In the published property tax records (lay subsidies) for Kent of 1334/5, about a third of the names in the index are a combination of a christian name and a place name. i.e. James de Colnwod, Thomas de Compton and Robert atte Cort. I think the use of "de" is still in use today but very rarely but does anyone know when the use of "de" mainly went out of fashion? ~~ Keith Griffiths
Hi Keith - Difficult one this and is part of P.H. Reaney's introduction to "A Dictionary of British Surnames" 2nd edition 1976 published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, but if its anything to go by, I have a couple of 1801 census that don't list any such names, but then they are only individual towns and not counties, I also have one from 1725 that doesn't give any such names either, and of the many parishes researched, I remember seeing some references to such names in the various written notes on covers but which don't seem to occur from around 1800 on. I don't think it possible to pinpoint any more accurately than this, but then again someone will perhaps come up with a better answer. Regarding whether it is in use today, I have never come across it, but in this enlightened age, anything is possible when naming our children of today, perhaps a modern family will very soon make use of a preposition like this for whatever reason? Regards Roy -----Original Message----- From: old-english-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:old-english-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Keith Griffiths Sent: 15 October 2008 08:06 To: Old English mailing list Subject: [OEL] Surnames In the published property tax records (lay subsidies) for Kent of 1334/5, about a third of the names in the index are a combination of a christian name and a place name. i.e. James de Colnwod, Thomas de Compton and Robert atte Cort. I think the use of "de" is still in use today but very rarely but does anyone know when the use of "de" mainly went out of fashion? ~~ Keith Griffiths ==================================== WEB PAGE: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~oel/ ARCHIVES: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/index?list=OLD-ENGLISH ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OLD-ENGLISH-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message