SURNAME
YOU GOT IT FROM YOUR FATHER
IT WAS ALL HE HAD TO GIVE
SO IT'S YOURS TO USE AND CHERISH
FOR AS LONG AS YOU MAY LIVE
IF YOU LOSE THE WATCH HE GAVE YOU,
IT CAN ALWAYS BE REPLACED;
BUT A BLACK MARK ON YOUR NAME SON
CAN NEVER BE ERASED
IT WAS CLEAN THE DAY YOU TOOK IT
AND A WORTHY NAME TO BEAR
WHEN HE TOOK IT FROM HIS FATHER,
THERE WAS NO DISHONOR
THERE
SO MAKE SURE YOU GUARD IT WISELY
AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE
YOU'LL BE GLAD THE NAME IS SPOTLESS
WHEN YOU GIVE IT TO YOUR SON
Author unknown
In
my research and study of surnames I have noticed that a
person's name is very important to an individual. If a
person is referred to by a name other than their given
name he will be quick to mention the mistake. People
generally are offended when their name is not pronounced
or spelled correctly. Different spellings of an original
surname are a common occurrence. Your name represents a
character. It gives you identity. By use of your surname
you will be quickly identified with a particular family
and their prominent traits. Society has a tendency to
look upon us with pleasure or contempt according to what
our surname represents to the community. What type of
people comes to mind when the name Child/Childs is
mentioned? Did our ancestors leave us a blessing or a
curse? Is our name spotless or are there black marks
upon it? What legacy will you leave in your surname to
your descendants? Please consider Proverbs 22:1.
PROVERBS 22:1
"A GOOD NAME IS RATHER TO BE
CHOSEN THAN RICHES."
The origin and development of
the name Child came from the word Hildr, of the Norse
legend, of the Scandinavian country, in the 4th century.
It can be traced to the rudimental and interchangeable
letters, al, el, il, ol. These letters are the parents
or producers of many terms and words that express deity,
holiness, power, supernatural attributes in all
languages and religion. The letters "il" of the name
Child is what denotes deity, holiness. The name Child at
first was an Ethnic term meaning deity; it then became a
title for royalty (spelled Childe). It was used as a
title of a king first with Gishelder, the Childe, in the
Norse legend of The Iliad of the Norse in the 4th
century. Childe means a young man of noble birth. It was
used as the equal of prince and knight by the earliest
writers. It was a title held by the first born son of a
king or earl, until he inherited the title of his
ancestors or gained new honors by his own skills, it
then became a term referring to all the sons in a
family. Later the term became a generic term referring
to any child, the young of the human species of either
sex.
Surnames were almost unknown
to Anglo-Saxon England, and were introduced by the
Norman-French during the last Saxon and first Norman
reigns of kings. The surname, at first was written
between the lines in smaller letters not on the line
with the Christian name. Individual surnames originated
for the purpose of more specific identification. The
four primary sources from which a surname was derived
are: occupation, location, father's name, or personal
characteristics. The surname Child appears to be both
occupational and patronymic (coming from a specific
person) in origin.
As the title Childe became
discarded it was generally adopted as a surname by
descendants or dependents. The literal sense of the word
indicates that the name should be written Childe,
because it appears that the head of the family towards
the end of the Anglo-Saxon domination of England used
his Anglo-Saxon title of Childe as his surname. We are
the descendants of a family whose leader or head of the
family was among the first to take a surname. He
probably took his Anglo-Saxon title of (Childe) as his
surname towards the end of the Anglo-Saxon domination of
England, in the 5th and 6th centuries. After the
Norman-French conquest of England under William the
Conqueror, members of the family used as their surname
L’Enfant for some generation. The original mode of
spelling the surname was with the terminal "e" (Childe),
from its translation in Great Britain from the
Norman-Frank form. The percentage of families retaining
the original "e," is larger in England than America,
while those adding an "s" are much less. The latter
spelling is incorrect. Childs is an error of modern
times. Probably it came about from careless usage of the
plural or possessive form. As previously stated there
are several instances in the early history of England
where the name took the French form, L'Enfant. The term
came to the Anglo-Saxon through the French form of the
Scandinavian language.
Dictionaries of surnames
indicate spelling variations of our surname to be:
Child, Chilled, Child’s, Chills, Chile, Chilies, Childe
and Childs. The name has taken on various spellings in
this country, sometimes taking on the letter "e," but
more often the terminal "s." In my research I found the
first four generations in America spelled the surname
Child. Occasionally at an early period the letter "s"
was used. But later on the "s" was more frequently used.
In our family line, in the fifth generation, it is found
in some records of business on the Upton, MA, town books
the letter ‘s’ was added to the name of Josiah Child(s)
and likewise the same can be said of his son, Asa
Child(s). At that time more and more family members
began adding an s to the spelling of the surname.
Whatever the reason for the change, in the spelling, it
is unfortunate because it sometimes leads members of the
same branch to a think they were not kin to one another.
The variations in spelling of the surname and its use or
omission of the "e" or the "s" do not affect our
identity to the ancestral line.
