昨日の記事「#2364. ノルマン征服後の英語人名のフランス語かぶれ」 ([2015-10-17-1]) で触れた通り，イングランドで名 (first name) に加えて姓 (surname) を採用するようになったのは，概ねノルマン征服以降であり，採用の順序も社会的身分の高い者から低い者にかけてであった．13--14世紀にかけて一般に拡がったようだが，地域差もあり，北部は南部よりも遅かった．Coates (327--28) の説明を引用する．

Surnames came into use among the Norman aristocracy shortly before the Conquest. The practice was neither universal nor stable then or in the early period of Norman rule in England, though by about 1250 it was the norm in the highest social class and the knightly and other taxpaying classes. Between 1300 and 1400 the practice had spread to the urban moneyed classes, though it appears that in some towns, such as York, the lower classes might be without surnames till as late as 1600. Rural small free tenants, for whom evidence is more scant, began to acquire surnames before 1300 in the south, and the practice moved northwards, with new surnames still being formed in Lancashire as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and this development is mirrored by that of the servile class. The adoption of surnames did not happen overnight anywhere, and our knowledge of the process is hindered by the different degrees to which social classes are represented in the record. . . / Surnames are distinguishing names given to people bearing the same personal name, and many of these came to be inherited, though the system is not in fully complete operation everywhere till the 1600s. Those which have been inherited were of course the ones originally bestowed on males, for a complex of reasons involving unambiguous identification of the rightful heir.

　イングランド内で完全に制度化するまでには，近代を待たなければならないほど，姓の慣習はゆっくりと広まっていったことになる．方言差という問題に関しては，中英語における多くの言語変化が北部から南部へという方向を示すのに対し，言語慣習の変化と呼ぶべき姓の採用がむしろ南部から北部へと拡がったというのがおもしろい．
　言語的革新の伝播がしばしば北から南へという方向を示したことについては，「#941. 中英語の言語変化はなぜ北から南へ伝播したのか」 ([2011-11-24-1])，「#1843. conservative radicalism」 ([2014-05-14-1])，「#1902. 綴字の標準化における時間上，空間上の皮肉」 ([2014-07-12-1]) を参照されたい．

　・ Coates, Richard. "Names." Chapter 6 of A History of the English Language. Ed. Richard Hogg and David Denison. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 312--51.

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