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CONTENTS
Appendix 1: Curious and Obsolete Surnames
Appendix 2: Surname Distribution
Appendix 3: The Fifty Most Common Surnames
Dictionaries are usually consulted very briefly for what they have to say about a single name or word. Many would apply to them the old joke about telephone directories – they have lots of characters but not much of a story. I think they fail to do their job if that is the case. A dictionary should be a collection of stories, each one briefly told and interesting in its own right. Those stories should be written in plain English, not dressed in academic jargon. The dictionary should, as a result, be a book in which you can happily browse, never being quite sure what you will discover on the next page.
As it happens, Collins have established a tradition of reader-friendliness in their dictionaries which has proved to be very successful. In this work I have gone very deliberately down that ‘friendly’ path, to the extent of providing from time to time an anecdote, verse or quotation to accompany the linguistic facts. Those facts, of course, are often entertaining in themselves; the anecdotal material is meant to be an icing on the cake.
Surnames are not just words; they are intimately connected with people and with human behaviour in all its variety. Taken as a whole, our surnames show not only where our ancestors lived and how they earned their living; they also record the out-spoken comments our fore-fathers made on their neighbours’ physical or mental peculiarities. In our surnames we find a record of life in the Middle Ages and are allowed a glimpse into the medieval mind. Our surnames really do bring the past to life.
Since it is impossible in a book of this size to deal with the huge number of individual surnames that now exist, I have tried to provide as much practical help as possible for those who are trying to trace the origin of an uncommon name. Inevitably that will mean delving into family history, but that is always a rewarding occupation. Researching your own surname leads you back to your ancestors. They are waiting there for you to find them.
We take it for granted today that everyone has a surname, but that was not always the case. Three questions we can usefully ask, therefore, are when, why and how surnames came into being. The answers to the first two questions are closely connected, so we can treat them together.
BLENDED NAMES
Our remote ancestors had a single name, referred to throughout this dictionary as a personal name. The Anglo-Saxons and their Germanic cousins usually formed such names by using words that had become conventional name components. Those who make a particular study of names (onomatologists) refer to these name components as elements,
