2. What's In a (Sur)name

Researching family trees is a business fraught with perils, none more dangerous than surname research.

Many people go into research hoping they will find someone famous to boast about, and seize on any theory which will help to shore up their hopes. Better to hope that the famous will be your descendants.

Although patronymics were used in early times, which is where the "Mac" and the Irish "O" come in, surnames were not generally used in England until the Normans arrived in 1066. They were devoted to records, the most famous of which is the Domesday Book. Good records meant efficient taxation collection, so the fact that my ancestors are listed in it is a dubious honour.

 

As people rarely moved far from their places of birth, a man could be known as Roger of Cambridge, Roger the Smith, Roger the Hawk.One could be named after one's birthplace, one's occupation, one's personal qualities.
So what do we have to work with, here?
There are three basic surnames to  deal with first: Whybrow, Cambridge and Cleal.

CAMBRIDGE

Cambridge Crest

Let's take Cambridge first. It is not a patronymic according to the normal rules. One would not normally name one's offspring Cambridge if one was the Duke of Cambridge. The lucky lad would be "Fitzherbert" or whatever your christian or surname was in early days. The Duke of Clarence, one of George III's sons, had a host of FitzClarences, and one Norman "Gerald" had descendants called Fitzgerald. They went on to cause some trouble in Ireland.

I like to think the Cambridges were named after the Cambridge on the Cam. It would mean that they are a part of a very ancient history. Of course, up to a hundred years ago, history was about "great men". Very few women about. Ordinary people were a kind of background to the knights in shining armour, some of whom were illiterate, violent louts. So we learned endless stories about kings and emperors.

G M Trevelyan

One of the those who changed this view of history was G M Trevelyan, the great social historian. Born into the gentry of Northumberland, although the family originated further south he was almost the inventor of social history. He has been accused of painting rural England as a kind of heaven, and he certainly hated the city slums, where the poor lived in horrible misery and squalor, but he took the trouble to actually find out what their lives were actually like. Long ago, my great grandfather, tramping the Northumberland hills, met a moustached man who had a long conversation with him, some of it about the price of food. The name Trevelyan meant nothing to him at the time, but the meeting is now part of a family tradition.

He also wrote about the Italian Risorgimento(Revival), and cheerfully accepted the brickbats thrown at him about bias, saying he couldn't have written much without it.

What's wrong about being a Cambridge of Cambridge?