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From: "M True" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] German Surname?
Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 20:35:27 +0100
References: <003e01c596f8$9514eec0$6401a8c0@RJEMAIN>


I think you are correct and as John Chandler mentioned the addition of a
final "e" on many surnames occurred for many reasons from poor or uncertain
spelling to just whim, a flourish, or
pretension. One of my colleagues surname at work is Browne, however, she
tells me that her husband's grandfather's name was quite clearly recorded as
"Brown" and that was how he himself signed his name.

I'm not sure that every letter in English was at one time pronounced. This
depends at which time period you are looking at. In the 14th & 15th
Centuries this may be true where English was developing as a hybrid between
French and German and this is demonstrated in the English of Chaucer's
works.
Therefore if an "e" was a part of a surname at this time and this spelling
has continued to the present day it would be likely that such an "e" would
have been pronounced. So for example if a family of Browne's have traced
their family back this far and it has always been spelt this way or in
variants which suggest the "e" was pronounced then it probably was
pronounced as "Browner" - very much like German pronunciation. .

However, as English developed reaching the English of the period of
Shakespeare in the 1600's the English spelling and pronunciation was much
more as it is today. The French/German hybrid sound of the language
becoming fully mixed to produce the intonation of English as we know it
today. Dialects are of course another matter and may have course have
influenced the way a name was spelled.

As Roberta mentioned the "e" on surnames often seems to have been added in
this period to sometimes be dropped in more modern times. The Barlow
surname is one case in point where it starts off as Barlow in the 13th
century, is sometimes recorded as Barlowe in the 1600's and then in many
later cases in the same family the "e" is dropped. Times change of course
and what may have been or appeared fashionable in the 1600's may easily have
seemed to look pretentious by many later generations including our own.

One interesting surname however where the final "e" seems to be significant
is the "Kay/Kaye" surname. This is what the main contact at the official
Kay/Kaye Family Association in the UK had to say on this subject:

"We know of about 15 different phonetic spellings of Kay. My own opinion
is that in the early days when most people were illiterate they knew that
their name sounded like "Kay" but did not know how it should be spelt and
so the literate listener recording it would spell it the way he or she
thought it should be spelt. However, overriding that, we do find that
invariably our Kaye members have their early ancestors in Yorkshire and Kay
members have their early ancestors in Lancashire. I don't know why this
should occur but it does."

Part of the solution is another "two brother" story. There are two versions
which essentially say the same thing with minor differences: (Again received
from the Kay Family Association UK):

From 'The Kay Chronicles' by Kenneth Kay. 1909
"Tradition has no difficulty in ascribing the original ancestry of both the
Lancashire and Yorkshire branches of the family to one Sir John Kaye Kt.,
supposed to have lived in the latter part of the eleventh century that is to
say about the time of the Norman invasion. He, by his marriage to the
daughter and heiress of Wodesham, or Woodsome, was said to be the father of
two sons - John, the elder, who inherited Woodsome, and was the fore-runner
of a long line of descendants, who by judicious marriages, a policy
seemingly pursued by the Yorkshire branch from the earliest days, gradually
enriched themselves and accumulated estates throughout the West Riding and
became important factors in the affairs of their county. Richard, the
younger, migrated across the hills into Lancashire and settling in that
county married the daughter and heiress of one Crompton of Crompton near
Rochdale by whom he became the ancestor of the Lancashire branch "

So the spelling may have been introduced to differentiate between the two
branches of the same family - Kaye = Yorkshire from John Kaye, Kay =
Lancashire from Richard Kay.......so in this case the younger branch of the
family had the "e" removed possibly to indicate its origin from the junior
brother.

I believe John Chandler is correct when he says:

English spelling is highly idiosyncratic and time-varying. Final E is
dependant on many things, including whim. I wouldn't try to base any
analysis on the exact spelling of an English name, except insofar as
it might hint at an unusual pronunciation.

Which is another way of saying "it depends" on the circumstances, family
history, whim etc etc !

Concerning Wild/e and its variants, Reaney & Wilson in their Dictionary of
English surnames say:
"Wild, Wilde, Whild, Whilde, Wyld, Wylde, Wyldes, Wylds:
(i) Uluricus Wilde 1066 Domesday Book (Lincolnshire)
William Wilde 1177 Pipe Rolls (Leicestershire)
Henry le Wylde 1236 Feet of Fines (Essex)
From Old English wilde "wild, violent".

(ii) William de Wilde 1200 Pipe Rolls (Sussex)
Walter de la Wylde 1256 Court Rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey and the Honor of
Clare (Huntingdonshire)
William atte Wylde 1347 Calendar of Letter Books...of the city of London, 11
vols, London 1899-1912
"Dweller by the waste, uncultivated land" from Old English wilde "wild,
waste", used as a noun. The above forms are much too early to be regarded
as due to the development of weald to wild.

Basil Cottle may have the answer though to the final "e" in the case of
Wild/e. The key sentence is the penultimate one in this quotation from his
book "The Penguin Dictionary of Surnames" as it hints to the age of the
"Wilde" spelling as supported by the early names stated by Reaney and Wilson
above:

Wild(e)
Nickname "wild, undisciplined" Old English. Or Local name, the same word
used as a noun "wilderness, waste/uncultivated place". A Midland surname,
with offshoots in West Yorkshire and Sussex. Wilde is a good spelling (even
if it is not for the weak adjective after a lost definite article), since
the Old English word ended in "e". Wild(e)s = son of Wild(e)..


John Eckersley


----- Original Message -----
From: "Roberta J. Estes" <>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 1:24 AM
Subject: RE: [DNA] German Surname?


> I've seen several of my names with the trailing e and then without,
> sometimes in the same document, and I've decided that maybe it was just
> a curly-que - a flourish.
>
> Roberta
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim Bullock [mailto:]
> Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 1:18 PM
> To:
> Subject: RE: [DNA] German Surname?
>
> I've seen neither rhyme nor reason for the inclusion of the silent "e"
> at
> the end of an English surname. The final "e" seemed to be used more
> often
> in the 17th and earlier centuries in England. Many, such as the family
> of
> immigrant Chad Browne (ca. 1600-1663) of Providence, Rhode Island,
> dropped
> it in subsequent generations.
>
> I have found my own surname spelled "Bullocke" in many of the early
> English
> records. It depended on who recorded the name, not how the family may
> have
> spelled it. The immigrant Richard Bullock (ca. 1622-1667) was a town
> clerk
> in Rehoboth, Bristol Co., Massachusetts, and he was consistent in the
> "Bullock" spelling when he signed documents.
>
>
>
>
> ==============================
> Search Family and Local Histories for stories about your family and the
> areas they lived. Over 85 million names added in the last 12 months.
> Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13966/rd.ashx
>


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