What's in a surname?

By David McKie

Subjects: History, Names, personal, english, Personal Names

Description: Surnames are much more than convenient identity tags; they are windows into our families pasts. Some suggest ancestral trades (Butcher, Smith, Roper) or physical appearance (Long, Brown, Thynne). Some provide clues to where we come from (McDonald, Evans, Patel). And some Rymer, Brocklebank, Stolbof offer a hint of something just a little more exotic or esoteric. All are grist to the mill for David McKie who, in What s in a Surname?, sets off on a journey around Britain to find out how such appellations have evolved and what they tell us about ourselves. En route he looks at the surname s tentative beginnings in medieval times, and the myriad routes by which particular names became established. He considers some curious byways- the rise and fall of the multi-barrel surname and the Victorian reinvention of embarrassing surnames among them. He considers whether fortune favours those whose surnames come at the beginning of the alphabet.