CHAPTER V

. THE ABSORPTION OF FOREIGN NAMES

"I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandize, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of words in English, we are now called--nay, we call ourselves and write our name--Crusoe" (Robinson Crusoe, ch. i.).

Any student of our family nomenclature must be struck by the fact that the number of foreign names now recognizable in England is out of all proportion to the immense number which must have been introduced at various periods of our history. Even the expert, who is often able to detect the foreign name in its apparently English garb, cannot rectify this disproportion for us. The number of names of which the present form can be traced back to a foreign origin is inconsiderable when compared with the much larger number assimilated and absorbed by the Anglo-Saxon.

THE HUGUENOTS

The great mass of those names of French or Flemish origin which do not date back to the Conquest or to medieval times are due to the immigration of Protestant refugees in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is true that many names for which Huguenot ancestry is claimed were known in England long before the Reformation. Thus, Bulteel is the name of a refugee family which came from Tournay about the year 1600, but the same name is found in the Hundred Rolls Of 1273. The Grubbe family, according to Burke, came from Germany about 1450, after the Hussite persecution; but we find the name in England two centuries earlier, "without the assistance of a foreign persecution to make it respectable" (Bardsley, Dictionary of English Surnames). The Minet family is known to be of Huguenot origin, but the same name also figures in the medieval Rolls. The fact is that there was all through the Middle Ages a steady immigration of foreigners, whether artisans, tradesmen, or adventurers, some of whose names naturally reappear among the Huguenots. On several occasions large bodies of Continental workmen, skilled in special trades, were brought into the country by the wise policy of the Government. Like the Huguenots later on, they were protected by the State and persecuted by the populace, who resented their habits of industry and sobriety.

During the whole period of the religious troubles in France and Flanders, starting from the middle of the sixteenth century, refugees were reaching this country in a steady stream; but after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) they arrived in thousands, and the task of providing for them and helping on their absorption into the population became a serious problem. Among the better class of these immigrants was to be found the flower of French intellect and enterprise, and one has only to look through an Army or Navy list, or to notice the names which are prominent in the Church, at the Bar, and in the higher walks of industry and commerce, to realize the madness of Louis XIV. and the wisdom of the English Government.

Here are a few taken at random from Smiles's History of the Huguenots--Bosanquet, Casaubon, Chenevix Trench, Champion de Crespigny, Dalbiac, Delane, Dollond, Durand, Fonblanque, Gambier, Garrick, Layard, Lefanu, Lefroy, Ligonier, Luard, Martineau, Palairet, Perowne, Plimsoll, Riou, Romilly--all respectable and many distinguished, even cricket being represented. These more educated foreigners usually kept their names, sometimes with slight modifications which do not make them unrecognizable. Thus, Bouverie, literally "ox-farm," is generally found in its unaltered form, though the London Directory has also examples of the perverted Buffery. But the majority of the immigrants were of the artisan class and illiterate. This explains the extraordinary disappearance, in the course of two centuries, of the thousands of French names which were introduced between 1550 and 1700.

We have many official lists of these foreigners, and in these lists we catch the foreign name in the very act of transforming itself into English. This happens sometimes by translation, e.g. Poulain became Colt, Poisson was reincarnated as Fish, and a refugee bearing the somewhat uncommon name Petitoeil transformed himself into Little-eye, which became in a few generations Lidley. But comparatively few surnames were susceptible of such simple treatment, and in the great majority of cases the name underwent a more or less arbitrary perversion which gave it a more English physiognomy. Especially interesting from this point of view is the list of--"Straungers residing and dwellinge within the city of London and the liberties thereof," drawn up in 1618. The names were probably taken down by the officials of the different wards, who, differing themselves in intelligence and orthography, produced very curious results.

As a rule the Christian name is translated, while the surname is either assimilated to some English form or perverted according to the taste and fancy of the individual constable. Thus, John Garret, a Dutchman, is probably Jan Gerard, and James Flower, a milliner, born in Rouen, is certainly Jaques Fleur, or Lafleur. John de Cane and Peter le Cane are Jean Duquesne and Pierre Lequesne (Norman quêne, oak), though the former may also have come from Caen. John Buck, from Rouen, is Jean Bouc, and Abraham Bushell, from Rochelle, was probably a Roussel or Boissel. James King and John Hill, both Dutchmen, are obvious translations of common Dutch names, while Henry Powell, a German, is Heinrich Paul. Mary Peacock, from Dunkirk, and John Bonner, a Frenchman, I take to be Marie Picot and Jean Bonheur, while Nicholas Bellow is surely Nicolas Belleau. Michael Leman, born in Brussels, may be French Leman or Lemoine, or perhaps German Lehmann.

To each alien's name is appended that of the monarch whose subject he calls himself, but a republic is outside the experience of one constable, who leaves an interrogative blank after Cristofer Switcher, born at Swerick (Zürich) in Switcherland. The surname so ingeniously created appears to have left no pedagogic descendants. In some cases the harassed Bumble has lost patience, and substituted a plain English name for foreign absurdity. To the brain which christened Oliver Twist we owe Henry Price, a subject of the King of Poland, Lewis Jackson, a "Portingall," and Alexander Faith, a steward to the Venice Ambassador, born in the dukedom of Florence.

PERVERSIONS OF FOREIGN NAMES

In the returns made outside the bounds of the city proper the aliens have added their own signatures, or in some cases made their marks. Jacob Alburtt signs himself as Jacob Elbers, and Croft Castell as Kraft Kassels. Harman James is the official translation of Hermann Jacobs, Mary Miller of Marija Moliner, and John Young of Jan le Jeune. Gyllyam Spease, for Wilbert Spirs, seems to be due to a Welsh constable, and Chrystyan Wyhelhames, for Cristian Welselm, looks like a conscientious attempt at Williams. One registrar, with a phonetic system of his own, has transformed the Dutch Moll into the more familiar Maule, and has enriched his list with Jannacay Yacopes for Jantje Jacobs. Lowe Luddow, who signs himself Louij Ledou, seems to be Louis Ledoux. An alien who writes himself Jann Eisankraott (Ger. Eisenkraut? ) cannot reasonably complain plain at being transformed into John Isacrocke, but the substitution of John Johnson for Jansen Vandrusen suggests that this individual's case was taken at the end of a long day's work.

These examples, taken at random, show how the French and Flemish names of the humbler refugees lost their foreign appearance. In many cases the transformation was etymologically justified. Thus, some of our Druitts and Drewetts may be descended from Martin Druett, the first name on the list. But this is probably the common French name Drouet or Drouot, assimilated to the English Druitt, which we find in 1273. And both are diminutives of Drogo, which occurs in Domesday Book, and is, through Old French, the origin of our Drew. But in many cases the name has been so deformed that one can only guess at the continental original. I should conjecture, for instance, that the curious name Shoppee is a corruption of Chappuis, the Old French for a carpenter, and that

Jacob Shophousey, registered as a German cutler, came from Schaffhausen. In this particular region of English nomenclature a little guessing is almost excusable. The law of probabilities makes it mathematically certain that the horde of immigrants included representatives of all the very common French family names, and it would be strange if Chappuis were absent.

This process of transformation is still going on in a small way, especially in our provincial manufacturing towns, in which most large commercial undertakings have slipped from the nerveless grasp of the Anglo-Saxon into the more capable and prehensile fingers of the foreigner--

"Hilda then learnt that Mrs. Gailey had married a French modeller named Canonges. . . and that in course of time the modeller had informally changed the name to Cannon, because no one in the five towns could pronounce the true name rightly."

(Arnold Bennett, Hilda Lessways, i. 5.)

This occurs most frequently in the case of Jewish names of German origin. Thus, Löwe becomes Lowe or Lyons, Meyer is transformed into Myers, Goldschmid into Goldsmith, Kohn into Cowan, Levy into Lee or Lewis, Salamon into Salmon, Hirsch or Hertz into Hart, and so on. Sometimes a bolder flight is attempted--

"Leopold Norfolk Gordon had a house in Park Lane, and ever so many people's money to keep it up with. As may be guessed from his name, he was a Jew."

(Morley Roberts, Lady Penelope, ch. ii.)

JEWISH NAMES

The Jewish names of German origin which are now so common in England mostly date from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when laws were passed in Austria, Prussia and Bavaria to compel all Jewish families to adopt a fixed surname. Many of them chose personal names, e.g. Jakobs, Levy, Moses, for this purpose, while others named themselves from their place of residence, e.g. Cassel, Speyer (Spires), Hamburg, often with the addition of the syllable -er, e.g. Darmesteter, Homburger. Some families preferred descriptive names such as Selig (