Re: Snow Was: Smoking. Was: Clarke Award Finalists 2001

On Fri, 4 Jul 2025 21:29:37 +0100, Robert Carnegie
<rja.carnegie@gmail.com> wrote:

On 26/06/2025 20:32, William Hyde wrote:

Paul S Person wrote:

<snippo mucho>

Are you sure his name did not come from an ancestor being ... a Church
man? Just like "Smith" or "Miller" (among others).

 
Usually the name came from people who worked for the church but were not
ordained, sextons, vergers, and so on.  At the time the name arose
clerics were Catholic, and thus did not acknowledge their children.

>
Without direct knowledge, I was about to suggest
that it has a meaning that is nothing to do with
any of that but was originally spelled differently
anyway.  Such as, arbitrarily, someone who sells
oranges.  I don't know how you'd get "Churchman"
from that, but I'm confident that it's feasible.
In fact let me try: oranges are Spanish, therefore
Roman Catholic, so let's suppose that they were
called, hmm, church-apples in England - that'll do.
Even though I just made it up.

Meanwhile, <https://namediscoveries.com/surnames/churchman> supports
the idea that the surname comes from, well, a church man.

However, I have no idea how reliable that site is.

Sadly, Wikipedia just puts of list of famous people named "Churchman".

https://www.alamy.com/a1942-advertisement-for-churchmans-no-1-cigarettes-manufactured-in-ipswich-the-company-produced-a-million-cigarette-a-day-in-1965-and-employed-over-1000-people-the-company-finally-closed-in-1992-this-wartime-advert-always-suggests-emptying-the-packet-at-the-time-of-purchase-and-leaving-the-package-with-the-shopkeeper-presumably-to-cope-with-wartime-shortages-an-early-form-of-recycling-image553687170.html

Very nice.
--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"