On 23/05/16 07:12, Vance Mead wrote: > Matt, > It wasn't only butchers, though they were probably the most frequent. Here's an example of an alias Baker from 1510, third entry: > > Robert Mychell alias Baker of St Albans, baker > http://aalt.law.uh.edu/AALT2/H8/CP40no990/bCP40no990dorses/IMG_0682.htm > There's a tradition of giving tradesmen nicknames based on their trades. For instance in the caption of picture 4 here http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2014/09/12/pictures-from-the-past-september-12/tuesday-36/ there's a reference to Jones the coal. My BiL tells me that his mates in the pub when he lived in London had much the same habit so a gas engineer might be John the gas irrespective of his actual surname. (It extended beyond occupations; someone who always brought his dog to the pub was Dave the dog or, after the dog died, Dave the dead dog.) It seems likely that something of the sort was at work here. If the trade name was sufficiently well established that some people might not have recognised him as Robert Mychell then the addition of the alias might have been necessary to ensure effective identification. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk