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Archiver > OLD-ENGLISH > 2002-08 > 1030000835


From: "Paul Vivash" <>
Subject: Re: [OEL] GOTOBED
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 08:20:35 +0100
References: <koWvMkANiiY9EwqU@varneys.demon.co.uk> <00bb01c2497f$c3ea4660$f175883f@preferred>


It's always fashionable to knock the established theories but, to do that,
one needs to demonstrate rather more conclusively where they are wrong. In
fact researchers like my old mentor at Bristol, Basil Cottle, realised and
'corrected, many of Reaney's notions but the 4 main origins of English
surnames can not be seriously challenged and are certainly not the invention
of PH Reaney.

I think what Gordon is saying is that quite often names have been wrongly
categorised. My own name (VIVASH) has often been placed in the 'location'
category ( a corruption of 5 ashes) but the existence of an early example
(Le VYVASH) leads to the more likely derivation from 'vivace' (lively).

I can't understand the notion of *imposed* since that is irrelevant to the
develoment of surnames. Also, if all nicknames are merely dialect
corruptions, this pre-supposes that they are corrupted from some word not
connected with an attribute. It would be interseting to ascertain which
dialect words LONG, SHORT, LIVELY etc are corruptions of. As to GOTOBED, I
haven't checked but, if Reaney's reference is correct, the earliest example
in 1269 pre-dates paish registers by a small margin:-)

Paul Vivash

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Barlow" <>
To: <>
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 12:52 AM
Subject: [OEL] GOTOBED


> Eve is right.
>
> Reaney's theory that many British surnames were nicknames is quite
> untenable, and has misled generations of readers, sad to say. He was a
> diligent digger-up of obscure homonyms, and had a wonderful sense of
fancy,
> but there was little or no historical basis for his assigned meanings.
> There were only rare and special occasions in British history when
surnames
> were *imposed* by anyone; and that never happened in the provincial
> parishes. The Irish in the Pale were at one time (14th Century, was it?)
> assigned English words to use as surnames, in an attempt to drive Irish
> clan-names out of existence, and in later times Jewish immigrants were
made
> to adopt permanent surnames to replace patronyms that changed with each
> generation. There must have been other instances, but I can't think of
any
> off-hand.
>
> I like to think of Reaney as the Bishop Ussher of surname-research.
(Ussher
> was the man who carefully worked out that the world was created in 4004
> B.C.) Each man based his theory on a false but plausible premise. In
> language-studies, the word to describe Reaney's ascription of names is
> "folk-etymology".
>
> All "nicknames" and all names that look to be based on personal
attributes,
> and most (if not all) names that look like occupational names, are simply
> dialectal variants. Much evidence for that counter-theory appears in
early
> Parish Registers. The exotic GOTOBED is an unusual variant of
> GODBERT/GODBALD/GODBER, my own ancestral CADBT, and a host of similar
names
> differentiated only by dialectal preferences. In whichever part of
England
> GOTOBED is found, there will be other examples of a preference for
> separating two consonants - especially two such incompatible consonants as
> *t* and *b*.
>
> Gordon Barlow
>
> > >
> > >I have just seen the surname GOTOBED. Whilst it isn't the first time I
> have seen
> > >this name, it set me wondering what were the origins of this one.
> >
> > I do wonder if there was a link with the name Godbold.
> > Eve McLaughlin
>
>
>
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