8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



INDUSTRIAL FAMILY NAMES. 



Br Peof. D. E. McANALLY. 



THE industrial history of the English-speaking peoples has 

 been faithfully written by able hands, and, until more mate- 

 rial accumulates by the growth of science and the progress of in- 

 dustry, little can be added to records already made. The study 

 of what may, for the lack of a better name, be called indus- 

 trial philology, has not, however, kept pace with the history of 

 industrial occupations. Much has been well done in this line, for 

 long ago students of language perceived that in the proper names 

 of men and places lingered unwritten histories, but all yet accom- 

 plished scarcely makes an impression on the huge heap of mate- 

 rial, since most proper names once had a significance which, in 

 many cases, has long ago been forgotten. 



Even a casual examination of the family names of men dis- 

 closes the fact that many of the most common must have origi- 

 nated in the adoption, by an individual, of the name of his occu- 

 pation as a surname, to distinguish him from other men of the 

 same given name. Dr. Adam Clarke, in his "Autobiography," 

 has a learned and critical essay on his own name, and accounts for 

 its use by his family in the manner already indicated. There can 

 be no doubt that this is a typical illustration, nor that, during the 

 period when the English language was assuming its present form, 

 many trade-names became those of individuals, and frequently, 

 when men more than commonly distinguished themselves in a 

 calling, were assumed as distinctive surnames by their children, 

 and were thus continued when the propriety of the appellation 

 no longer existed. In this way multitudes of trade-names are per- 

 petuated, some in their original form, some so modified as to be 

 scarcely recognizable, and others, no doubt, which once were desig- 

 nations of trade, so changed as to bear not a trace of their origin. 

 Concerning the last named speculation is profitless, and even those 

 of the second class may be passed with little notice, since quite 

 enough material is found in family names which plainly proclaim 

 their own ancestry. 



The food-providing occupations have always, of necessity, been 

 thronged, and from them come, in more or less altered form, many 

 of our family names. The Butchers and Slaughters tell their 

 own story, so also do Flesh and Flesher, since in Scotland and the 

 north of England the purveyor of fresh meat is even to-day 

 known as the "flesher." But Fletcher and Flitcher need to be 

 introduced as the lineal descendants of Flesher, while Boucher 

 and Bouchelle would be unidentified were not the fact known that 



