Читать книгу Collins Dictionary Of Surnames: From Abbey to Mutton, Nabbs to Zouch - Leslie Dunkling - Страница 14

Some may feel that it is worth making an intelligent guess at the origin of a surname by using deduction. Of the four classes of surnames mentioned above, three have been especially well studied. Names which reflect medieval occupations, for example, were also words which were recorded in contemporary literature. They are dealt with in a historical work such as the monumental Oxford English Dictionary and find their way into most surname dictionaries. Descriptive nicknames were also normal words, and again have been thoroughly investigated. Patronymics of the Johnson type, including Scottish and Irish Mac- names, Welsh Ap- or Ab-, are well covered in existing works.

Surnames which began as place names, the largest class of surnames, are the ones that give most problems. They may have begun as the names of small settlements or hamlets which were totally unknown fifty miles away. The place names themselves had usually themselves been in existence for centuries and had probably changed their original form. Local pronunciation of many place names, as is still the case today, often varied from what the spelling of the name might suggest. An obscure surname, then, is likely to be a transferred place name, which is why a good place to search for it is often the county by county volumes of the English Place-Name Society. These are available in any good reference library. Such a search should only be made after delving into the family history as described above. Clues as to where to begin may be suggested by Appendix 2 of this dictionary, which gives the main locations of many surnames at the end of the 19th century.