yes Anthony my maternal grandfather advised me that the surname of veale came from SIR ROBERT DUC DE VILLE i remembered this for a long time in my later years i found his name meant prince of the town a rough which meant he was a child born of the town or in today's vernacular a bastard well thats quite common to day been trying to find a connection got as far as 1630 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Anthony Bennett" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2012 6:51 AM Subject: Re: [CORNISH-GEN] Surnames and given names in Cornwall > Hi Ken > > I think Robert de Mortain (b abt 1031) was the second holder of the title > Earl of Cornwall. He was the half brother of William the Conqueror. The > first earl, Brian de Bretagne, was another Norman. If I'm not mistaken > Norman, or rather French, forenames were pretty much integrated into > Cornish as well as English naming patterns over the 100 years or so > following the Conquest. > > Best wishes > > Tony > > Tony Bennett, Cheshire, UK > > Sent from my iPhone > > On 1 Dec 2012, at 09:06, Ken Ozanne <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Phoebe, >> Particularly in the west, the language of Cornwall at the time >> surnames were becoming common was neither English nor French but Cornish. >> We >> don't have any original parish records from the 16th century (the ones we >> do >> have are transcriptions made in Jacobean times) so it is not possible to >> tell if any of the originals were in Cornish. (I'm inclined to think >> not.) >> >> But there must have been an element of translation at some stage. >> >> Wasn't the first Earl of Cornwall named Robert? An obvious place for >> the origin of the name. >> >> Best, >> Ken >> >>> >>> From: Phoebe <[email protected]> >>> Reply-To: [email protected] >>> Date: Sat, 01 Dec 2012 14:03:43 +1100 >>> To: [email protected] >>> Subject: [CORNISH-GEN] surnames and given names in Cornwall >>> >>> Greetings, all. Another interesting thread! Here's my contribution. >>> >>> Some years ago a Stephens friend pointed out that Stephens, Roberts, >>> Richards, etc are all cornish forms, whereas Stephenson, Robertson, >>> Richardson etc are english forms. This fits my knowledge of anglo-saxon >>> and the history of the english language: "son" is a danish ending (as >>> opposed to "ing", an anglo-saxon ending) and tends to indicate ancestral >>> origins within the Danelaw. Cornwall was well outside the Danelaw and >>> even if the people had spoken a form of english they wouldn't have been >>> affected by that. >>> >>> Subsequent research has alerted me to a cornish habit of using given >>> names, both female and male, as surnames - without even a terminal S. >>> (Ignore Cliff Richard - he was born Harry Webb.) In all cases the given >>> name is the basis of the surname, not vice versa. But with society the >>> way it was, how did female names get to be surnames? A man would be >>> differentiated from other men of the same given name by his father's >>> name (or his occupation etc, but just focusing here on given/surnames), >>> and his wife and daughters just got lumped in with him. My guess is that >>> a man surnamed Betty or Pheby was born out of wedlock - a guess based >>> simply on common sense and social history, plus a remembered story of a >>> man born out of wedlock in Russia whose surname was in the feminine >>> form: not his mother's first name but her actual surname, feminised as >>> she would herself have used it. >>> >>> And when looking particularly at Roberts I realised that Robert is >>> neither a cornish nor an english name: it's french. Most or all the >>> surnames in Cornwall based on men's given names seem to be french, >>> though a mixture of norman and parisian forms. Why? Did the ancestors of >>> all these families cross to Cornwall with (or follow) the Conqueror? Did >>> some of them originate in Paris, not Normandy? William handed big chunks >>> of Cornwall to his supporters, but I don't know that these were >>> necessarily all born in Normandy. >>> >>> Any takers on these questions? >>> >>> Bev Edmonds' message was very useful to me personally re Annis - I'd >>> never thought of a silent G, but it makes sense. Ralph is correctly >>> pronounced "Rafe", as in Ralph Vauhan Williams (good cornish surname >>> there, though in his case welsh) or as in calf, half, palm, calm or - >>> best of all - golf; we just get it wrong. (Rock Hudson in, I think, >>> "Giant", refers to a cow's baby as a "cal-f".) Thanks, Bev. >>> >>> Phoebe >> >> ------------------------------- >> Listmom: [email protected] or [email protected] >> >> Visit the OPC (Online Parish Clerk) web page for transcription >> information http://www.cornwall-opc.org/ >> ------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to >> [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the >> quotes in the subject and the body of the message > > ------------------------------- > Listmom: [email protected] or [email protected] > > Visit the OPC (Online Parish Clerk) web page for transcription information > http://www.cornwall-opc.org/ > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >