Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is Episode 118, Trade Names.

In this episode, we're going to continue our look at the development of English surnames

in the 1300s.

Specifically, we're going to explore the rise of occupational surnames.

Like other surnames, names based on specific jobs or trades became common in the period

after the Norman Conquest, and they were really an outgrowth of the changing job market

during the Middle Ages.

Towns and cities were growing, and jobs were becoming more and more specialized, and it

was increasingly common to refer to people by their occupation.

A job title helped to distinguish people who otherwise had the same first name, and

many of those occupational surnames still exist today.

In some cases, those surnames still exist even though the original word for the job

or trade has largely disappeared.

So those names serve as relics of a time when the job market was very different from today.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is historyofenglishpodcast.com,

and you can sign up to support the podcast and get bonus episodes and transcripts at

patreon.com slash historyofenglish.

Also if you missed my recent announcement, I had the opportunity to sit in on the Lexitexture

podcast when I was in Boston for the Sound Education Conference.

In keeping with the format of that show, we each introduced a word and discussed its

etymology.

...