British Surnames
The men and women of Anglo-Saxon England
normally bore one name only.
Distinguishing epithets were rarely added.
These might be patronymic, descriptive or occupational.
They were, however, hardly surnames.
Heritable names gradually became general
in the three centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066.
It was not until the 13th and 14th centuries
that surnames became fixed,
although for many years after that,
the degree of stability in family names
varied considerably in different parts of the country.
British surnames fall mainly into four broad categories:
patronymic, occupational, descriptive and local.
A few names, it is true, will remain puzzling:
foreign names, perhaps, crudely translated,
adapted or abbreviated;
or artificial names.
In fact, over fifty per cent of genuine British surnames
derive from place names of different kinds,
and so they belong to the last of our four main categories.
Even such a name as Simpson may belong to this last group,
and not to the first,
had the family once had its home
in the ancient village of that name.
Otherwise, Simpson means "the son of Simon",
as might be expected.
Hundreds of occupational surnames are at once familiar to us,
or at least recognisable after a little thought:
Archer, Carter, Fisher, Mason, Thatcher, Taylor,
to name but a few.
Hundreds of others are more obscure in their meanings
and testify to the amazing specialisation
in medieval arts, crafts and functions.
Such are "Day", (Old English for breadmaker)
and "Walker" (a fuller whose job was
to clean and thicken newly made cloth).
All these vocational names carry with them
a certain gravity and dignity,
which descriptive names often lack.
Some, it is true, like "Long", "Short" or "Little", are simple.
They may be taken quite literally.
Others require more thinking:
their meanings are slightly different from the modern ones.
"Black" and "White" implied dark and fair respectively.
"Sharp" meant genuinely discerning, alert, acute
rather than quick-witted or clever.
Place-names have a lasting interest
since there is hardly a town or village in all England
that has not at some time given its name to a family.
They may be picturesque, even poetical;
or they may be pedestrian, even trivial.
Among the commoner names
which survive with relatively little change
from old-English times
are "Milton" (middle enclosure)
and "Hilton" (enclosure on a hill).