CHAPTER XVI

. A SPECIMEN PROBLEM: RUTTER

"Howe sayst thou, man? am not I a joly rutter?"

(Skelton, Magnyfycence, 1. 762.)

The fairly common name Rutter is a good example of the difficulty of explaining a surname derived from a trade or calling no longer practised. Even so careful an authority as Bardsley has gone hopelessly astray over this name. He says, "German ritter, a rider, i.e. a trooper," and quotes from Halliwell, "rutter, a rider, a trooper, from the German; a name given to mercenary soldiers engaged from Brabant, etc." Now this statement is altogether opposed to chronology. The name occurs as le roter, rotour, ruter in the Hundred Rolls of 1273, i.e. more than two centuries before any German name for trooper could possibly have become familiar in England. Any stray Mid. High Ger. Riter would have been assimilated to the cognate Eng. Rider. It is possible that some German Reuters have become English Rutters in comparatively modern times, but the German surname Reuter has nothing to do with a trooper. It represents Mid. High Ger. riutaere, a clearer of land, from the verb riuten (reuten), corresponding to Low Ger. roden, and related to our royd, a clearing (