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Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland
The SNSBI exists to promote the study of place-names, personal names, and other names. It has members within and beyond Britain and Ireland, some of them academics (students or staff) in relevant fields, but most from other walks of life.
Our next name story is "Walker, Fuller and Tucker: workers of cloth". It is written by Peter McClure, Honorary Professor (Name-Studies) at University of Nottingham.![]()
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Walker is the twelfth commonest surname in Britain; there were 100,114 persons with this name in the 1881 census and over 133,000 by 2011. Contrary to the Johnnie Walker whisky logo, it has nothing to do with a gentleman striding along in a topper and tails. It is an occupational name, the third most common category of surname, after toponymics and patronymics. In medieval Britain, when the surname was coined, a walker was a fuller of raw woollen cloth and a vital operator in the woollen cloth trade on which the later medieval English economy heavily depended. ![]()
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Fulling meant scouring and cleansing the woven material to remove oil and dirt, and also to thicken and strengthen the cloth by shrinking and felting the fibres. It was done using either the bare hands or a club or the feet to pound the cloth in warm water, to which had been added a cleansing agent such as stale urine or lye, a strong alkaline solution made with ashes.![]()
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Fuller is naturally another surname derived from this occupation and so is Tucker. Once fulled, the cloths needed careful drying out to prevent further shrinking. This was done by stretching or ‘tucking’ them out in the open air on wooden frames known as tenters, to which they were attached by tenterhooks. Tenter fields or tenter grounds were common outside towns from medieval times onward.![]()
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After tentering came teaseling, when walkers used the dried heads of what was known as fuller’s teasel (Dipsacus fullonem) to raise the nap of the cloth into a fine softness. Surnames from this part of the process, Tesler and Teslar, are rare, with only 14 instances (six families) in the 1881 census. Excess nap was then trimmed off with shears (whence the surnames Shearer, Sherman and Sharman ‘shear-man’). After a final pressing, the cloth was sent to a Dyer if required, before being sold on by a Draper and either tailored into clothes or made into blankets and other coverings. ![]()
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Read about the distributions of these names here:![]()
www.snsbi.org.uk/exploring-names/surnames/walker-fuller-tucker/![]()
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Image: Engraving of a water wheel driving a German fulling stock from Böckler's Theatrum Machinarum Novum (1661)![]()
Georg Andreas Böckler, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Call for Papers! Submissions welcome for the Onomastics panel at Leeds IMC 2027.
This month's name story is by Emeritus Professor Diana Whaley, Newcastle University. Explore the long and winding history of the River Coquet, one of Northumberland’s most attractive rivers!![]()
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The River Coquet rises in the Cheviot Hills and flows about forty miles to the North Sea at Amble. The name Coquet looks French, but along with many river-names it arose long before French was used in England, and has a long and winding history, rather like the course of the river itself.![]()
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The name is pre-English and probably contains the Brittonic (Celtic) word cocc ‘red’, an older relative of modern Welsh coch. The ending is thought likely to be wedd, meaning ‘appearance’ and as Richard Coates notes, the name Coquet is a great rarity: a pre-English river-name containing two roots. The geology of Upper Coquetdale is rich in a pink-coloured porphyrite, and the river flows through reddish-brown rocks and soil for much of its lower course. The water has that colour especially at times of flood.![]()
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Just as the River Coquet rises deep in the Celtic-named Cheviot Hills (where Cheviot probably means ‘ridge’), its name arises from a Celtic language spoken widely throughout Britain from the first millennium BC; see Languages). And these early origins are shared with most of the great rivers of Britain. Some river-names such as Avon, Frome, Leven and Wear appear to be early Celtic but many, including Ouse, Severn, Thames, Trent and Wye, are believed to originate in a still older language. Since rivers are striking linear features in the landscape their names tend to be very widely known and easily transmitted from speakers of one language to another. However, it seems that the next group of speakers misunderstood the name of the Coquet.![]()
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The History of St Cuthbert (Historia de Sancto Cuthberto) of the late eleventh century shows the river-name transformed into a very English-looking Cocwudu ‘cock wood’, referring to male birds, perhaps woodcock. In a sense this is a mistake, a case of folk etymology or popular etymology where people re-form a name to make sense of it, but it is curiously appropriate since this central area of Northumberland was historically quite heavily wooded. ![]()
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The spelling Coket then dominates in late medieval documents, perhaps influenced by French-trained scribes, but the still more French-influenced variant Coquet emerges as the standard modern spelling. The name doesn’t sound French, however: it’s pronounced with the stress on ‘Co-’, and not like the word ‘coquette’.![]()
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www.snsbi.org.uk
The Coquet rises in the Cheviot Hills and flows about forty miles to the North Sea at Amble. The name Coquet looks French, but along with many river-names it has a long and winding history.
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SNSBI Essay Prize winners for 2025!![]()
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We are delighted to announce that we have two joint winners for the 2025 SNSBI Essay Prize:![]()
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Alina Brust, University of Glasgow: "Reflections of Gaelic Heritage in the Street Names of Girvan"![]()
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Xiang Lin, The University of Edinburgh: "Structure and Formation of bilingual Hong Kong street-names"![]()
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Congratulations to both of them!