the hypocoristic suffix -cok, were largely associated with the English rural peasantry (free and unfree) and the labouring folk in towns. Most of the Norman R- names, including Richard, Robert and Roger, have continued as English first names at all levels of society up the present time, a span of around 900 years. It shows how strong traditions can be in the naming of children. It is a different matter with pet-forms, which tend to be less stable over time. Since the 16th century many of the medieval English pet-forms have been progressively abandoned. But the old usages are still with us, largely unrecognised, in patronymic surnames that had become hereditary before 1500, including rhyming ones such as Hitchcock, Hickox, Higgs, Higson, Dixon, Dobson, Dodgson, Hobson and Hopkins.

Hitchcock: a tale of conquest and patriarchy

Some surnames from medieval English baptismal names are metronymic (from a mother’s name), such as Dyson from the female name Dye, a pet-form of Dinis (modern Denise). But most of them are patronymics, i.e. from the names of fathers, and these names are overwhelmingly continental in origin, a direct consequence of the Norman Conquest. As such, Hitchcock has two stories to tell. It exemplifies the primarily patriarchal nature of family life in England’s long history, and it shows how personal naming reflects and manages social change. The Norman Conquest brought a radical upheaval to all levels of English society. The English adoption and adaptation of the Norman baptismal name stock was both a public and an intimate process by which the ruled and their rulers began to develop a new, continentally English identity.

Select sources

Alfred Hitchcock Wiki (–2023).

Archer, S. (2003–15), British 19th Century Surname Atlas, version 1.20.

Hanks, P., R. Coates and P. McClure, eds (2016), Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland.

McClure, P. (1998) ‘The interpretation of hypocoristic forms of Middle English baptismal names’, Nomina 21, 101–31.

McClure, P. (2005), ‘The kinship of Jack: II, pet-forms of Middle English personal names with the suffixes ‑cok and ‑cus’, Nomina 28, 5–42.

Reaney, P. H. (1967), The Origin of English Surnames, chapter 7.