One name was often enough
In the early Middle Ages, most people had a single personal name. In a small community, that was usually enough: everyone knew who Godric or Alfred was. A second name became useful as populations grew, towns expanded and records multiplied. Tax lists, court rolls, charters and rent books all needed ways to tell several people with the same first name apart.
How first names were chosen
Names followed fashion and family custom, as they do today. They were commonly chosen in honor of a godparent, a grandparent, a saint or a ruler. Christian baptism encouraged saints’ names, and this concentrated the choice among a relatively small group. In many regions, a small set of male names, such as John, William, Robert, Richard, Thomas, Henry and Walter, covered a large share of the population, while women often bore names like Alice, Agnes, Joan, Margaret, Matilda and Isabel. Exactly which names dominated depended on region and century.
Political change affected naming. In England, many Old English personal names became less common after the Norman Conquest, as Norman names such as William and Robert became popular, though some native names survived. Names from other cultures show similar patterns: Scandinavian settlers left their mark on names in parts of Britain, and Germanic names were widespread in much of continental Europe. Pet forms were common in speech and sometimes in records, such as Jack for John, Will for William, and Meg for Margaret.
Bynames: telling people apart
When a second name was needed, people commonly used a byname, an added descriptive label. At first, these were personal and could change within a lifetime or from one document to the next. A man might be “John the baker” in one record and “John of the mill” in another. Historians usually sort bynames into several broad types.
- Patronymics: names that refer to a father, such as Johnson, Williamson, or in Gaelic and Welsh forms “mac” and “ap” (“son of”), as in the Scottish MacDonald or the Welsh ap Rhys, which gave rise to names like Price.
- Occupational names: names drawn from a trade or office, such as Smith, Baker, Miller, Cooper, Fletcher or Clerk. These do not always mean the bearer was literally in that trade, since a byname could be passed down after the occupation was forgotten.
- Locational names: names from a place, whether a village, a town or a feature of the landscape, such as Hill, Brook, Wood, Newton or Atwell. A byname from a place might show where a person had come from, which is useful evidence of migration.
- Nicknames: names describing appearance, personality or habits, such as Short, Brown, Wise or Longfellow. Some were teasing or even rude, and their original sense can be hard to recover.
Which type was most common varied by region. Locational bynames were prominent in some areas and patronymics in others.
From byname to surname
A surname is a hereditary family name, passed from parent to child. The change from changing bynames to fixed surnames was gradual and uneven. Historians generally place it over several centuries and note that it started with the upper classes, who had property and lineage to protect, and later reached ordinary people. In England, many families had hereditary surnames by the fourteenth century, but fixity came later in other places and among poorer people. In Wales and parts of Scandinavia, patronymic systems continued far longer, and some regions of Europe adopted fixed surnames at later dates.
Several developments pushed people toward surnames. Growing populations and towns made first names alone ambiguous. Governments wanted to identify taxpayers and landholders, and the poll tax returns of the late fourteenth century in England, for instance, are valuable sources because they list names of many ordinary people. Inheritance of land and property made a family name a useful label. Once a surname was passed down, it no longer needed to describe the person: a man named Baker might be a farmer, and a Hill might live on flat ground.
Spelling was inconsistent. Names were written by clerks according to how they heard them, and the same person could appear with several spellings in different documents. Standardized spelling came much later, which is why modern surnames often have many variants.
Women’s names
Medieval women were usually known by their own first name and by a byname that might refer to their father or husband or to their trade, as in “Alice the brewster.” Women did not generally take their husband’s surname in a formal legal way, though in practice they were often identified by reference to their husband, and customs varied. As hereditary surnames became common, children usually took their father’s name.
Nobles and royal names
The nobility often used names linked to land, such as “de” followed by a place. A family might be called by the name of a lordship, and rulers were identified by their personal name and a number or epithet, such as “the Bold” or “the Fair,” added later. These added epithets were often applied by chroniclers rather than used in life.
Names and what they can tell us
Because names change over time, they are a useful resource for historians. A cluster of locational names can suggest migration. Occupational names hint at what trades were common. The spread of saints’ names can show shifts in devotion. Care is needed, however, because a name does not prove how a person lived, and etymologies are often uncertain. Many modern guides to the origins of family names are speculative, and a surname could arise independently in more than one place.