What's in a surname?
What's in a surname? Says the title and that why this is an interesting book for the likes of me.
A few years back, my wife knew that a DNA test would be the ideal birthday gift for my insatiably curious mind. Via Ancestry a rabbit hole opened.
I found I had a gateway ancestor that led me to Adam and Eve. Anyone can find these gateways if they search hard enough or just get lucky. Time and patience, or someone else has done the research.
As with the title of this book, I became very curious about these surnames that I was discovering along my own journey into my past. As I was building my family tree, the breadth of the unusual ancestral grandparent names was very interesting for this novice genealogist. My paternal grandmother's maiden name was Elson, and they had deep roots from the district in Surrey, England, around the Godalming area. The Elson's were generally farm labourers, the working poor, usually illiterate. This area of Surrey is now greenbelt London commuter country and now hardly impoverished. My Great Grandmothers mother's maiden name was the fairly common Simmonds and through them, I found the name Goddard. I recalled that this was thought to be an old variant of French names that may have come with the Norman Conquest. From there I came to the name Hooker and that led to a Sir William Hooker 1612 to 1697. He is my 10th time Great-grandfather, was Lord Mayor of London and is mentioned by Pepys when both an Alderman and a Sherriff.
“.....and meeting Sir William Hooker, the Alderman, he did cry out mighty high against Sir W. Pen for his getting such an estate, and giving 15,000l. with his daughter, which is more, by half, than ever he did give; but this the world believes, and so let them.”
“Up, and all the morning at the office. At noon to the 'Change, and thence after business dined at the Sheriffe's [Hooker], being carried by Mr. Lethulier, where to my heart's content I met with his wife, a most beautifull fat woman. But all the house melancholy upon the sickness of a daughter of the house in childbed, Mr. Vaughan's lady. So all of them undressed, but however this lady a very fine woman. I had a salute of her, and after dinner some discourse the Sheriffe and I about a parcel of tallow I am buying for the office of him. I away home, and there at the office all the afternoon till late at night, and then away home to supper and to bed.”
Hooker's wife, Lettice Coppinger, is of the nobility through both her parents and has some historically significant ancestors in her family tree.
I read that Hooker can come from being a hook maker or agricultural labourer, and that makes sense in an odd way as his descendants via my Elson line fell back into poverty as illiterate farm hands. The name Coppinger has several thoughts as to its origin with some thinking from the Norse areas, hence Norman and that maybe why I have 2% Norwegian DNA from my paternal side. Maybe not as well. As to that Coppinger name, I took that back to Edward III who is both my 22nd and 23rd GGfather and according to further reading he just might be everyone of English stock's GG. Along with just about everyone else, I am Danny Dyer's cousin.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/sep/23/danny-dyer-who-do-you-think-you-are
So that's the good stuff about some surnames in my family tree. What about the surnames in this book that may relate to me?
A couple have leaped from the pages. David McKie the author of this enjoyable social history picked a village name, Houghton, to do a study of surnames from the various records both past and present. He found places named Houghton in Hampshire, Furness, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, North Wales, Borders and Orkney.
As early as page 15 he mentioned Pragnell as an old name from the Hampshire Houghton and its diminishment. The name has variations of its spelling from one census to the next, writes the author and yes it has. My Great Grandmother was a Prangle and further back the name is changed to Prangnell with other census variations. In the 1841 census there were 16 Prangles types in Hampshire's Houghton, but by 1911 they were no more.
Another name that is related to me by marriage is Casson. The Casson name had 23 people on the 1841 census in Furness. By the next census, none appeared. I know that one family of them ended up in Grafton in Northern New South Wales.
The author's personal survey of several communities of Houghton's is to see if, among other things, the surnames had changed over the years, where they came from and where they moved to. It is with the advent of easier and cheaper transport that the vast majority of people moved away from their ancestral homes in approximately the last 150 years. Prior to that, they stayed where they were. My Elson ancestors never moved from the Goldalming area until the turn of the 20th century. The Casson's never left Houghton in Furness until, one family at least, upped and moved to the other side of the world.
There is much more to this book than my connections. We get discussions on literary surname, DNA, name changes and a fair bit more. Why are there many so Johnston's but no Georgson's for example.
We get a very useful bibliography for anyone that seeks further information.
Is it worth a read for anyone searching for maybe more depth on the subject? Probably not.
It is more a jaunt by an author with an interest. And with that, I personally got a fair bit out of this easy-to-read tour.
As an aside, here are a few of the more interesting surnames from my family tree. In no particular order Rishman, Batten, Puddicombe, Chackington, Colpus, Machray, Greenway, Seagrave and Upperton.