Population, mutation, linguistics and the number of surnames

 

Topics (Brief Coverage)
Introduction
Pronunciation
Education of the clergy
Misinterpretation of Regional Dialects
Spelling
Recent Developments
Further Research

 

 

If you came to this page directly, then please access
Modern British Surnames

 

 

 

Preface:
I can find no critique of English surname variance on the web, and very little in print.
Consequently, I have combined the little information I have found, with a few of my own thoughts.
Beware: this is a complex area, and I am a blundering amateur

 

The plethora of surnames in the early Middle Ages

"Although the national population was far lower in the middle ages than it is today, England had a much wider range of surnames at the period of their formation than it had in subsequent centuries"
(Source -David Hey: Family Names and Family History)

Many historians currently believe that the population of England reached 5 or 6 million by the year 1300. However, the effect of the Black Death of 1348-50 and later pestilences meant that it had fallen back to the region of 2.2 to 3 million by 1380. This downward trend continued for another 100 years until the population bottomed out at about 2 million. Recovery was slow, and appreciable increase did not show until the 1530's and 1540s. (David Hey: ibid)

 

bdeath2.jpg (41K)

The Black Death

Maximum estimates
% Mortality

           
Inadequate
data
30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50 -

 

 

How did the ravages of the Black Death affect the stock of surnames? The general population levels may have gradually recovered, but surnames were more vulnerable to erasure. How many were wiped out completely? Which categorary of surnames was effected the most? What was the effect on individual counties?
Impossible questions to answer, though intriguing ones. I do wonder if a trace of the Black Death can be discerned in the current surname density levels of individual counties (Comparing Derbyshire with Staffordshire, for instance)- though one would need to know the surname compostions of each county prior to the Black Death. Again, highly unlikely to unearth. Just day-dreaming....

Population drop was not the only reason for the surname pool to decrease. Sturges and Hackett modelled the rate of surname extinction over 23 generations. They chose a start date of 1350 to enable them to neglect the effects of the plague. Even without accounting for pestilence, 30% of male lines would fail in the first generation according to their model.

The drop in the number of surnames due to these two reasons must have been phenomenal.
The following might be a reflection of this. A recent study of the surnames of Nidderdale has shown that there were no outstanding common names among the taxpayers of 1379 . However, localised established surnames had certainly achieved dominance by the time of the Lay Subsidy of 1546, for they reached a peak after the Dissolution. This peak continued in Nidderdale for as long as conditions were favourable, but received a setback after the Restoration, when family size declined and the national population growth fell to zero.
The dominance of certain names came to an end in the mid eighteenth century. (Turner: Distribution and Persistence of Surnames in a Yorkshire Dale, 1500-1750).

Earlier, Richard McKinley in The Surnames of Lancashire had drawn attention to the fact that although some names had ramified considerably by the 16th and 17th centuries, no name was preponderant in the Lancashire Poll Tax returns of 1377-81.

The evident stability of the class of leading names over the last 100 years should not be extrapolated back to the beginning of surname formation. Intriguingly, perhaps the surname Smith took an equal billing with currently rare surnames in 1300?

The number of recorded surnames -in England- did increase post 1540, but mainly due to surname corruption and mutation

Reaney wrote:-

"The modern form of very many of our surnames is due to the spelling of some sixteenth or seventeenth century parson or clerk, or even to one of a later date. It is not a matter of illiteracy in our sense of the word. These parsons who kept the parish registers were men of some education. Their ability to read cannot be questioned, but they had no guide to the spelling of names. It was the printing-press which gradually established a recognised system of spelling. That of Tudor and Stuart England was very different from ours, and the spelling of many of our words is not earlier than Dr Johnson's Dictionary. But there was no recognised spelling for names. A great part of the population was illiterate. Their names were only written at birth or marriage or death, or if they happened to come within the clutches of the law. Then they gave their names orally and the clerk put them into writing as best he could. He wrote them down phonetically, using his own system of spelling, sometimes spelling the same name in different ways at different times"

For example, here is how the surname Partridge was recorded in two sources for Suffolk

1524 Subsidy Roll Partriche, Parterych, Patrick, Pattrik, Patryk
1674 Hearth Tax Pattridge, Pattrige, Pateridge, Pattarage, Pattrage, Putteridge

One name generating 11 mutations in just 2 sources. Dugdale is said to have found 130 mutations for the name Mainwaring.
George Redmonds has commented
"..the number of variant spellings of any given name throughout its history, is infinitely greater than the surviving variants. Moreover, this tendency towards uniformity now is probably greater than the move towards individuality"

There must have been numerous factors in the creation of new surname forms . Here are a few possibilities:-

Pronunuciation

The pronunciation of surnames at the time of their creation is entirely different to that of today. Indeed, pronunciation changed markedly between the time of Chaucer and that of Shakespeare, but subsequently only in small ways.

A distinction that should be made here is between a root language change (affecting how all the names in a region were pronounced) and individual name changes - what might be termed surname corruption.

David Crystal (2004) has highlighted the distribution of surname forms beginning in w- wh- and qw- in East Anglia at the time of the lay subsidies (in his examples, between 1296 and 1334. The OE spelling for modern White was Hwit, a voiceless w. Perhaps as a result of Norman influence, the initial h in the consonant cluster was gradually dropped (a process reflected in many other words; hnutu becoming in turn nut). This process did not occur uniformly, so that surnames commencing with the the initial wh- consonant cluster - White, Whitbread, Whyting- exist alongside shortened variants - Wyting, Wyteman. The relative proportion changed markedly from one eastern county to another. Moreover, the cluster of spellings with a q- in Norfolk in these Lay Subsidy Rolls, suggests that clerks were interpreting local pronunciation for White as chwite and consequently representing it as Quite in the Rolls.
Similar regional dissimilarities can be seen in the word for Mill (and surname Miller). In 1 place a u substitution was found e.g. Mulner, Muller; in others an e substitution - e.g. Melner, Meller, in others Milne, Miller, Milner. Please compare the 1881 distributions of these forms - very few are now associated with the eastern counties. In fact, the only significant Qu- surname strongly now associated with Norfolk is Quantrill/Quintrell, which is a nickname of French lexical derivation (
Cointerel = a beau) and not of w- derivation)

The Stories of English pp140-143

Overall, the biggest changes were in the vowel-system; and the main changes are referred to as the Great Vowel Shift.

What is the Great Vowel Shift ?

The GVS was a massive sound change that affected the long vowels of English. In the process, these were now pronounced higher and the tongue moved more to the front of the mouth. This complex phenomenon proceeded at different rates in different dialects. It did not happen overnight, but started in the fifteen century, and was not fully complete till the end of the eighteenth century. At any given time, people of different ages and from different regions would have different pronunciations of the same word. True to say that even today, one can say a word like route to rhyme with either boot or out. However, sociolinguists suspect that especially in the sixteenth century, the opposing methods of pronunciation were class-based.

Some regional speech still reflects pronunciation pre-GVS.
For example the Chaucerian pronunciation of the vowel in goat to rhyme with saw, is still heard in Yorkshire; and house to rhyme with hoose in the north of England

And because of dialectical variation, in some specific words the long vowels did not undergo the GVS e.g. break, great, steak, and yea

 

>>> Sound Changes in the Long Vowels>>>
(as in ...)

as in ...far as in ...bad
(
London pronunciation)
as in ...French faire German Zehn tree dipthonged-
as in
time
> by 1600 > >by 16th C   >by 1500 >by early 15th C.
    as in saw as in French chose as in goose dipthonged
as in
poor
      >by 16/17th C >by 1500 >by early 15th C.

 

Phonetic Consonant loss

Initial k e.g. knee, knight Sounded up to c 1600
Initial g e.g. gnat Sounded up to c 1600
Initial w e.g. write Sounded up to c 1600

 

Examples of pronunciation change on words

Modern word Chaucerian pronunciation Shakespearian pronunciation
tide as in tree - teed as in admit -tah'd
green as in German zehn - grehn as in tree- green
meat as in French faire - may-t as in German zehn - meh't
house as in goose - hoose as in go -ho'se
knee as in German zehn - k'nay as in tree - k'nee
Note: I would like to use phonetic symbols, but am prevented by the lack of standardisation
till Unicode is completed

The situation was slightly more complicated than this, and anyone wanting to take this further should consult the standard texts.

Did the GVS affect surnames? Certainly in how they were pronounced; but not necessarily in how they were spelt. The Present-Day English spelling reflects Middle English pronunciation : the pronunciation of English before the GVS.

Although the present-day name, and its variants,
WEACKES, WEACKS, WEAK, WEAKE, WEAKES,WEAKS, WECKES, WECKS, WEECKES, WEECKS, WEEK,WEEKES, WEEKS, WEYKES, WHICKS, WHIKES, WHYKES, WICK, WICKE, WICKES, WICKS, WIKE, WIKES, WIX, WIXE,WYCK, WYCKES and WYKE in all probability have several different origins, it is likely that one source of the name originates in Saxon times - a wyke was the Saxon term for a dairying hamlet, or small village. It seems likely that the current pronunciation of the name Wykes, with a soft vowel sound, originated, or became more prevalent, in the 18th century. Prior to this, there is evidence to suggest that it was pronounced with a strong vowel sound, as one would pronounce Wicks or Wix or perhaps Weeks. Chaucer uses the spelling wykes for the plural of week (as in 7 days) in the Canterbury Tales. Modern pronunciation of the name Wykes seems to be fairly consistent, rhyming with likes, hikes and pikes
Reproduced with kind permission of Harry Whykes

The surname 'Dance' was often recorded as 'Daunce' or 'Dawnce' prior to 1600. It seems to have been pronounced as if to rhyme with haunts. Words like dance, aunt and chance have origins in borrowings into Middle English from French. "They entered English with an au spelling which, according to Dobson (1968 II:786), corresponded to a dipthong that was later monophthongised into a short a in some areas and a long a in other areas". After 1600, the au spelling falls away, as if to reflect that the vowel has been shortened, even in the south where the name is predominantly found. This echoes the fact that there was a sporadic shortening of vowels in words of one syllable (especially if they ended in a single consonant). Often short and long variants would be in circulation simultaneously.
Anthea Fraser Gupta 'Baths and Becks' English Today 81(Jan 2005) quoting Dobson

I have concentrated on the GVS because I think it is instructive to learn how our surnames were actually pronounced at different times in the past. However, I would like to emphasise that it is not clear what effect the GVS had (if any) on the recording of surnames. Surname changes were occurring well before the GVS, as the following examples recorded by Reaney reveal :-

adding an s Scripps for Cripps; Sturgess for Turgoose
losing an s Stallworthy becomes Tolworthy
s becomes sh Saxby becomes Shakesby
loss of r Sartin becomes Sattin
Initial p and b interchange Peasegood=Bisgood: Bumphrey=Pumfrey
Initial t and d interchange Dunstall=Tunstall; Tizard=Dysart
-son may become -som Paul's son becoming Poulsom
Initial h added/omitted at whim Adkins, Hadkins: Oldham, Holdham

Further Reading:-

Charles Barber The English Language : a Historical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1993)
H C Wyld A History of Modern Colloquial English (T Fisher Unwin Ltd, 1920)
P H Reaney The Origin of English Surnames (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967)

 

Education of the clergy

Until the end of the 16th century, the standard of education of the average clergyman was low. Inadequate remuneration failed to attract an educated clergy. But by the 1630's the majority of parishes had an resident, graduate clergy. Is this change in education/cultural background evidenced in the recording of surnames in parish registers?

Moreover, the new graduate clergy would have been heavily influenced by Latin. In the 16th century, Latin influence caused words to be remodelled according to their real or supposed Latin etymology. Thus b was introduced into debt (originally dette), p into receipt, and c into indict. Not only spellings, but also pronunciation of individual words altered under Latin influence e.g. aventure (= at a venture) became adventure; verdict from verdit; perfect from parfit.

One is left wondering whether the same happened with surnames? The clergy are usually seen as the honest interpreters of a surname, but could they have been consciously/unconsciously transmuting names?

There is an intriguing reference in Pounds A History of the English Parish p166

A priest at St Ewe (Cornw) moved to another living because he could not understand
the Cornish language, and there are other instances of inability to cope with the local patois

This example came from the 14th century, and a study of the geographical mobility of priests (through locative surnames) at that time reveals that the majority remained in the same diocese, and not infrequently only moved a short distance from their place of birth. However, a significant minority (25%?) had a surprising degree of mobility - e.g. from the deanery of the East Riding of Yorkshire to Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Surrey, Kent ,as examples of the furthest interchanges.

Are there any studies of the geographical mobility of parochial clergy in later centuries, and the difficulties they had in understanding?
George Redmonds also gives examples in
Surnames and Genealogy of the local clergy humorously altering surnames; deliberately misspelling as a kind of private joke. Wonderful.....

Another source for the creation of temporary variants could be due to hearing loss of an individual cleric. We tend to naturally assume that those recording events had perfect hearing. Not necessarily so. Although it could be argued that this particular defect was corrected through lip-reading. If it is a possibility, then research has been conducted into those consonants that become progressively confused due to hearing impairment. For example, the consonants d,g,b or v,th,z are indistinguishable to those with even a slight hearing loss.

 

Misinterpretation of regional dialects

Migration is often cited as the single most important cause of surname corruption.

"My MOWBRAY name has variants such as:
MOWBERRY...this was from a Leicester family that went to Northants in the early 1700s. The parish clerk, never having had a MOWBRAY family in his region before, heard the name and wrote what he thought the man had said. The offspring migrated to Lincolnshire, which is prime MOWBRAY territory, and some maintained the variant whereas others reverted to the original. In medieval times, an offspring of the baronial line went to Scotland and founded a dynasty. They adopted the spelling MOUBRAY which has persisted. One can hear the Scottish accent in this variant. In Yorkshire the variant MAWBRAY crops up, this time reflecting the Yorkshire drawl."
(Source: David Mowbray email to the Guild Forum)

"In fact this change in the way the name is written down is quite easy to map, and SW of a line drawn between Kidderminster and Redditch it is ROWBERRY and NE of that line it is RUBERY. This is most neatly demonstrated by a 19th Century Ag Lab family who moved backwards and forwards over that line. In the one area their children's births were registered as ROWBERRYs but in the other as RUBERYs." (Source: Polly Rubery email to the Guild Forum)

In the above examples it clearly is. However, how typical are its migration patterns?

Mobility - Mediaeval

There have been several useful studies of mediaeval migration, and all indicate a high level of mobility.

Nottinghamshire Distance travelled up to 5 miles ...10 miles ...20 miles ...150 miles
Early 14th Century (cumulative percentage) 40% 60% 75% 100%
Source: Peter McClure: Patterns of migration in the late Middle Ages : The evidence of English Place-Name Surnames
Economic History Review (1979) 167-182

. Twenty Five percent were moving over 20 miles, and a few up to 150 miles. It would be useful to correlate this with points at which dialect certainly changes. The distance for dialect changes is greater for lowland than upland regions: but I hazard a guess at 70 miles (lowland) and 40 miles (upland). Someone more knowledgeable, enlighten me please.
And a higher percentage of the the names that moved would be more distinctive than later, and therefore a higher percentage subject to change.

Post-medieval mobility

David Hey writes that most migration was within a radius of 25 miles; often centring on the local market-town : subsistence migration declining rapidly with the passing of the 1662 Settlement Acts.

For further information, read Ian Whyte 'Migration and Society in Britain, 1550-1830'

 

Spelling

It is commonly accepted that for the printed word, the spelling system became standardised by the end of the seventeenth century. Powerful influences had been the introduction of the printing press (with spelling conventions set by the printers) and the publication of dictionaries.
This standardisation was not echoed in the recording of surnames. Famously, Shakespeare had 5 other variants of his name, in his lifetime. Indeed, standardisation did not arrive until the advent of mass literacy in the twentieth century. In my initial analysis of the 1900 Portsmouth Burgess Rolls, I am struck by the lack of name standardisation. And this in a section of the populace that one would expect to have a higher incidence of literacy.

 

Common spelling changes

Added e or es suffix losse, frende or motheres
Doubling or singling consonants allways, shoppe, ffawkes
Doubling or singling vowels shep, thret, gode (sheep/treat/good)
Interchangeable vowel sounds
e.g. o/ou, i/ie/y and w/u
could/cold, first/fyrst/fierst
J written as I Ianuary
U written as V Maior

 

Spelling changes in names

F and Ph Fair, Phair; Fazackerley, Phizackerly
C replaced by S or K Cely, Seeley; Curtler, Kirtler
ks replaced by x Dickson, Dixon; Wicks, Wix
i and y Sime, Syme
-er as a final syllable Bowrer, Bowra; Vanner, Vannah
Doubling consonants Dannce, Dansse

In surname studies, there is a complicated relationship between pronunciation, orthography and -presumably- the influence of the standardisation conventions of printed text.

Modern Spelling

As mentioned, Surnames have resisted -or have been placed outside- the drive for spelling standardisation. (In contrast to forenames, where variance is allowed, but is very constricted e.g. Catherine, Katherine, Kathryn)
This is perhaps due to the perceived need for surnames to be differentiated from common nouns, in a way other than capitalisation. This process seems to apply particularly to succinct names, and is achieved through a process of padding. This padding is found in 3 forms:-

  1. The addition of a superfluous letter 'e'
  2. Consonant doubling
  3. The substitution of the letter 'y' for 'i'

As a counter argument, it must be noted that many of the variable padded surnames are of a lower frequency than the main form.
This 'Crosse' is far rarer than 'Cross'; and similarly for Webbe, Locke, Steele, Brooke etc. The situation is reversed with consonant-doubled surnames, which have become the norm- especially the plural form e.g. Gib-Gibb-Gibbs

1. Superfluous <e>

The addition of the letter <e> can be discerned in 4 types

1. After a short vowel and a consonant-letter cluster

Examples:-

Fixed form Crabbe, Legge, Snagge, Thynne

Variable forms

Ask(e), Cross(e), Lock(e), Webb(e)

2. After <oo> and a consonant (usually /k/)

Examples: Brook(e), Cook(e), Hook(e)

3. After a long vowel (spelt with more than 1 letter)

Examples:-

Fixed form Blencowe, Coote, Doyle, Keyne, Rowe, Toole

Variable forms

Beal(e), Broom(e), Daw(e), Down(e), Kean(e), How(e), Neal(e), Steel(e)

4. Vowel spellings with <r>

Examples:-

Fixed form Bourne, Burke, Herne, Doore, Thorne, Warne

Variable forms

Clark(e), Ford(e), Horn(e), Sharp(e)

 

2. Consonant doubling

This is particularly seen with the following (end) consonants
p b t d g m n and r

Examples:

<pp> Alsopp, Chipp, Copp

<bb>

Chubb, Cobb, Dobb(s), Gibb(s), Hobbs, Stubbs, Tibbs
<tt> Bartlett, Blissett, Boycott, Brett, Corbett, Follet, Hewitt, Perrett, Platt, Smollett, Truscott
<dd> Budd, Dodd, Judd, Todd
<gg> Bigge, Bragge, Clegg, Hogg, Kellogg, Legge, Pegge, Snagge, Twigg
<mm> Gomme, Grimme, Mumm
<nn> Donne, Flynn, Lynn, McCann, Nunn, Thinn, Venn
<rr> Barr, Carr, Kerr, Starr, Storr

 

3. Letter 'Y' Substitution

Examples would be Taylor, Smythe, Pye, Wylde.
In some cases, these forms have predominated because they are seen as having archaic value, in the same sense that the form 'Ye Olde Tea-Shoppe' is used. The substitution adds to the written sense that this type of name is of historic longevity.

Combinations
All the above examples include instances of names that combine 2 types, e.g. consonant doubling and the superfluous <e> e.g. Lily vs Lilley, Crab vs Crabbe

Idiosyncratic spellings
Spellings in which there are no correspondences between spelling and pronunciation
Examples:
Batchelor, Beauchamp, Cholmondeley, Featherstonehaugh, Marjoribanks, St John

Sources: E.Carney 'A survey of English spelling / V Cook 'The English writing system'

Recent developments

The best in-depth analysis of how/why surnames mutate has been George Redmonds Surnames and Genealogy : A New Approach. Dr Redmonds shows -through his study of the use of aliases in Yorkshire parish records- the depth of uncertainty that parish clerks had in understanding and recording local names. Previously, the extent of name changes had been regarded as a minor phenomenon ; Dr Redmonds demonstrates that it was a process of major importance in enlarging the stock of surnames in Yorkshire.

"George Redmonds' Yorkshire examples show that, although some apparent variations in names were simply misspellings by clerks (or in some cases humorous adaptations by clergymen), many surnames changed permanently. Some alterations were minor ones, involving the dropping of aspirates or of consonants such as a final 'd' or 't', but others were more basic because of the the different speech customs of the district into which a family or individual moved" (Source: David Hey 'Family Names and Family History' p84)

Surnames were being changed through peer pressure, into new forms that bore no resemblance to the original name.

For example Cowgill being tranformed into Coldhill. Such transformations could be temporary, and revert on future migration; or could become permanent.

Andrew Todd in his 'Shadows of Ancestors' has summarised some of Dr Redmonds' earlier findings; and identifies the following processes:-

Surname separation e.g. Hinchcliffe developed 20 mutations -Henchcliffe,Hincliff, Incliff
Surname interaction Confusion between 2 surnames produces a 3rd Ollerhead & Holroyd interact to form Oldroyd
Surname assimilation An incoming surname becomes absorbed into an existing local surname (often a local placename surname)
This process may be temporary or permanent
Lancashire Catteralls are treated as Cotteril, when migrating to Staffordshire.
Associative Etymology Locals try to make sense of a name, phonetically D'Orleans is rendered as Darling

 

Names with the following structure are liable to be affected:-

Names with interchangeable forms interchange e.g. Moor and Mower, Sharman and Sherman
Simplification of polysyllabic names e.g. Badilonde >Badelond>Badlan
Vocalisation or lack of terminal stress leads to suffix confusion Everard>Everett
Soft consonants (e.g. v) liable to abbreviation Littleover>Littler
Similarly pronounced letter interchangeable e.g. F/V or G/K Gilpin>Kilpin
B and p and d and t interchangeable Radcliffe>Ratcliffe
Loss of a consecutive consonant Hartley>Harley
Metathesis -the shifting of letters Firth > Frith
Metanalysis - shifting of letter from forename to surname Otley > Notley

 

 

Qu/W

S Carlsson in Studies on Middle English Local By-Names in East Anglia (Lund, 1989) p 161 averred that the voicing of W and Wh by Q was a distinctively northern phenomenon, particularly characteristic of Lancashire.. (Although it does occur sporadically outside of 'the north', e.g. Robert Peperquit in a 13th century Sussex charter)

K/C substitution (velar and palatal plosives)

The consonantal substitution of k for c in northern zones is a familiar phenomenon of late Middle English. This was not just a spelling change, but a voiced one as well, in some surnames and by-names
e.g. Godrik (south) vs Godrich (north)

K/C insertion

e.g.Sklater < Slater
Skaithlock < Scathelok

If you have a more than passing interest in surname variance, then you must read Todd and above all George Redmonds. I have included an Appendix which lists changes in much finer detail.

For a discussion of what might constitute a variant, please read Peter Christian's various papers, which are held on the Thesaurus of British surnames website.

How can a true variant be determined?
A difficult question. However, it is possible to say that B cannot be a variant of A, because it would then violate the rules of the sounds of English.
[Peter demonstrated this in his paper 'What surname distribution cannot teach us']

Sources:-

 

 

 

 

Further Research.

Variant or Deviant?

The Guild of One-Name Studies defines a variant as

"a name spelling which varies from the primary name spelling (or another variant spelling) used by that person’s ancestors and which is:
A name spelling that the person was known to have used, through signature evidence on wills, marriage bonds, marriage certificates or other documents originating from the individual concerned
Or A name used by officials on a consistent and persistent basis over a number of years"

The Guild of One-Name Studies defines a deviant as

“any other spelling recorded, including cases where the spelling occurs in official records, but only randomly and inconsistently.
Deviants will also include spellings derived from enumeration, transcription and indexing errors, both contemporary and modern.”

 

Do names that are subject to drastic variance share some or all of the following aspects?:-

There is much work to be done in :-

Variations in Reaney

Reaney1 gives no indication of how he chose to group variants. How did he decide on a head-form? -on etymological grounds?- the most occurrences? the earliest form? the latest form?
With these uncertainties, a peremptory analysis of variants using Reaney is bound to be somewhat suspect.
I spent a week at a hospital bedside, and to pass away the time, I decided to count how many of the variants in Reaney (3rd ed) differed in the lead consonant from the head-form. Most variants are created through a change in a medial vowel sound, or through a doubling of consonants, or through the addition of a suffix. The initial consonant is deemed to carry most 'information' about a name, and hence if it changes, that should be significant.
In the following table, column 1 is the letter of the head-form, and the subsequent columns indicate the count of variants that do not match that initial letter.

 

 

a

b

c

d

e

f

g

h

i

j

k

l

m

n

o

p

q

r

s

t

u

v

w

x

y

z

 TOTAL spread

A

 

3

 

4

68

1

 

 

53

6    

11

 

9

7

   

1

 

4

           

167

11

B

     

3

             

2

   

2

14

                   

21

4

C

     

4

   

7

     

50

4

   

1

2

   

11

             

79

7

D

2

     

5

   

2

 

4

         

2

                   

15

5

E

15

   

1

     

38

10

   

2

 

3

5

   

1

   

4

     

3

 

80

10

F

     

4

             

11

     

21

         

58

       

94

4

G

   

7

2

1

2

   

1

59

 

11

2

               

2?

20

     

107

10

H

30

   

2

5

5

         

1

   

11

         

10

         

64

7

I

       

6

   

15

                       

2

         

23

3

J

         

1

30

 

1

   

1

                           

33

4

K

   

16

2

             

2

 

4

                       

24

4

L

     

6

                                           

6

1

M

     

1

 

1

         

5

                           

7

3

N

                       

8

 

2

                     

10

2

O

4

   

4

     

14

     

1

 

8

     

1

1

 

6

         

39

8

P

    2   3   1             6                               12 4

Q

        1                                       1       2 2

R

            1                                         1 1

S

      9 1   1             2         1        1             6   21 7

T

        5                                             5 1

U

                5         1     3                       9 3

V

            12             1         9                       22 3

W

     

1

 

4

13

1

                 

4

   

12

1

       

36

7

X

                                                   

0

0
Y                                         4           4 1
Z                                                     0 0
  51 5 32 44 85 29 50 128 18 63 50 61 10 24 33 47 0 7 12 5 38 59 21 0 3 6 881  
  a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z    

 

Provisos

  1. The analysis should have been on phonemes rather than consonants e.g. P's will cover both a hard 'P' and 'F' sounds as in Paul and Phillips. There is grapheme-to-phoneme guidance which helps2. Even so, names often do not adhere to these rules, and a personal judgment would still have to be made as to pronunciation
  2. Correspondences with D, L, M or O can be explained in some cases with the dropped suffixes -De, Le, Mc and O'

Analysis

1 Reaney Dictionary of English surnames 3rd ed OUP, 1995

2 Edward Carney 'A survey of English spelling' Routledge 1994

Appendix: Yorkshire Changes noted by George Redmonds

Vowel Changes   Thomas Ayke alias Oke 1610 Hornsea
Consonant Changes   Robert Porrage alias Poddage 1573 Doncaster
Unpronounced Consonants   John Squire vulgariter John Swyre 1618 Skipton
Final "t"   William Petty alias Petit 1658 Bolton
Final "d"   Francis Bramald otherwise Bramall 1764 Bramall
Metathesis   John Stirley alias Strelley 1595 Roas
"L" -as final letter William Angell alias Angeer 1597 Terrington
"L" -vocalised James Wignall otherwise Wigney 1749 Norland
"L" -vocalised internally Edmund Holgate alias Howgate 1708 Hebden
"L" interchangeable with "N" Richard Cattall alias Catton 1739 York
Aspiration Omitted initial "H" Abraham Heeley or Ely 1690 Kirkburton
Aspiration Included initial "H" William Eyre alias Hare 1726  
Aspiration as "Qu" or "Qw" George Whippe or Quippe 1596 Leverton
Aspiration as consonants G, Kand Hard C David and Sarah Hawcraft/Cawcroft 1755-59 Earley
Voiced consonants   Thomas Bickers alias Vicars 1547 Filey
Voiced Consonants "B" interchangeable with "P" William Bolton alias Powton 1558 Byland
Initial alternatives determined by cleric Daniel Awty alias Otty 1685 Dewsbury
Initial "Wr"   Susannah Rigley otherwise Wrigley 1734 Wakefield
Prosthetic consonants Y and E William Yernschay/Ernshaye 1545-5 Holme
Prosthetic consonants S and K,P or T William Specke alias Pecke 1786-88 East Hatfield
    John Strafford/Trafford   Aughton
Metanalysis "Incorrect" analysis in separating forename and surname ; involves especially John and Thomas Thomas Anderson alias Saunderson

John Nellis alias Ellis

1524

1622

Allerton

Buttercrambe

Suffix confusion   Myles Hurtley alias Hirtcliffe

John Claybourn/Claybor/Claybrough,

Miles Thisselwhat/Thisselworth

1622 Halith

Kippax

York

Abbreviation Loss of final syllable William Priest alias Priestley 1605 Harewood
Abbreviation Loss of first syllable Abraham Harbytle, son of Henry Bytle 1631 Kippax
Contraction e.g. by omitting a medial syllable Nicholas Cordyngley or Cordley

Jane Erat or Everard

1589

1612

Birstall

Snaith

Filial names but may result from confusion between similar and yet distinct surnames, and not abbreviation e.g. Stephenson (common in Yorkshire) and Stephens (rare in Yorkshire) Roger Casson, son of Simon Casse

Benjamin Parkinson/Parkins

1645

1788

York

Wombwell

Assimilation -to a local placename William Tingle/Tingley 1648-54 Birstall
Surname confusion   William Donwell/Dunnill
/Dannell/Daniel
1641-56 Heckmondwike

Appendix 2

Linguistics and the corpus of modern surnames

Only certain combinations of phonemes are possible; and the study of the possible combinations is called phonotactics.

Syllables

1) Number of syllables

Surnames are nouns (in fact a subset of proper nouns). How does their average number of syllables compare with those of ordinary nouns?
A simple analysis of the leading 300 surnames reveals

Syllables Surnames 1-99 Surnames 100-199 Surnames 200-299

Single

34%

40%

29%

Double

59%

55%

57%

Triple

7%

7%

14%

Compare this with an analysis of the 19,334 nouns in the Longman's dictionary of contemporary English

 

English surnames (or at least those in the top 300) are predominantly bi-syllabic. This categorary -plus the mono-syllabics- account for 91% of these surnames. Whereas these two categories in the nouns sample accounted for a lesser figure- 60% . Moreover, the surnames sample had no occurrences of surnames with 4 or more syllables; even those with 3 were a definite minority. So surnames can be differentiated from nouns by the pattern of their syllable length.

The English form of identity -it seems- requires succinctness, but not necessarily brevity

As a double-check, I counted syllables from samples of 100 names each from lower-frequency surnames

Syllables Frequency 3,600 Freq 6870 Freq 8300
1 15% 23% 15%
2 71% 64% 64%
3 12% 10% 21%
4 2% 3% 0%

Bi-syllabic names still predominate at these lower frequencies

The same proportions can be discerned in an analysis of the average syllable length in forenames:-

 

In the case of monosyllabic surnames, there almost seems to be a 4 letter rule for English surnames.
However, there are exceptions : Cam, Esk, Ham, Kyd, Lot

Source: Anne Cutler, James McQueen, Ken Robinson
Elizabeth and John : sound patterns of men's and women's names Journal of Linguistics 26 (1990) p477

 

 

Strong and weak syllables

The English language "consists predominantly of words beginning with strong syllables, and the most common word pattern is in English is a bi-syllabic with initial stress, such as common, pattern, English" 1

In their study of 190,000 words of spontaneous spoken British conversation, Cutler and Carter (1987) 3 found that 90% of the lexical words (i.e. nouns,adjectives, verbs and adverbs) began with strong syllables. Whereas, considering the total number of weak syllables, 69% were initial syllables of function words, 26% were not word-initial, and 5% were initial syllables of lexical words. [Examples of function words would be articles (e.g., an, the), prepositions (to, from), conjunctions (and, but), determiners (all, those), complementizers (if, that), auxiliary verbs, and personal pronouns.]

Thus the patterns of word stress have resulted with the great majority of English lexical words, like nouns, placing stress on the first syllable. It is the case that a large number of lexical words have only one syllable, but still that one syllable is likely to have stress.

For Example
the predominant stress pattern for bisyllabic words in English is strong\ weak (e.g. m ommy) : weak\strong words
(e.g. all ow) are comparatively rare

Moreover:-

"English words generally follow a pattern of alternating strong and weak syllables. In general, strong syllables are pronounced with a slightly higher pitch and for a slightly longer duration than weak syllables. Strong syllables are long. Weak syllables are usually short. " 2

 

More Examples

(. a dot = short, - a dash = long)

Weak/Strong   Strong/Weak   Weak/Strong/Weak   Strong/Weak/Weak

. -

. -

. -

- .

- .

- .

. - .

. - .

. - .

- . .

- . .

- . .

result detect confuse final science table computer in Sydney distribute absolute tentative chemistry

 

Weak/Strong/Weak/Weak   Weak/Strong/Strong/Weak Strong/Weak/Strong   Strong/Strong

. - . .

. - . .

. - . .

  - . . -   - . -   - -   - -
infanticide it's terrible impossible Give me a break Run along Get lost Don't know

2These great examples (and quote) borrowed from Language Center (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)- I hope to replace them as I become more competent

Surnames as poetry?

I do not know - and have not the knowledge to successfully to survey and analyse a corpus of surnames (as spoken). Might there be a difference with nouns?

The other way in which a name might be considered poetic is in the possible euphony through forename choice

Clint

Bonney

 

Ian

Bonney

-

- .

.

- .

Strong

Strong/Weak

Weak

Strong/Weak

Sources
  • Fear, B., Cutler, A., and Butterfield, S. (1995). The strong/weak syllable distinction in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, (1995) 3, pp1893-1904.
  • (3) Cutler, A. and D. M. Carter, The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language, 2 (1987): pp133-142.

 

Sound symbolism

It has been axiomatic that there is no relationship between an object and the sound chosen to signify it. The label 'tree' could easily have been the label 'treb' with no loss of understanding.

 

Syllabic structure-

Syllables can be simple or more complex; the latter analysed as having a centre, plus a beginning (onset) and an ending (coda).

1) Minimum syllables are single vowels in isolation - words like 'are', 'or, err'

2) Syllables with an onset (i.e.more than just silence precedes the centre)- 'bar', 'key', more

3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Modern British Surname Studies
Last revised: August 10, 2008
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