How does one distinguish a patronymic Carpenter >From a hammer and nails carpenter in the English Middle Ages? This is not a trivial question, because unless the problem is well understood, a researcher into Carpenter family history could easily wander off into a kind of ‘carpenter Disneyland’, confusing his would be relatives from a horde of unrelated board-bangers. The original documents written in Latin and Norman French make no distinction. The modern translator-editors of these documents will sometimes try to make the distinction by assigning one individual as a ‘carpenter’ and another as a ‘Carpenter’. This is done by context, when the context is absolutely clear. There are still mistakes galore as you might well imagine. In most cases the editors of Medieval English documents assign everyone as a ‘Carpenter’, sawdust carpenters included, thereby avoiding what is clearly an editor’s nightmare. Enter a happy, and perhaps hapless, Carpenter genealogist who opens a musty volume of English history and is heard in the library stacks exclaiming, “Wow, neat; look at all my ancient relatives!” Our fine-feathered friend proceeds to stitch together all the unrelated hammer and nails carpenters back to Adam and Eve. The factor that separates all the ‘carpenters’ and ‘Carpenters’ is historical context. ‘Carpenter’ by itself is next to worthless. An additional matter to mention is that medieval hammer and saw carpenters could be quite respectable sociologically. A ‘carpenter’ could be attached to an aristocratic household and do very well financially. He could be a landowner of means with many land records to hand down through time to confuse the later researcher like me. Such examples are numerous. At a later date I will introduce my favorite ‘carpenter’ attached to the household of Black Prince John of Gaunt. Sincerely, Bruce Carpenter