Yorkshire Given Names from 1379

by Talan Gwynek (Brian M. Scott)
bmscott@stratos.net

The assessment roll of the 1379 Poll Tax for Howdenshire Hundred in Yorkshire East Riding includes the forenames of approximately 1794 women and 1665 men. (In a few cases the sex of an unmarried person cannot be determined.) I have arranged these names in descending order of frequency after combining variants and diminutives. If a name occurs in just one form, that form is followed by the number of times the name occurs in the roll. If a name occurs in several forms (including diminutives), the most common form appears as a headword. It is followed by a fraction whose numerator gives the number of occurrences of the headword form, and whose denominator gives the total number of occurrences of the name in all forms. Thus, the entry Cecilia 57/80 means that the specific form Cecilia occurs 57 times, while its variants and diminutives occur another 23 times for a total of 80 instances of the name. The variants and diminutives are listed with their respective frequencies under the main forms. Numbers in square brackets refer to the footnotes.

This is a Latin record, and therefore the names have quite consistently been recorded in their Latin forms. And since they follow the preposition de, they are all in the ablative case. These facts have different consequences which are explained separately for masculine and feminine names.

Parts of names enclosed in square brackets are editorial emendations in my source; in my counting I have assumed that these editorial emendations are correct. Starred names are diminutives.


Feminine names
Masculine names





Editted & published by Arval Benicoeur