Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 170

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 170

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/170

This is one of the Academy's earliest reports. We are not confident that these early reports are accurate. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on English women's names from the 13th and 14th centuries, specifically "Anne, Horace's daughter."

We know that "Anne" was not often used in the 13th century. We have conflicting information on whether it became popular in the 14th century. One generally reliable source says that (1) "Anne" became common around 1300, perhaps because of Richard II's queen Anne of Bohemia. However, an actual list of names taken from 1100-1600 (2) shows only one example of "Anne," but most of the names in the list date before 1300 in any case. You may be interested in the name "Agnes," which had a number of variants including Annaus, Angnet, Annote, Anot, Agote, Anneys, and Annys. "Agnes" and its variants were very common names in your period.

Names of the form "Williamsdaughter" are very rare in Middle English. The more common form for names like this would be simply "Williams." We found no examples of medieval surnames derived from the name "Horace." The English given name "Horace", derived from the Roman name "Horatius", first appears in the Renaissance, by which time most people already had fixed surnames. However, you could construct a surname from any male or female name which was used in your period. A good source for dated names is Withycombe (reference 1 below).

Arval D'Espas Nord, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vic Ralte, Rouland Carre, and Elsbeth Anne Roth all contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel

(1) Withycombe, "Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names"

(2) Reaney & Wilson, "Dictionary of British Surnames"