Dear Matt:
Thank you for your interesting comments.
Bulluc- leah - "Bullock-ley (Bulkeley Cheshire) you
advise is a genuine Anglo Saxon Place Name.
Many authorities make similar claims for the village
of Bulkeley, and yet I question if it is correct. In
the 1100s there were many families named Bullock and
its equivalent. Why should the name Bulluc (Bullock)
become transposed to the name of Bulkeley or its
equivalent at that time? Logically one would assume
the village would have named Bullockley.
Secondly many authorities claim that there is no
reference to the village of Bulkeley before the late
1100s, and that Domesday makes no mention at all of
the place. One would have assumed that if the name
Bulluc-leah was of such ancient vintage, that there
would be some reference before the 1100s.
It is thought provoking that there is a record of
Richard de Beaucleia 1170/1180 Bunbury, and of
Geoffrey and Robert Buckley Lancashire 1135 (Whalley
Coucher) The possibility of the villages of Bulkeley
and Buckley being named after the families rather than
the reverse exists.
Your observation that it is possible that there were a
number of independent families who all adopted a
similar name is one to be considered. Of course that
observation applies to just about every single family
discussed by Gen-Med that puts to question those
subscribers who claim adamantly basing their evidence
on the records only of the family bible or parish
register.
Sincerely Yours,
Paul Bulkley
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Boklerplaiers
Moderator: MOD_nyhetsgrupper
-
Matt Tompkins
Re: Boklerplaiers
paul bulkley wrote:
The village probably was named Bullockley, or perhaps Bullocksley, but
of course at that time people spoke Anglo-Saxon, not modern English,
and they would have said Bullucleah, or perhaps something like
Bullucaleah or Bullucanleah (my OE grammar isn't up to working out
the correct dative or genitive form of bulluc). Over the subsequent
thousand years and more the language pressures which have altered most
other English place-names have also operated to change that to
something pronounced Bulkley (or even Bukley - from about 1300 the
name was often recorded in forms beginning with Buck- and Buk-, but the
form which stuck in the 19th century was Bulkeley). The changing forms
of the name from 1170 to the modern day can be seen in the English
Place-name Society's 'Place-names of Cheshire' (1972) iv, 17, by JM
Dodgson.
It's doubtful whether the place would have been named after people
surnamed Bullock (indeed at the time the place-name was most probably
formed people did not use surnames) - it would have been called
Bullock-ley because it was a forest clearing somehow associated with
bullocks (or possibly a wood with those associations - 'leah' was
an ambiguous word which could mean either a clearing in a wooded
landscape or an isolated piece of woodland in a largely open landscape,
and later came to mean pasture or meadow). Topographical descriptions
are a common type of English place-name, and -leah derivations (-ley,
-lee, -leigh, -lea etc) are the most common ending in that group.
Compounds with animal names are common, and -leah has been combined
with other types of cattle to give place-names like Bulley, Oxley,
Calveley, Cowley.
Place-names of this sort are discussed in some detail in Margaret
Gelling's book 'The Landscape of Place-names' (Stamford, 2000), and
also in most other books on the history of English place-names.
The lack of early documentary references to Bulkeley is really quite
normal, and does not mean that the place had not been in existence and
known by that name for a long time before 1170. Only a few English
places are mentioned in pre-Domesday Book sources, and for many places
the first written mention comes much later - for the simple reason
that few records were created before the 12th century, and only some of
them have survived.
But the date of the earliest surviving documentary reference to a place
does not tell us when it was first inhabited, or even when it was first
known by that name - most places for which there is no written record
before the 12th or 13th century had almost certainly been in existence
and known by that name for a long time beforehand, probably for several
centuries.
Bulkeley's absence from Domesday Book is easily explained - DB
recorded manors or estates held by the tenants-in-chief and their
sub-tenants and occasionally sub-undertenants. Some manors, especially
in the north, were large estates comprising several settlements, but DB
usually only mentioned the central place in each estate. Bulkeley was
part of just such an estate, one centered on Malpas (which
significantly was also the centre of an unusually large parish in which
Bulkeley was just one of several non-parochial townships). In 1086
Malpas was held as a single estate by Robert FitzHugh, who presumably
had not yet subinfeudated Bulkeley or the other constituent townships.
Yes, that must be possible, and indeed many of the earliest documentary
references to Bulkeley are in the form of a surname following 'de'.
But it is also recorded as a place-name proper from much the same date
(in forms like Bulkeleh, Bulkileia) and the most likely explanation of
the place-name must surely be that, like the hundreds of other
place-names with endings derived from 'leah', it is an Anglo-Saxon
one.
And by the same token, even if the place in Cheshire did take its name
from a twelfth century lord called de Bulkeley, he would probably have
derived his surname from another place in England called 'bullock-ley'.
Curiously Reaney and Wilson's History of English Surnames does state
that the surname derives from a place in Essex called Bulkeley, but I
can't discover where that might be (and I notice that the distribution
of Bulkeleys in the 1881 census is clearly focused on
Cheshire/Lancashire, with a smaller concentration of Bulkleys in
Hampshire - your ancestors, Paul?).
Regards,
Matt Tompkins
Bulluc- leah - "Bullock-ley (Bulkeley Cheshire) you
advise is a genuine Anglo Saxon Place Name.
Many authorities make similar claims for the village
of Bulkeley, and yet I question if it is correct. In
the 1100s there were many families named Bullock and
its equivalent. Why should the name Bulluc (Bullock)
become transposed to the name of Bulkeley or its
equivalent at that time? Logically one would assume
the village would have named Bullockley.
The village probably was named Bullockley, or perhaps Bullocksley, but
of course at that time people spoke Anglo-Saxon, not modern English,
and they would have said Bullucleah, or perhaps something like
Bullucaleah or Bullucanleah (my OE grammar isn't up to working out
the correct dative or genitive form of bulluc). Over the subsequent
thousand years and more the language pressures which have altered most
other English place-names have also operated to change that to
something pronounced Bulkley (or even Bukley - from about 1300 the
name was often recorded in forms beginning with Buck- and Buk-, but the
form which stuck in the 19th century was Bulkeley). The changing forms
of the name from 1170 to the modern day can be seen in the English
Place-name Society's 'Place-names of Cheshire' (1972) iv, 17, by JM
Dodgson.
It's doubtful whether the place would have been named after people
surnamed Bullock (indeed at the time the place-name was most probably
formed people did not use surnames) - it would have been called
Bullock-ley because it was a forest clearing somehow associated with
bullocks (or possibly a wood with those associations - 'leah' was
an ambiguous word which could mean either a clearing in a wooded
landscape or an isolated piece of woodland in a largely open landscape,
and later came to mean pasture or meadow). Topographical descriptions
are a common type of English place-name, and -leah derivations (-ley,
-lee, -leigh, -lea etc) are the most common ending in that group.
Compounds with animal names are common, and -leah has been combined
with other types of cattle to give place-names like Bulley, Oxley,
Calveley, Cowley.
Place-names of this sort are discussed in some detail in Margaret
Gelling's book 'The Landscape of Place-names' (Stamford, 2000), and
also in most other books on the history of English place-names.
Secondly many authorities claim that there is no
reference to the village of Bulkeley before the late
1100s, and that Domesday makes no mention at all of
the place. One would have assumed that if the name
Bulluc-leah was of such ancient vintage, that there
would be some reference before the 1100s.
The lack of early documentary references to Bulkeley is really quite
normal, and does not mean that the place had not been in existence and
known by that name for a long time before 1170. Only a few English
places are mentioned in pre-Domesday Book sources, and for many places
the first written mention comes much later - for the simple reason
that few records were created before the 12th century, and only some of
them have survived.
But the date of the earliest surviving documentary reference to a place
does not tell us when it was first inhabited, or even when it was first
known by that name - most places for which there is no written record
before the 12th or 13th century had almost certainly been in existence
and known by that name for a long time beforehand, probably for several
centuries.
Bulkeley's absence from Domesday Book is easily explained - DB
recorded manors or estates held by the tenants-in-chief and their
sub-tenants and occasionally sub-undertenants. Some manors, especially
in the north, were large estates comprising several settlements, but DB
usually only mentioned the central place in each estate. Bulkeley was
part of just such an estate, one centered on Malpas (which
significantly was also the centre of an unusually large parish in which
Bulkeley was just one of several non-parochial townships). In 1086
Malpas was held as a single estate by Robert FitzHugh, who presumably
had not yet subinfeudated Bulkeley or the other constituent townships.
It is thought provoking that there is a record of
Richard de Beaucleia 1170/1180 Bunbury, and of
Geoffrey and Robert Buckley Lancashire 1135 (Whalley
Coucher) The possibility of the villages of Bulkeley
and Buckley being named after the families rather than
the reverse exists.
Yes, that must be possible, and indeed many of the earliest documentary
references to Bulkeley are in the form of a surname following 'de'.
But it is also recorded as a place-name proper from much the same date
(in forms like Bulkeleh, Bulkileia) and the most likely explanation of
the place-name must surely be that, like the hundreds of other
place-names with endings derived from 'leah', it is an Anglo-Saxon
one.
And by the same token, even if the place in Cheshire did take its name
from a twelfth century lord called de Bulkeley, he would probably have
derived his surname from another place in England called 'bullock-ley'.
Curiously Reaney and Wilson's History of English Surnames does state
that the surname derives from a place in Essex called Bulkeley, but I
can't discover where that might be (and I notice that the distribution
of Bulkeleys in the 1881 census is clearly focused on
Cheshire/Lancashire, with a smaller concentration of Bulkleys in
Hampshire - your ancestors, Paul?).
Regards,
Matt Tompkins