ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1391 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1391 ************************************ 9 Jan 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked our opinion of the name for an Englishman from the 1500's. Here is what we have found. was a reasonably common English name in your period. In one of our documents it is the 34th most frequent man's name [1]. We didn't find an example of in your period, but we think it's a perfectly reasonable possibility. We did find in 1606, in 1348, c.1115 (later , and numerous other place names with as the first element. means "wooded hill", and we have many examples of it combined with other descriptive elements to form place names. In particular, we found 1470, 1291 (later ). We think that combining these two elements to form is entirely plausible [2, 3, 4]. To sum up, we feel that is a fine name for your period. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. We were assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Giles Leabrook & Arval Benicoeur 9 Jan 1999 ___________________________________________ References: [1] Talan Gwynek, "Late Sixteenth Century English Given Names" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1997). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/talan/eng16/ [2] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995). [3] Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), s.nn. Hurst, Hawkhill, Ravendale. [4] Smith, A.H., _English Place-Name Elements_ (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1956), s.v. hyrst.