Place-Names. 
3 
England. Bruce, Percy, Montgomery, and Montmorice are 
Norman place-names. The French mont , mountain, is seen in 
two of these. The use of surnames was at first confined to the 
nobility. The practice did not become general among the com¬ 
mon people of England until the fourteenth and fifteenth cen¬ 
turies. 
There are four great classes of surnames, as follows: first, 
place-names; second, those derived from the Christian, or bap¬ 
tismal name of the father, or, in some cases, from that of the 
mother; third, surnames derived from occupation, rank, or offi¬ 
cial position; fourth, those which were originally nicknames. 
Rev. C. W. Bardsley gives 2 the result of a careful analysis of all 
the names in the London Directory which' begin with A, B, C, 
D, or E. The total number of names examined was over 30,000. 
I turn his figures into percentages. 
Surnames originally place-names.37.5 per cent 
Derived from baptismal names.27. per cent 
From rank, office, or occupation.14.5 per cent 
Originally nicknames.10.2 per cent 
Foreign and doubtful.10.8 per cent 
100 . 
In another work Mr. Bardsley says: “In England our local 
surnames are two-fifths of the whole. In France patronymic 
[baptismal] surnames are almost two-fifths of the whole. ” 
Let us give attention for a few moments to each of the four 
great classes of surnames. 
PLACE-NAMES. 
Names beginning with At come from a prepositional phrase; 
as, At (the] well, At (the) wood, Atwater, Atterbury, etc. 
Nash is from atten-ash, i. e., at the ash. Local names of French 
origin often begin with Dela-, Del-, or Du-; as in Delamere, 
Delisle, Dupont. Van and Von are Dutch and German prefixes 
of place. Buren in Holland, for example, gives the name Van 
Buren. Wood, Shaw, Holt, Hurst (all having much the same 
meanings), Thwaite, Thorp(e), Den, Comb, Gate(s), Down(s), 
Croft, and Clough are all local designations of known meaning. 
2 “ English Surnames,” 3d Ed. 
