From our local "on this day" (here)


A reminder of the dangers of big construction projects where, sadly, such accidents were not uncommon - and also how much of the news in Victorian times is very much along the same lines as the news of today.   

I question whether "James Box" was his real name - a co-incidence that his surname was the same as the location name. But then we have a grave in the old Baptist cemetery in Melksham of George Melksham who was, I believe, a foundling who lived his life out here.

 

I believe that in early medieval times most people were known by a just single name, such as James or George - their Christening name.  In later medieval times they gained a second name - the surname - and this would often be a trade or distinctive feature or place of origin.  In the later times, if the surname of foundling George was not known I can imagine that the orphanage might well give him the surname Melksham.  And something similar might have happened for James Box.

 
I think you can go further than that, and say that before the Normans turned up here most people had just a single name - their name. There was a bigger choice of those early English names than the Norman-French ones that replaced them, but even then extra descriptions could be added when needed to identify someone. These were of the same kind we recognise as the basis of surnames - fathers, places, descriptions, trades, language/ethnicity...

The "introduction of surnames" was more a matter of starting to think of those extras as part of a name, and happened first for leaders, who had become feudal landholders. Then surnames were made compulsory for reasons of administration, and eventually that applied to everyone. Of course that "everyone" was only men with few exceptions, with their families getting the same surname automatically.

Children, as babies, have never had surnames (except a few very high status ones). If you ask a parent the name of their baby you do not expect a surname to be included. They get the family's surname, which always meant (and still commonly does) the father's unless there isn't one, in which case it's the mother's. Just recently the idea of choosing a surname has perhaps become meaningful, but you're  still not likely to be told it if you just ask the baby's name.

This idea that babies only have one "name" can be seen on the original (1837) English birth registration form. Its columns are headed "name, if any" (registration could be done before a name was chosen), "name and surname of father", and "name and maiden surname of mother". Nothing on the form suggests that the child even has a surname, but there were quarterly indexes which were alphabetical by surname. So the indexers used the standard assumption about the family's surname, and ever since those indexes have been taken as definitive (though originally they were just meant as a finding aid).

 
That's why I'm Chris from Nailsea. 

 

and if you were Norman / aristocratic Chris de Nailsea.