Surnames remained fluid even in the 16th century. I fairly often come across people named, say, Johnson alias Bocher whose occupation is butcher. For example, the defendant in this Common Pleas case (4th entry) in 1528 was John Lacforth alias Bocher, of Castle Acre, Norfolk, occupation butcher. http://aalt.law.uh.edu/H8/CP40no1057/bCP40no1057dorses/IMG_7936.htm

On 22/05/16 16:34, Vance Mead wrote: > Surnames remained fluid even in the 16th century. I fairly often come across people named, say, Johnson alias Bocher whose occupation is butcher. > One cause of fluidity is illegitimacy where the result might be Smith als Jones and this could be continued through a few generations in C17th or 18th. Another is the instance of toponyms where the place itself had alternative variants. The most obvious, at least in my part of the world, is Pontefract/Pomfret. Another is Kenworthy/Kennerly which was a place in Cheshire, now vanished under a junction on the M60 - I eventually found it on a map of the 1850s. Collins in the appendix to the PRs of Kirkburton shows that Assman and Aspinall were interchangeable in the C18th/early 19th with an outlier of Askin. Redmonds adds variations of Asmold, Asmah, Aspital and Aspiner to this group. There are a few Astmans in the area which I suspect are also interchangeable but with insufficient examples to connect up. I think my Elizabeth Asterman is another of them. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

From: Vance Mead via [gen-medieval@rootsweb.com] Sent: 22 May 2016 16:34 > > Surnames remained fluid even in the 16th century. I fairly often come across people named, say, Johnson alias Bocher whose occupation is butcher. > > For example, the defendant in this Common Pleas case (4th entry) in 1528 was John Lacforth alias Bocher, of Castle Acre, Norfolk, occupation butcher. > > http://aalt.law.uh.edu/H8/CP40no1057/bCP40no1057dorses/IMG_7936.htm > ------------------------------- ________________________________________ I think early 16C butchers may have been a special case. Just the other day I was commenting to a colleague how strange it is that in early 16C manor court rolls from all across the country most of the men presented for meat-selling offences in those decades were surnamed Butcher. Not as an alias, but at such a late date it surely was one. Matt Tompkins