ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3122
http://www.s-gabriel.org/3122
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6 Aug 2006
From: Femke de Roas
Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked whether the feminine name <Brithwen Cressawell> would be
historically accurate at some point within the period 1100-1400,
describing <Brithwen> as 'the Old English variation' of the name and
mentioning that the site where you found <Cressawell> said that it was
from Old English <cressa> and was for 'a man living near a spring or
stream (watercress)'.
The name <Brithwen> is not itself Old English, but it comes from the
Old English feminine name <Beorhtwynn>. The Old English name was
apparently not very common: only one certain pre-Conquest example is
known, and we've found only five examples of the Middle English name
descended from it. In chronological order these are:
Byrhtwynne 10th or 11th c. [1]
Brithwen 1066 [2]
Brictwen 1148 [2]
Brichtwen 1148 [2]
Brichtwenne 1222 [3]
Brigthtwyna 1257 [4]
These Middle English spellings, especially <Brithwen>, may be a bit
misleading to the modern eye, so a word of explanation is in order.
Oversimplifying a bit, Old English <Beorht-> originally represented a
pronunciation very roughly like \bairkht\; in late Old English this
changed, first to something like \bu"rkht\, and then to something like
\brikht\. (Here \u"\ stands for the sound of u-umlaut in German
<fu"llen> 'to fill'.) These were customarily written <byrht> and
<briht>, respectively. [5]
The pronunciation \brikht\ persisted throughout your period, but the
\kht\ combination was spelled in a variety of ways in Middle English,
not just in this name, but in general; <ht>, and later <cht> and
<ght>, are among the most common, but <ct> and <th> are also
occasionally found in early Middle English, and there are other
possibilities as well. [6, 7] In particular, the spellings <Brith->,
<Brict->, <Bricht->, and <Brigtht-> above all represent the
pronunciation \brikht\ or \bricht\, where \ch\ stands for the soft
sound of <ch> in German <ich> and <nicht>. (The odd <gtht> of
<Brigthtwyna> is probably the result of scribal error, the scribe
having inadvertently written an extra <t>.)
The vowel of the second syllable, \u"\ in Old English, remained
unchanged or developed into \ih\ or \eh\, depending on dialect. [8]
Our examples are all of the last two types: the first four Middle
English examples above represent roughly \BRIKHT-wen\ or \BRICHT-wen\,
while the last represents \BRIKHT-win\ or \BRICHT-win\. [9]
A few Old English names have surviving modern descendants, but the
great majority died out by about 1300, and the available evidence
suggests that <Beorhtwynn> is typical in this respect. Thus, we
cannot recommend it as good historical re-creation after the later
13th century. From 1100 through the late 1200s, however, it's a fine
choice. The spelling <Brichtwen> is a reasonable one throughout that
period and is likelier than the others to suggest approximately the
right pronunciation.
Turning to the byname, we have not seen the precise form <Cressawell>,
but very similar forms are quite common. As you thought, the name
originally referred to a location near a spring where watercress grew,
from Old English <cressewella> 'cress-spring'. This compound and
dialect variants of it were the source of a large number of
place-names. Here are some of the forms of these names that we found
in your period: [10, 11, 12, 13]
Kersewella 1165x1189 [14]
Kressewella 1176
Cressewella 1190
Cressewell 1231, 1256
Kereswell 1234
Kercewell 1255
Crassewalle 1255
Cressewyle 1273
Cressewel 1256
Kressewelle 13th century
Cresswell 13th century
Creswell 13th century
Crassewell 13th century
<Brichtwen de Cressewell> would be a fine 13th century documentary
form; in the English of that period the byname would have been <of
Cressewell>, pronounced roughly \ohf KRES-s@-wel\, where \@\ stands
for the sound of <a> in <sofa> and <about>. Most of the other forms
listed above are also suitable for the 13th century. The only
exceptions are the first three: the termination in <-a> is a relic of
Old English that is rarely seen after the 12th century.
During the period in which the given name is known to have been in
use, bynames based on place-names usually appear in the written record
with the preposition. There are exceptions, however, at least by the
later 13th century; indeed, we found <Robert Cressewyle> 1273. [11]
Thus, <Brichtwen Cressewell> is also possible.
Finally, it is possible that in some cases the modern surname goes
back not to an actual place-name, but to a byname indicating simply
that the bearer lived near a spring where cress grew. So-called
topographical bynames of this type were typically constructed with the
prepositional contraction <atte> 'at the' (e.g., <Attewell> 1274 'at
the spring', <atte Hale> 1235 'at the nook'). [15] Although we found
no examples of this type, <Brichtwen atte Cressewell> is a perfectly
plausible 13th century name for someone living by a spring
distinguished by its wealth of watercress.
We hope that this letter has been useful to you and that you won't
hesitate to write us again if any part was unclear or if you have
further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was
provided by Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, and Mari neyn Brian.
For the Academy,
Femke de Roas
August 6, 2006
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REFERENCES
[1] Old English charter Sawyer 1539. <Byrhtwynne> is an inflected
form, in the dative case; the nominative case -- the one used for the
subject of a sentence, for instance -- is <Byrhtwynn>.
http://www.anglo-saxons.net/hwaet/?do=seek&query=S+1539
[2] Von Feilitzen, Olof. 'The Personal Names and Bynames of the Winton
Domesday', in Martin Biddle, ed., _Winchester in the Early Middle
Ages_, Winchester Studies 1 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 151.
[3] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_
(London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995), s.n.
<Brightween>.
[4] Selte/n, Bo, _The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal
Names_, Volumes 1 & 2. (Lund, Sweden: Royal Society of Letters at
Lund, 1979), vol. II, p. 45.
[5] Von Feilitzen, Olof. 'The Personal Names and Bynames of the Winton
Domesday', op. cit., pp. 61-3.
[6] Moore, Samuel, rev. by Albert H. Marckwardt, _Historical Outlines
of English Sounds and Inflections (Ann Arbor: George Wahr Publishing
Co., 1964), p. 78.
[7] Von Feilitzen, Olof. 'The Personal Names and Bynames of the Winton
Domesday', op. cit., p. 121.
[8] Mosse/, Ferdinand, _A Handbook of Middle English_, trans. James A.
Walker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 23.
[9] The final <-a> of <Brigthtwyna> is a Latin grammatical ending
artificially added to the Middle English name to accommodate the Latin
context in which it occurs. The final <-e> of <Brichtwenne> may also
be a Latin grammatical ending; our source does not provide enough
context for us to tell.
[10] _Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the
Collections of the English Place-Name Society_, Edited by Victor
Watts, Edited in association with John Insley, Margaret Gelling
(Cambridge University Press: January 2004), s.nn. <Cresswell>, <Craswall>.
[11] Bardsley, Charles, _A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames_
(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1980), s.n. <Cresswell>.
[12] In addition to <cresse> 'cress', Old English had the variants
<c{ae}rse> and <cerse>, where <{ae}> stands for the a-e-ligature
formed by squashing together an <a> and an <e> so that they share a
common upright; these account for the <Ker-> spellings.
[13] Aryanhwy merch Catmael (Sara L. Uckelman), "Names from 13th
Century Northumberland," (WWW: privately published, 2005).
http://www.ellipsis.cx/~liana/names/english/northumberland.html
[14] '1165x1189' is a standard convention for 'some unknown date
between 1165 and 1189'.
[15] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English
Surnames_, op. cit., s.nn. <Attwell>, <Attale>.