By-name by-name

Elmidae: Requesting speedy deletion (CSD A10). (TW)

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A by-name is a descriptive title given to a person to distinguish them for other persons of the same name. In England by-names were used during the period when the use of [[Wikipedia:Surname|surnames]] had not been extensively adopted. As an example the Domesday Book of 1085 identifies 40 individuals with the given name of "Richard". Most (40%), such as "Richard of Coursey" are identified with a locational by-name, indicating where they came from, or in some cases where they lived. Others (25%), such as "Richard the butler" and "Richard the bald" are identified with an occupational or a personally descriptive by-name. Some of the "Richard's" identified in the Domesday Book such as Richard Basset, made use of what we would recognize as a surname. The distinction between a by-name and a surname lies in the fact that the by-name is not usually heritable, and may change for any given person as his circumstances change. Richard the bald, for example, was presumably not always bald, and Richard of Brampton may not have always lived at Brampton.

The use of by-names did not end with the adoption of surnames. In some cases, before the adoption of middle names, government records, such as taxes lists, included persons with both the same given name and the same surname. This led to the use of by-names to further distinguish the person. For example one "John Smith" might be described as "John Smith of the mill", while another might be described as "John Smith the short".

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