Defining Historic Names
Shelley Suffolk, All Saints’ Church In any attempt to analyse our historical past, it surely requires an understanding of how and why people and places were named in the way they were. English surnames, or family names, are thought to have been first considered in around 1605 when Richard Verstegan (1550-1640) published his ‘Restitution of Decayed Intelligence’. His essays contained chapters on both forenames and surnames. The study of personal names, as with the study of place-names requires a…