Chapter XVII

). The verb had also in Mid. English the sense of running away, so that the name may mean fugitive. In some cases it may represent a maker of leaps, i.e. fish baskets, or perhaps a man who hawked fish in such a basket.

A Slayer made slays, part of a weaver's loom, and a Bloomer worked in a bloom-smithy, from Anglo-Sax. blo-ma, a mass of hammered iron. Weightman and Warman represent Mid. Eng, waþeman, hunter; cf. the common German surname Weidemann, of cognate origin. Reader and Booker are not always literary. The former is for Reeder, a thatcher--

"Redare of howsys, calamator, arundinarius" (Prompt. Parv.)--

and the latter is a Norman variant of Butcher, as already mentioned.

SPELLING OF TRADE-NAMES

The spelling of occupative surnames often differs from that now associated with the trade itself. In Naylor, Taylor, and Tyler we have the archaic preference for y. [Footnote: It may be noted here that John Tiler of Dartford, who killed a tax-gatherer for insulting his daughter, was not Wat Tiler, who was killed at Smithfield for insulting the King. The confusion between the two has led to much sympathy being wasted on a ruffian.] Our ancestors thought sope as good a spelling as soap, hence the name Soper. A Plummer, i.e. a man who worked in lead, Lat. plumbum, is now written, by etymological reaction, plumber, though the restored letter is not sounded. A man who dealt in 'arbs originated the name Arber, which we should now replace by herbalist. We have a restored spelling in clerk, though educated people pronounce the word as it was once written

"Clarke, or he that readeth distinctly, clericus." (Holyoak's Lat. Dict., 1612.)

In many cases we are unable to say exactly what is the ocpupation indicated. We may assume that a Setter and a Tipper did setting and tipping, and both are said to have been concerned in the arrow industry. If this is true, I should say that Setter might represent the Old Fr, saieteur, arrow-maker, from saiete, an arrow, Lat. sagitta. But in a medieval vocabulary we find "setter of mes, dapifer," which would make it the same as Sewer (