:pokes naming conventions:

[burntcopper]

Huh. Most north european countries, when the surname denotes that someone comes from somewhere, stick the equivalent of the prefix 'of' or 'from' in the front - de, van der, von, de la, te, van t', da, di and so on. How the hell did the English escape this? Our language is descended from germanic/dutch/friesian with Norman French laid over the top of it. Was it a post-invasion of Britain by Saxons thing? The only example I can think of is 'a' - and the only actual name I can think of that has it is Allan a Dale, and that's medieval which appears to have died out completely. Cornish uses Pen, Tre and Pol, but that's Celtic, not English.

All the prefixes I can think of in English surnames mean 'son/daughter of', (o', mac/mc, fitz) and they're all other languages, since 'son of' in northern european non-latin non-celt languages tends to be a suffix.

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Hmm. What's actually know about Saxon naming conventions? Are Saxons all "~son/~sson" and therefore closer to Old Norse? The Celtic languages do tend to have the "son of"/"descendent of" in front ("ó" is a more general "descendent" rather than "son") - including Welsh, which I think you missed ("ap") - so I'm wondering if the Norman "fitz" is in fact influenced by Gallic naming practices to move from its "~son" position to the start of the name instead?