Names from Ormskirk Parish, Lancashire: The Poll Tax of 1381

With Comparative Data from 16th Century Parish Registers

Brian M. Scott

known in the SCA as Talan Gwynek

© 2005 Brian M. Scott; all rights reserved.

Introduction

Extant records of the 1381 Poll Tax include returns from the parish of Ormskirk, in West Derby Wapentake, which occupies the southwest corner of Lancashire. These returns are published in:

Carolyn C. Fenwick, ed. The Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379 and 1381. Part 1: Bedfordshire-Leicestershire. Records of Social and Economic History, New Series 27 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1998); pp. 471-2.

At that time the parish included the vills of Scarisbrick, Lathom, Woolston, and Burtonwood, and each taxpayer is listed under one of these four vills. Altogether 142 taxpayers are named; 128 have masculine forenames, 11 have feminine forenames, and in three cases only the byname remains legible. In one of these three cases the byname is Steveneson’; this is probably a literal patronymic, so its bearer is probably male. The disparity in numbers is largely due to the fact that although this document indicates which men are married, it does not list the names of their wives.

Data from the 16th century parish registers are taken from ‘16th Century Names from Ormskirk Parish Registers’ by Aryanhwy merch Catmael (Sara L. Friedemann), a study (in progress) of the names in these registers.

Forenames

As is usual in official documents of the period, the forenames in the 1381 poll tax returns are Latinized. There are, however, a few concessions to the vernacular: Ricardus, representing vernacular Ricard, appears in place of the traditional Richardus, Ibota, a superficial Latinization of the very common vernacular Ib(b)ot, appears in place of the traditional full form Isabel(la), and the masculine names Janyn (a diminutive of Jan, from Johannes by way of Johan) and Symond show no overt signs of Latinization. Matheu may also be a vernacular form, a spelling variant of modern Ma(t)thew; the usual Latin form in these records is Matheus, and Matheu does appear as a byname in the 1379 Yorkshire Poll Tax. On the other hand, the very limited vernacular evidence available in these records suggests that in practice diminutive forms like Maykin and Maiot were most common.

In the third column of the table below I have listed some vernacular forms of these forenames and their pet forms and diminutives. Most are derived from bynames appearing in the 1379 and 1381 poll tax data from West Derby Wapentake and the neighboring Salford Wapentake (e.g., Alysson’, Gybonmayden, Jacdoghter, Thomasmon 'Thomas’s male servant', and Thommogh’ 'Thom’s brother-in-law'). Those appearing in boldface are actually found as forenames in these data. Finally, those appearing in italics are from a bit further afield (e.g., the 1379 Yorkshire Poll Tax); I've added them only when the local data either include no relevant forms (as in the case of Edmund and Edmond) or omit what seems to have been a fairly common variant (e.g., Doge for Roger). Those drawn from a considerable distance in space or time are given with a question mark.

The forms are grouped by type, and the types are listed roughly in descending order of frequency, as are the variants (in parentheses) within each type. Note that these lists are not intended to be exhaustive.

The masculine names show the lopsided frequency distribution characteristic of the period. The top three names account for just over 60% of the men; the top four for just over 70%; and the top five for over 76%. The frequency distribution of the feminine names is also lopsided, but there aren't enough women in the sample to justify calculating similar statistics.

It is clear, however, that the fashion in forenames changed between the late 14th century and the second half of the 16th century, especially the fashion in feminine forenames. The four most common feminine forenames in the 16th century parish registers, comprising just over half of the tokens, are Margaret, Elizabeth, Anne, and Jane, none of which appears in the 1381 data. In the other direction, three of the seven feminine names represented in the 1381 data, Amysia, Isolda, and Matilda, do not appear at all in the 16th century data, and only Elena is in the top ten, ranking fifth. (To avoid possible misunderstanding, I note that the names in these parish registers are recorded in English, not Latin, so Elena as such does not appear at all; the most common variant is actually Ellin.) Cicilia ~ Cicely ranks thirteenth in the 16th century data, but it accounts for only a little over 1% of the tokens. Finally, Ibota is something of a special case: neither it nor any of the vernacular forms that it can represent appears in the 16th century data, but Isabel, the name of which it is a pet form, ranks twelfth, with about twice as many tokens as Cicely.

On the men’s side the differences are much less pronounced. For example, John, Richard, Robert, William, and Thomas, corresponding to the top five masculine forenames in 1381, rank second, third, seventh, fourth, and first, respectively, in the 16th century data, though they account for only 52.3% of the tokens. On the other hand, Adam and Allen account for only 8 out of 2529 tokens (0.3%) in the 16th century data, compared with 11 out of 128 individuals (8.6%) in the 1381 data.

Bynames

The table below contains all of the 116 distinct bynames found in the poll tax data, together with etymological notes on as many of them as I can identify. At least 30 of these bynames subsequently became (or quite possibly already were) hereditary and appear in the 16th century Ormskirk parish registers; for those bynames the etymological information is followed by the notation ‘16th c.:’ and a list of the forms of the name found there. Brief references for the etymological notes are placed in parentheses at the end of the entry; a key to the abbreviations follows the table.

Key to the References

Last updated 16 December 2005.