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HULLAND

A Reader has asked about this name. It is derived from "Hulland", a village on the A517 Ashbourne-Belper road. It means "the settlement overlooked by the long low hill". This hill is described in a popular guide book as "a fine ridge, having a magnificent outlook over the hills and moors". What is, however, more interesting is that the Reader refers to a stone in Brailsford Churchyard (4 miles south) bearing the name "Osbourne-Hulland" which he describes as "double-barrelled" and wonders if there is any ancestral link. However location-names were regularly shared by many people who had emigrated from their native places and therefore similarity of such surnames is no positive proof of any relationship. Detailed records would be needed to settle the point and it is doubtful if any have survived. As for the unit "Osbourne" - it is a first-name which was once extremely popular among our Mediaeval Ancestors but is now rarely conferred as such. Where it survives, it is derived through the corresponding surname it has generated. It means "the Man who fights like one of the Gods". It is of Saxon origin and is not to be confused with the place in the Isle of Wight. The Brailsford inscription is certainly not an example of "double-barrelling" since it is dated 1500 and doubled forms did not appear for another 200 years.

Although the "Peak Advertiser" endeavours to provide only the meanings of surnames, the Reader's question has suggested that perhaps a description as to how the doubled forms came about might be appropriate. Such a description can only be, unfortunately, heavily condensed and much fascinating information forgone. As a starter they are admittedly "aristocratic", and, until the expansion of Industry and Commerce, the aristocracy was inseparably linked with land-ownership and the incomes derived therefrom. Among such great land-owning classes, their family names were positively venerated since their bearers had, at various times been engaged in shaping the history of our country. Along with titles and armorial bearing there was an understandable anxiety to project one's identity as far as possible into the future, and most especially if there were chances that a name might die for want of somebody to inherit it.

A stratagem to combat this was to incorporate a direction in Wills and Settlements whereby gifts were made conditional upon the recipients assuming a given name. In most cases this condition was satisfied by simply tagging on the new name, with or without a hyphen as it seemed fit. Only in a few exceptional circumstances was it necessary to employ legal technicalities. For example, if a new name was added to a surname under which a Peerage had been conferred, a Royal License was needed - hence in 1795 the 4th Duke of Portland was permitted to add "Scott" to "Cavendish". The manoeuvre was devised during the turbulent times of the 17th Century. The earlier and comparatively simple laws of inheritance from father to son were replaced with elaborate Trusts into which these special condition could be incorporated if necessary.

During the 18th Century the practice seems largely to have been followed by the truly aristocratic families whose reasons (making due allowance for the ethos of that period) were understandable. Note: the characters in Jane Austen, drawn largely from the "lesser" gentry, all bear single surnames. As the 19th Century progressed however, people who were making money but had no inherited landed status noticed that compound surnames seemed to partake of something "aristocratic" and so without much understanding of the matter contrived fanciful names for themselves - and even adopted armorial bearings on the strength of nothing more than similarity of surname. Note how George Osborne cleverly side-steps a question on his antecedents: Vanity Fair, Ch.29.

The expression "double-barrelled name" first occurs in print in 1848 though it had applied to firearms since the beginning of the 1700's. It is used to pour scorn on a socially climbing curate who expands his name into the "Reverend Thomas D'Arcey Sniffle" Note too how in "Barchester Towers" (1857 Ch.9) Trollope expresses disapproval of the practice with reference to Madeline Stanhope. However, perfectly sensible reasons often account for such names. A son, for example, of a distinguished father who had died and whose mother had re-married might have wished both to honour his father's memory and show respect to his step-father by hyphenating the two surnames.

Here it is appropriate to mention that a hyphen is really a grammatical device and its applicability to surnames is doubtful. In 1891 a commentator on the social scene was provoked to censure the absurd aspirations of two sisters who bullyragged their Father into moving from Shepherd's Bush to Kensington and triumphantly marked their elevation in Society by hyphening their Mother's name and becoming the "Misses Robinson-Jones".

The custom of including a Mother's maiden name amongst those conferred upon children in baptism, etc. is observed on both sides of the Atlantic. But there is evidence of a divergence. Over here such first names have tended to move forwards and lend themselves to being hyphenated with a surname, whereas in the States surnames have been brought backwards and then transformed into first names - hence Grant, Scott, Wayne, Dale, Craig, etc. The motives which have led families to adopt double-barrelled names range no doubt from a natural desire to preserve the memory of a distinguished predecessor, to wanting simply to be "different". The last word on the subject rests with a remark in a Professional Review some 50 years ago: The "double- barrelled name has really no basis whatever beyond being that of a remote ancestor".

© Desmond Holden
From "The Peak Advertiser", 23rd March 1998.

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