Women engaged in many medieval professions, and some surnames derived from professions survive in two forms, masculine and feminine. The suffix -ster indicates the female form. Thus: Baker/Baxter; Weaver/Webster;Brewer/ Brewster. Chaucer's Wife of Bath was a clothmaker, a webster, and the annoying mystic, Margery Kempe was a brewster.

Hello and welcome. This is interesting. I had the surnames in mind this day and seeing this, I wonder if this phenomenen you mention is typical only for English surnames. Dutch, which in the past has been so closely related to English does not have this.

We have f.i. surnames like: Bakker, but no Bakster. Wever, but no Weefster. Brouwer but no Brouwster. And does this tell something about differences in societies? Was our society more partriarchal than the English? Were in certain societies people rather named after their father ( John Johnson, William Williamson, (>Icelandic, Scandinavian and Dutch traditions have this a great deal) than after their father's profession?

Or, if a man had no real profession or trade all one could do was to take this son of/daughter of choice? ( Jónsón-Jónsdóttir ). Hessels means son or daughter of Hessel (old Dutch proper name) Jacob comes back in the surname Jacobse-Jacobsen. Hendrikse- Hendriksen, etc.

Many thing to consider.

The -ster suffix in English came down from Old English -estre. Perhaps it was somewhat different in Dutch. There are also place names and characteristics. The ancestral Joe Church may have lived near the church and Jim Brown was dark complected.

Baker/Baxter Wow, I never knew that! Cool! Thanks, and welcome aBoard!

Never thought of all these possibilities. Funny, I find no 'Church' Googling for names , but lots of 'Churchyard' (Kerkhof), 'Churchyards' or van Churchyard. Also lots of Brown (Bruin) and The Brown/ or Browns. Historically we are of light complexion.

(Link and link.)

NOW I remember reading your first one; not so much the second, sorry. Thank you for the remindery!

I really enjoy the study of names.

http://surnames.behindthename.com/

http://www.behindthename.com/

Surname names not so different in other countries, then Bran.
And that makes it easier when 'breaking down' language and in the understanding....as explained by Zm's links. (I never did like that word 'spinster' but I'll look at it in a different light now).

I looked up my name in your link Luke.
earliest form..... 1166.
Now thats old!

They are pretty good sites. Easy to use too.

They're nice, if only I had time to dig into them.

I used to have a unit on names when teaching 14-15 year olds.
They enjoyed it very much. Had lots of Name books, of course now
it is all on the 'net.

Have you looked up your surname then Luke.....

Is it older than mine?

I've searched everywhere for mine, cannot be found.

Maybe the books just concentrated on 'mainstream' names.
I'm guessing American Indian surnames wasn't part of the research!

I think I must have you confused. My surname is not
Native American. It's lost in the generational wars of
Eastern Europe.

I have a Native American Grandmother, but on my mother's side.

Yes....I was mixed up, a bit. Thanks for making it clear, Luke.

I'm guessing American Indian surnames wasn't part of the research!

I'm not even sure that Native Americans had surnames before they adopted English or Spanish ones. The Navaho do have surnames in their own language, but they seem to be the exception. (The Dutch and Yiddish-speaking Jews in the early 19th century were made to adopt surnames by Napoleon's bureaucrats.)

Indians used names from the first thing the mother saw after the
birth, or some great happening (green comet in the sky: Tecumseh)
or some feat of the father, and they often changed their names
after Hanblecheya (vision quest). As above, aside from Navajo,
they did not use last names; the clan they belonged to was more
important.

I don't know about all of them but a couple of the more common names, Begay and Benally, just mean something along the lines of 'his uncle' or 'his nephew'. They got them when the white man decided they needed last names so they asked them who they were. They responded by giving their name and the relationship to someone else who was there with them. At least that's the story I got when I was living in Flagstaff back in the '70s.

Thanks Zm, I found that interesting.

I have heard that as well.

Brown may refer to hair color rather than complexion.

Re: Googling for names -- Google may not be the best search engine for finding names. Looking through a directory might give you more significant results.

Which is why I use sites like these:


http://surnames.behindthename.com/
and

http://www.behindthename.com/