G F Black uses it in his 'Surnames of Scotland'. Of the surname Bremner, "The old form was Brabener, 'the Brabander', i.e. a native of Brabant. Artificers and traders from the Low Countries settled in Aberdeenshire and elsewhere on the east coast at an early date." He quotes A J Warden's 'Burgh Laws of Dundee': "The braboner, or webster craft, holds the eighth place among the nine trades". There are umpteen alternative spellings of the name including Brebner, Brember, Brymer, Brimmer, Braboner etc. I have a family in my tree who used Bremner and Brymer intechangeably over several generations. Anne ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wallace Fullerton" <fullerton@comcast.net> To: "Angus Roots Web" <angus@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 3:07 AM Subject: [ANGUS] definition? > Might anyone know the term "braboner?" I've not found it > anywhere. > Alternative spelling seems to be "brabaner." > > The term was used in a list of testaments where the individual > was the > "sometime brabonar in Claschebeny, par. of Dunnichen" circa > 1600. > > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > ANGUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

Thank you, Anne. I didn't expect so complex a definition. John Cable responded also, giving the meaning as "weaver" - that might also fit into your more expansive definition since many from the Low Countries were, in fact, weavers. And I just looked up the derivation of the name "Webster" and find that it also comes from the Flemish and relates to weaving. Most intriguing, these little factoids. On 3/20/2013 6:37 AM, Anne Burgess wrote: > G F Black uses it in his 'Surnames of Scotland'. > > Of the surname Bremner, "The old form was Brabener, 'the > Brabander', i.e. a native of Brabant. Artificers and traders > from the Low Countries settled in Aberdeenshire and elsewhere on > the east coast at an early date." > > He quotes A J Warden's 'Burgh Laws of Dundee': "The braboner, or > webster craft, holds the eighth place among the nine trades". > > There are umpteen alternative spellings of the name including > Brebner, Brember, Brymer, Brimmer, Braboner etc. > > I have a family in my tree who used Bremner and Brymer > intechangeably over several generations. > > Anne > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Wallace Fullerton" <fullerton@comcast.net> > To: "Angus Roots Web" <angus@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2013 3:07 AM > Subject: [ANGUS] definition? > > >> Might anyone know the term "braboner?" I've not found it >> anywhere. >> Alternative spelling seems to be "brabaner." >> >> The term was used in a list of testaments where the individual >> was the >> "sometime brabonar in Claschebeny, par. of Dunnichen" circa >> 1600. >> >> >> >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> ANGUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without >> the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >> > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to ANGUS-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >

> I didn't expect so complex a definition. John Cable > responded also, giving the meaning as "weaver" - that might > also fit into your more expansive definition Yes - Warden does refer to it as 'the braboner, or webster craft' in that extract. Anne

On 20/03/2013 11:55, Wallace Fullerton wrote: > Thank you, Anne. > > I didn't expect so complex a definition. John Cable responded also, > giving the meaning as "weaver" - that might also fit into your more > expansive definition since many from the Low Countries were, in fact, > weavers. And I just looked up the derivation of the name "Webster" > and find that it also comes from the Flemish and relates to weaving. > Most intriguing, these little factoids. I would be a little hesitant in claiming that the Scots term webster/wabster/wobster "comes from" the Flemish. The modern Dutch for "weaver" is "wever", which (allowing for standard consonant shifts) is equivalent to modern German "Weber", and quite distinct, phonetically and etymologically, from "webster". I don't have dictionaries of mediaeval Dutch/Flemish/Low German to hand, but even if some form resembling "webster" had been current in the Low Countries in the Middle Ages, it does not follow that we Scots were so linguistically impoverished that we had to borrow the term. That's a bit like saying "my cousin and I both have red hair - he must have inherited it from me". If my cousin and I share a physical characteristic, then neither of us can have inherited it from the other, because there is no genetic pathway between us. But we might both have inherited it from our shared grandfather, and similar mechanisms operate in families of languages. There were influxes of peoples from the Low Countries, but how can you be sure that the term was not current in Scots before the Flemish arrival? You don't say where you looked up the derivation of "webster", but the "Shorter Scots Dictionary" records the term in various parts of Scotland, and notes that, while now obsolete, the form is also known from older forms of English. So while we can say with some certainty that "webster" etc is of West Germanic origin, tying it down more precisely would require a deeper knowledge that I possess of the various strands of Mediaeval West Germanic - and I do hold a degree in Germanic Philology! Gavin Bell