NAME POLICY

1.  PLACE-NAMES

A Domesday place-name describes an estate, sometimes a manor, and corresponds to part or all of a vill. Depending on its size and status it may form part or all of a later ancient ecclesiastical parish (which is in origin the territory served by the church of an estate, manor or vill), or encompass more than one. The 1086 estate may well contain a number of settlements that had separate names, rarely given in Domesday. These Domesday estates are above all units of survey and of taxation. Some were neither independent nor self-supporting; earlier and later evidence can sometimes show that some were fragments temporarily alienated from another estate, or the dependencies of one. The probable extent of many Domesday estates is explained in the notes.

A Domesday name can only be regarded as satisfactorily identified if: (a) it can be connected philologically with the proposed modern equivalent; (b) it can be localized to a particular hundred or wapentake and distinguished within that administrative unit from other places of the same basic name; (c) the resources of the Domesday estate can be matched with those of its supposed modern representative; (d) the descent of the Domesday estate can be traced in medieval records. 
	There are many identifications of Domesday places that do not satisfy these tests. Where necessary, doubts are expressed in the notes.

The place-name given in the translation is the modern representative of the Domesday name as taken from recent Ordnance Survey Maps; it should be noted that the place-name form can vary from edition to edition. In most cases the modern place-name chosen will be the linear descendant of the 1086 name-form, except where (a) one name that describes the same estate, vill or manor has directly and entirely replaced another, for example, Reigate (SUR 1,7) for ‘Churchfield’, and Christchurch (HAM 1,28. 17,1) for 'Twynham';  (b) a topographical name, especially that of a river has been replaced by a more localized name, for example, Martinstown (DOR 55,1) for ‘Winterbourne’; (c) the later name of the estate derives from the Domesday holder’s name, or title, for example Dodington (SOM 47,12) for ‘Stowey’; Bishopstone (HEF 2,46) for ‘Mansell’. Where a Domesday name has subsequently been replaced by that of an adjacent settlement that probably lay within the Domesday estate in 1086 the latter name has not been used in the translation, but is given in the notes. Thus, Domesday Beddintone (STS 4,10) survived as 'Bedintone' to the twelfth century, but was displaced by the adjacent Pillaton. The translation reads 'Bedintone'.  Other information (for example, concerning manorial names not derived from the Domesday name forms) is given in the notes.

Where the Domesday name is now represented only by a house, farm or particularized settlement (for example, Warnford Barton, Perry Farm, Forton End), the affixes are omitted and the places appear simply as Warnford, Perry and Forton. Similarly, where modern maps provide a range of names (for example, Hartford Manor, Hartford Green, Hartford Farm, Hartford Mill), the simple name Hartford will be chosen. However, where separate estates with the same name in Domesday can be identified with separate later settlements (Upper and Lower, East and West, Bishop’s and Earl’s etc.), these identifications are included in the translation. In the case of major settlements, those that often form separate parishes, the use of ‘or’ (Upper or Lower Cheddon) indicates that there is uncertainty about the precise identification; the use of ‘and’ (Great and Little Standon) implies that both places were part of the particular Domesday estate.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Four-figure Grid References refer to the surviving representative of the name where there is only one, or to what seems to be the original or most important settlement where there are several or a hierarchy. A settlement site is always preferred to a wood or hill name where there is a choice. The church or the so-called 'manor' is not used as a reference point, when there is a settlement nearby to serve as such, since both church and manor are often post-1086 and built on the periphery of the settlement, or sometimes, in the latter case, in deliberate isolation from it. In a hamlet, village or suburb, the point chosen for the reference is usually a central crossroads. Where the settlement has been swallowed by urban growth, early nineteenth-century maps have been used to determine what appears to be the historic centre. In all cases, the point chosen on the map is not necessarily the centre of the eleventh century estate, though any known major changes, caused for example by imparking, or abandonment and subsequent resettlement in another place are included in the notes. It should be borne in mind that Domesday says nothing about the form of the settlement, whether nucleated or dispersed. Moreover, settlement forms can change and centres can shift. 

Unidentified Places
Where a place has not been identified, the Domesday form is printed in the translation in italics. Some of these places may have disappeared soon after 1086, by being abandoned or absorbed into other holdings. Some of these names may yet be found as the listing of minor names (for example, field names) in each county continues. In other cases, the name-form may be so distorted by the process that produced Domesday Book, that it has not yet been possible to connect it to a name evidenced later.

Lost Places
Single inverted commas enclose the following categories of name:
1.	A place name that is evidenced after 1086 but disappeared later.
2.	The modern equivalent of the Domesday name if it is not now a habitation name (it may, for example, be the name of a hill, wood, field, street or road).
3.	Places lost to the sea or covered by the water of a reservoir.
In such cases, the name-form chosen is the latest found or (if that is unrepresentative), the most normal. Where the location is known, a Grid Reference is given and a note explains.

HUNDRED AND WAPENTAKE NAMES
Hundreds and wapentakes continued to exist, though for increasingly minor purposes, into the twentieth century. The form chosen for use in the translation and notes is the most recent representative of the 1086 name. This will either be (a) a place (not necessarily a settlement) still named on modern maps, or (b) a place no longer in existence but which is evidenced after 1086 (such names are included in single inverted commas), or (c) a name that is last evidenced in Domesday (the Domesday form or a representative of several forms is given in italics). Where one hundred-name was replaced by another, this latter has not been used, as the extents of the hundreds often changed as well. This departs from the policy of the Phillimore printed edition. Information to connect the 1086 and later administrative units is given in the Introduction to each county. 

COUNTY NAMES 
The counties referred to are those that existed before the major reorganization of 1974. Probably because of a lack of county headings in certain circuit volumes, a number of Domesday places are included in the wrong county in 1086. Further, a number of Domesday places have been transferred to another county between 1086 and 1974. These matters are addressed in individual notes and in the Introduction to each county. 

2. PERSONAL NAMES
Apart from a few names taken from the Romans, from the Bible and from Celtic languages (Welsh, Irish, Cornish, Breton) most personal names in Domesday Book are in origin Germanic, that is, they derive from, or are developments of, a name-stock that was common to the members of a branch of the Indo-European speakers. Germanic includes English, Dutch, German, Frankish and the Scandinavian Languages (Icelandic, Danish, Norse, Swedish).
	Some of this Germanic name-stock will have arrived with the Germanic peoples settled by the Romans in Britain in the late third and early fourth centuries, and with the migration of those peoples (with the separate identities of Angles, Saxons and Jutes) that followed the Roman withdrawal from Britain and the collapse of imperial rule in the west (fourth century). Some names (not infrequently the same ones in origin, but subject to various forms of evolution) came with the Danish invaders who attacked, marauded and settled from the ninth century. This branch of these names is especially found in the later Danelaw counties: Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Many of these names were thoroughly implanted and developed specifically Anglo-Scandinavian forms. Further names and duplicates of existing ones arrived with the 'Vikings' (Norwegians) who settled in Yorkshire in the early tenth century and more with the renewed Danish settlement, especially under King Cnut at the beginning of the eleventh century. Finally, Germanic names came with the Normans, Picardians, French and Flemings who arrived in England in and after 1066. The Normans themselves were Scandinavian in origin, but many adopted Old German names or Old German versions of their own that had been current in France since the Frankish invasions of the fifth century, and many of which had Old French variants. On arrival in England some of these names developed distinct Anglo-Norman variants. It should be noted that Edward the Confessor (1042-1066) welcomed a small number of Normans who settled in England.
	The implication of this is that a single name of Germanic origin may have entered England on four different occasions, in a form that was the same, similar or differentiated by separate development in isolation and by the passage of time. Other names, especially ones compounded from more than one element, arose after the peoples had separated, but some, though arising independently, were look-alikes because of the comparatively small number of basic elements.
	An ideal text, however idiosyncratic its spellings of individual names, would nonetheless distinguish one from another. This is not the so with the texts of Domesday Book, for a number of factors make it inevitable that some names will be impossible to identify and in the case of others there will be uncertainty or more than one possibility.
	Firstly, in 1066 England was mainly populated by Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Scandinavians and Old Welsh (Cornish, Welsh), speaking Old English, various Scandinavian dialects and varieties of Old Welsh. The new arrivals were Norman, French, Breton, Picardian and Flemish, speaking several different languages. The English scribes had their own insular manuscript hands, but were no doubt conversant with Carolingian minuscule; the continental scribes had probably only been trained in the latter. As a result of this involvement of different peoples and tongues in the course of the Domesday Survey, there will have been mispronunciations, mishearings, misreadings and miscopyings.
	Secondly, the scribes involved, working under pressure of time, will have made simple errors of their own: a vowel miswritten here, a termination left off there. Both English and continental scribes were used in the compilation of the Liber Exoniensis and it is probable that this was true of every circuit volume. To some extent each will have tried to express alien sounds in terms of the sounds allotted to the letters of his own alphabet. When a Saxon worked on the schedule compiled by a Norman scribe (or vice versa) there will have been further confusion. Some, but not all, of the names are as it were 'encoded',  hidden under letters that conceal phonetic modifications made by clerks dealing with names that were outside their language.
	Thirdly, it is unlikely that the names themselves were ever written in a 'pure' form (as understood by a personal name scholar) in any of the documents that preceded Great Domesday. In particular, if tenants-in-chief supplied the names of their tenants and of their 1066 predecessors, and jurors (French or English) pronounced on them, another layer of confusion, apart from scribal, will have been introduced.
	Fourthly, if the stages by which Great Domesday was produced have been correctly understood, each name will have been 'processed' four or five times. The differences between the Liber Exoniensis and Great Domesday Book are not simply of misunderstanding, but show the application of different conventions (for example, the handling of initial W- and initial St-, the addition of Latin terminations), which were partially unscrambled for the final product. The removal of a supposedly Latin termination can take away a vowel that is in fact Scandinavian or English and which makes the difference between two names. The reduction of an element such as Aethel- to Ail- in a circuit volume, then its subsequent partial restoration in Great Domesday similarly confuses a series of different names and makes the Domesday occurrences of any of them suspect. The same is true of the reduction of both -ketel and -kell to -chil.
	Fifthly, for the eleventh century, it is Domesday Book that provides more name-forms than any other document. The lack of  a larger quantity of comparative material makes it difficult to determine if some Domesday forms are aberrant, Normanized or are, as it were, a new spelling, representing more accurately the pronunciation of the time. The nature of much of the comparative material (Anglo-Saxon charters, perhaps traditional and backward-looking in terms of name-forms, and chronicles, often compiled later and with spellings perhaps updated) makes a true assessment difficult.

The result of all this is that it is sometimes difficult to perceive through the Domesday form a name that is adequately attested elsewhere. Sometimes the Domesday spelling may suggest the existence of a name not otherwise found, but in such cases caution is needed, as error may have produced the new form (as Pirot perhaps for Picot). On the other hand with such a comparatively large number of names, Domesday could reasonably be expected to contain names otherwise unknown, especially if they are compounded from known elements in traditional ways of name-forming.
	However, there is no question that a number of name-forms in Domesday are erroneous or misleading. It can be shown that the same man is represented by forms that are in fact those of different names. Conversely, the same name-form can represent different names, especially if the nationality and the date of arrival in England of the individuals can be established; thus a single Domesday form, such as Adelelm, Alstan, Algar, can conceal several distinct English or Germanic names.
	Where a Domesday name-form can be confidently identified with a particular English, Danish, Norwegian, French or Breton (etc.) name, there is the added problem of which form to choose for that name. The priority for students of personal names is to find enough examples of the name to be able to determine its etymology, elements and earliest form. However, these early spellings and the pronunciations that they imply may well have fallen out of use by the mid-eleventh century. It is not certain that Old English -gifu or Beorht- were still in use or pronounced as spelt then since their common representations are -eva and Brict-. Scandinavian personal names in particular are often given in the standard works of name scholarship in their more primitive Old Norse or Old Icelandic forms, together occasionally with the use of letters not found in the English alphabet. Such forms were never in use in England (though the names were) and they seem out-of-place when inserted into a Domesday translation.

The first serious attempt to handle all the Domesday names in a uniform translation was made by John Morris for the Phillimore edition (1975-86). He used the scholarly tools then available to identify the Domesday form with an English, Scandinavian, Norman, French, Breton or Flemish counterpart, but as a moderniser he simplified some name-elements and brought them more into line with the regular spellings in Domesday which in his opinion more exactly recorded the eleventh-century pronunciation.
	John Morris died suddenly and before his time in 1977 with only a dozen counties published and leaving untouched many Domesday names which he had not been able to standardize, especially in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and the three counties of Little Domesday. Had he been able to work on every name some of his earlier conclusions would no doubt have been modified. The completion of the project was overseen by John Dodgson who was himself a names expert. He contributed a series of valuable notes to individual counties but it was impossible for him to identify or approve each name. Inevitably, individual county editors had preferences of their own and those who had a background in name-studies tended to choose philologically purer forms. The scale of the discrepancies became clear when that cumulative index of personal names was being prepared (Phillimore Domesday Book: Index, part 2: Persons, 1992). John Dodgson tried valiantly to assist the reader in finding the way through the myriad names and forms by indicating real or possible equivalents and connecting them with the forms normally preferred by personal-name scholars by a series of entries (for example Carl: see also Karl, Karli; Fredregis: see also Fredegis, Fredis).As John Dodgson explained in his Introduction to that cumulative index: 'Because of the vicissitudes which befell the preparation of the Phillimore Domesday Book, not least of them the untimely death of Dr. John Morris its General Editor, there was no opportunity to complete the standardisation of personal-names and descriptions which he appears to have intended in the modern English translation and the annotations. The county volume editors and the Index volume editors have had to do the best they could in difficult circumstances for lack of a fully articulated scheme.' 
	In view of this and of the fact that some of John Morris' chosen forms were improbable, unwise or idiosyncratic, it has been felt necessary to review all the forms of Domesday personal names found in the Phillimore printed edition. Nonetheless, John Morris was essentially right in refusing to use name-forms which, though they might represent the original or etymologically pure form of the name, were obsolete by the time of Domesday Book. He and others since (see, for example Lewis, 'Joining the Dots') have stressed that names evolve, and divide. Behind the confusions and partially understood codes of the Domesday scribes are real people with the names they actually used. A modern Harry is not a Harald or even a Harold, even though the names have the same origin, a Piers is not a Peter or a Petrus nor should a present-day Edmund be forced to re-spell himself Eadmund. 
	It is important to realize that, although the identification and classification of names relies heavily on the work of philologists, there are cases where the philological deduction about the nature of the name is at variance with historical record, or with the identification of an individual on the basis of the proximity of his holdings or the geographical spread of his lands. These problems are addressed in the notes. 

The aims of the revision are:
1. As far as the Domesday forms allow, to distinguish one name from another.

2. To eliminate variant forms of the same name; that is, for each separate name, to choose a single standard form that is in scholarly use, except that certain elements have been modernized in accordance with John Morris' guiding principles (not followed slavishly or uncritically) and the usage of Domesday Book itself.

3. To provide notes on all name-forms. 

In detail this means that:

1. Where a Domesday form cannot be identified with a name attested elsewhere or where it could represent two or more distinct names, it has been left in the Domesday form, less any Latin termination, in italics. 

2. With a few exceptions given below (3-6) and unless an error can be shown, the head-words provided by von Feilitzen, Personal Names of Domesday Book, have been used for 1066 holders. Old Danish forms have been preferred to those of other Scandinavian languages. They were adopted by John Morris on the grounds that in 1086 they were the most likely Scandinavian names to be found in England and were closer to English methods of spelling. This means that Anglo-Scandinavian names in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, where the Old Norse or Old Icelandic forms were used in the printed edition of those counties, as occasionally in others, have been changed: thus Atsurr is replaced by Azur; Saksulfr by Saxulf. The different editorial choices exercised in the translation and commentary of these two counties have hitherto made them appear to contain a unique population group. 

3. There is no reference work comparable to von Feilitzen, Personal Names of Domesday Book, for 1086 names, so the name-forms that are those of English, 'French' and Anglo-Scandinavian holders have been regularized as far as possible using the principles of von Feilitzen, Personal Names of Domesday Book, and after consulting Tengvik, Old English Bynames; Forstemann, Personennamen;  Forssner, Continental-Germanic Personal Names; and Dauzat, Dictionnaire des Noms de Famille et Prénoms. 

4. A number of other works of reference have been consulted, including Fellows-Jensen, Scandinavian Personal Names. All the forms adopted have been compared with those provided by Ann Williams for the Alecto edition and discrepancies noted. 

5. Certain elements that are in use by personal name scholars, but whose spelling was  probably obsolete in the mid-eleventh century, have been simplified and brought more into line with Domesday spelling. These are either those adopted by John Morris himself, or, as far as can be, in accordance with his principles:

First elements; Aethel- only for MS forms Ade(l), Agi(l), Ede(l), Ege(l) for OE Æthel- 
				Aelf- for women, Alf- for men, for OE Ælf-
				Ald- (MS and translation form) for OE Eald-
				Al(f)- (MS Alu-) for OE Ælf-
				Bald- (MS and translation form) for OG Bald-
				Bern- (MS and translation form) for OE Beorn- and OG Bern-
				Brict- (MS Brict-, Brist-, Brics-, Briht- etc.) for OE Beorht-
				Ceol- (MS Cel-) for OE Ceol-
				Ed- (MS and translation form) for OE Ead-
				Ern- (MS and translation form) for OE Earn- 
				Lam- (MS Lan-) 
				Leof- (MS Lef-, Leu(e)-, Lep-etc.) for OE Leof-
				Ord- (MS and translation form) for OE Ord-
				Os- (MS and translation form) for OE Os-
				Sae- (MS Sa-) for OE Sæ-
				Si- (MS and translation form) for OE Sige-
				Theo- (MS Ted-, Tet-) for OG Theo-
				Thor- (MS Tur-, Tor-) for ON /ODan Thor-
				Ulf- (MS and translation form) for ON/ODan Ulf-
				Wulf- (MS Ulf-, Ul-, Wl(f) for OE Wulf- 
Also (apparently):
				Had- (MS and translation form) for OE Heathu-
				Hard- (MS and translation form) for OE Heard-

Final elements: -bald (MS -bald, -bold) for OG -bald and OE -beald
				-bert (MS –bert, -ber, -bric, -brict) for OG -bert and OE -beorht
				-bern (MS –ber, bern) for OG  -bern
				-eva (MS -geva, -giva, -eva, -iva etc.) for OE -gifu
				-got (MS -got, -cot, -god) for OG and ODan –got, -gut 
				-gar (MS -gar, -ger, -car) for OE -gar
				-geat (MS -get, -giet, -iet, -ied, -et, -ed etc.) for OE -geat
				-ger (MS -ger, -gar) for OG -ger 
				-gyth (MS -ith, -it, -iet, -id. -gid, -ged, -ed, -ad etc.) for OE -gyth
				-hard (MS –ard) for OG -(h)ard
				-heah (MS -ac,- ag, -ec, -eg) for OE -heah
				-here (MS -er, -ere) for OE -here
				-lac (MS and translation form) for OE -lac
				-mer (MS -mer, -mar) for OE -mær
				-mund (MS and translation form) for OG -mund
				-noth (MS -nod, -not, -noth) for OE -noth
				-old (MS –ald, -olt) for OG –ald, -old
				-red (MS red, -ret, -rad, -erd, -ert) for OE -ræd
				-ric (MS -ric, -rich) for OG -ric and ON -rikr
				-si  (MS -si, -sy, -sic, -sid) for OE -sige
				-sten (MS -sten, -stan, -stin, -steinn etc.) for ON -steinn
				-w- or -fw- (MS -uu-) 
			 	-ward (MS -uuard, -uard, -uuart, -uart, -uord) for OE -weard and OG
								 -ward
			 	-win (MS -uuin, -uuine, -uin, -uine, -uui) for OE -wine and OG -win
				-wold (MS -uuald, -uuold, -uuolt, -uuol, -uold etc.) for OE -weald 
				-wulf (MS  -ul, -ulf, -olf) for OE -wulf and OG -wulf
				-wy (MS -uui, -uuic, -ui, -uit, -uid, -uuin) for OE -wig and OG -wig
				-wynn (MS -en, -ene) for OE -wynn
Also (apparently) -frith (MS -frid, -fert, -ferd, -uert, -uerd, -fort, -ford) for OE -frith, to be distinguished from OG -frid

6. In the particular case where the manuscript form can represent either Old English Ælf-, Æthel-, Ealh-, Eald-, the base-form (Al-) has been used, as suggested by John Dodgson, and as appears in von Feilitzen, Personal Names of Domesday Book (see p. 142), though John Morris' final elements to have been retained. Thus: Aleva, Alfled, Alfrith, Algar, Algard, Algeat, Almer, Almund, Alnoth, Alred, Alric, Alsi, Alstan, Alswith, Althryth, Alward, Alware, Alwin, Alwold, Alwy, Alwynn). Where the individual can be identified, this is placed in square brackets: Alric [Aelfric] son of Goding .

7. Where a document such as the Liber Exoniensis, the Inquisitio Eliensis, the Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis, or Domesday Monachorum, which are closely related to Domesday, provides a different name-form for the same individual, it is the standardization of the form given in Domesday itself that is included in the translation. The discrepant form, even if it is fuller or more likely, is given in brackets or in the notes. Thus Aluuoldus in DEV 16,174 appears as Adeluuoldus in the corresponding entry in the Liber Exoniensis. He appears as Alwold [Aethelwold] in the translation, with an appropriate note. The same applies when any individual can be identified from another source which shows that the Domesday form is mangled or erroneous. Where the person is well-known, the commonly used form of his name is placed in square brackets after it: for example, Bishop Almer [Aethelmer] of Thetford.  

8. The traditional spelling of important people, mostly kings and queens, earls and countesses, abbots and bishops (for example, Alfred, Edgar, Edith, Edmund, Edward, Edwin, Godiva, Harold,  Morcar, Oswald, Siward, Stigand, Swein, Tosti, Waltheof etc.) has been retained.

9. In the case of Norman and Breton names which are predominantly those of 1086 holders, the modern English forms which descend from them, where they exist, are preferred: thus Aubrey, Brian, Gilbert, Geoffrey, Godfrey, Harding, Henry, Ralph, Richard, Robert, Roger, William.

10. Careful attention has been given to the context in which individual names occur in the text and this has been used where possible to decide between alternative forms of the names. Thus if a name of a T.R.E. holder, which has both an Old English and a Scandinavian form, occurs in a list of several holders who bear Scandinavian names, the Scandinavian option is preferred. Similarly with a 1086 tenant holding from or coupled with a Norman, the Old German or Old French form of the name is preferred to the Old English. The reasoning behind these choices is explored in the Notes. 

Thus the overall principle is consistency: to leave in the Domesday spelling in italics forms that are obscure, and to regularize all others, noting, where possible, evidence that suggests that the Domesday form is in error, or that two apparently different names refer to one individual.

Identifying Individuals
The principal ways in which individuals might be identified are:
1. If they have a byname either in Domesday or in another document that can be securely connected with the presumed individual's occurrence in Domesday.
2. By the fact that the lands held in 1066 by a person or persons having the same name reappear in more than one county in the fief of a particular tenant-in chief or generally pass to the same 1086 subtenant. The rarer the name of the 1066 holder, the more likely that one individual is involved. Similarly, if a particular name appears as a subtenant more than once in the fief of a single tenant-in-chief.
3. By the geographical distribution of estates, that is if a particular name (the rarer the better) appears more than once in a particular locality or, if the person can be shown to be important, in several clusters.
4. If pairs or groups of the same names appear in more than one place, suggesting that the holders are kin-related.
5. If the assessed size of an estate is small or it is not valued at much it is less likely to have been held by an important thane or Norman.
	None of these methods is entirely convincing. It is uncertain what significance should be given to the distance between estates held by men of the same name. There is no reason to think that it was important to own or be a tenant of estates that were within a day's travel: the owner or tenant might in fact live on none of his estates, but merely enjoy their revenues, and in such a case the geographical spread (which might be the result of marriage or inheritance over more than one generation) is of no importance. Spots on the map can produce spectres in the mist or imaginary ley lines unless there is some factual underpinning. The evidence of the wills of quite modest people or of their deeds of gift to churches might show that dispersed estates in the hands of one individual were not rare. The problem is that with a hundred undifferentiated men called Leofwin, any number of individuals (from one to a hundred) can be produced on the basis of unexamined and unproved or unprovable assumptions. Further, the smallness of an estate is no guarantee that the individual was of no importance, since even great thanes held estates of widely differing sizes, as did their mighty Norman successors. The bynames become problematic when they are not used, as in cases where a Harold might be Earl Harold or a Tosti the earl of that name, or where they are quite common, such as cild. The others are subject to decreasing probability, especially since even in the case of the predecessors of 1086 tenants-in-chief and particularly of the latter's subtenants, more than one individual of the same name may be involved. 
	Even with very rare names there would sometimes seem to have been more than one person: there are only four mentions of the name Buggi in Domesday, three in Nottinghamshire, where two holdings of apparently separate individuals called Buggi appear in one entry (NTT 14,2). Moreover, the policy of the main scribe of Great Domesday led him to omit the names of a great many people, calling them merely 'thanes' or 'men of [the 1086 tenant-in-chief]', as shown by a comparison between the returns in the Liber Exoniensis and the counties in circuit II of Great Domesday. Therefore the 'rarity' of a name in fact cannot be proven; indeed, rarity is a difficult concept, bearing in mind that the individuals named in Domesday represent only a tiny percentage of those living in England in either 1066 or 1086. Finally, the Domesday forms of names, where Algarus can represent Old English Ælfgar, Æthelgar or Ealdgar or even Old Norse Alfgeirr, makes it even harder to link individuals, let alone identify them. 
	Nonetheless, these groups - the predecessors and the 1086 subtenants - call out to be systematically studied, and the aim of the present revision is to facilitate this. Possible individualizations, where there are bynames available, are given in the translation between asterisks within square brackets. In other cases it has been thought helpful to identify an individual by naming him from one of his estates or, where his holding is not given a location, from the hundred or wapentake in which it lay. These toponyms, placed within chevrons, are markers or identifiers, but they are not used of the person concerned in Domesday or in any other source.

BYNAMES

Patronymics  
‘Son of’ is used in place of 'fitz'.

Toponyms
Both English and French forms are preceded by ‘of’. Where the name is unidentified, it is left in Latin, in italics. Otherwise, the place-name is given its modern spelling. Identifications that are certainly erroneous but which appeared in the Phillimore printed edition have been corrected. Uncertainties or alternative identifications are referred to in the notes. An exception is, however, made for major figures who have acquired a traditional name among historians and others. These names had already appeared in the printed edition. Thus de Mandeville, of Mortimer and d’Oilly have not been replaced by 'of Manneville', 'of Mortemer', or 'of Ouilly'. It should, however, be emphasized that it is not always certain that the English families with these names were derived from the holders listed in Domesday Book; these Domesday holders are generally first generation Normans, Bretons, Flemings or Picardians, who still retained lands and often power at the places that give them their bynames. Inherited surnames really begin with the next or succeeding generations. These French places of origin have mostly been drawn from Tengvik, Old English Bynames, Loyd, Some Anglo-Norman Families, and Keats-Rohan, Domesday People. Information concerning the location of French places (département, arrondissement, canton, commune) has been taken from the Dictionnaire National des Communes de France, Paris (2001). 

Occupational Names
The definite article, ‘the’, is used at all times and the occupation not capitalized; thus: Ansger the cook, Waleran the hunter, William the usher. In many cases the detail of Domesday Book or the later history of the family or of the estate show that the holder really was a butler or steward. The alternative (that the name has, by 1086, become a surname) is scarcely ever demonstrable.

Bynames derived from attributes of physique or character 
These are usually translated, but some of the more flamboyant translations of the Phillimore printed edition have been revised, and where there is doubt the form found in the MS has been retained; thus Osmund Benz (DBY 17,13) is preferred to Osmund Bent.

3. RELIGIOUS HOUSES
Domesday Book often uses ecclesia (‘church’) for abbatia (‘abbey’), and sometimes uses both terms for the same place. The translation reproduces what Domesday Book says, but a note explains the type and status of the church, whether abbey, church, cathedral, secular college, minster or other. A further note gives a brief history of the religious house in question and brief information on its abbots, abbesses, bishops and archbishops for the period from 1066 to 1086.

F.R. Thorn
C.M.J. Thorn
December 2005