Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ... The Wade Genealogy CHAPTER I. THE ORIGIN AND ETYMOLOGY OF THE NAME OF WADE AND HEREIN OF DUKE WADA. () "Sine nomine, homo non est." Puteanua: Diatr: de Erycio. "To find out the true originall of surnames is full of difflcultie."--Camden. Wade, according to Lower (Patronymica Britanntca), is one of the names that man derives from the face of nature. Britaine's Remaines (1614) speaks of it as a baptismal name in use in England at the Conquest (1066). It is one of the oldest English names, as the following folk-rhyme, (quoted by Lower), will show: -- With Thorpe and Bourne; Coke, Carter, Oke, Combe, Bury, Don and Stoive and Stoke, With Ey and Port; Shaw, Worth and WADE, Hill, Gate, Well, Stone are many made Cliff, Marsh, and Mouth and Don and Sand, And Beck and Sea with numbers stand. As to the derivation of the name, the same author ascribes it to the Anglo-Saxon wad, as importing a meadow or a ford. The late Dr. E. Cobham Brewer, also, in his excellent Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, derived the name from the Anglo-Saxon wad, a ford; wadan, to ford or go through (a meadow), but erroneously instances the Anglo-Saxon name for the month of June--Weydmonat; as, so called, according to Verstegan, "because the beasts did then weyd in the meadow, that is to say, go and feed there." Thus, an investigator may expect to find innumerable instances of the surname from the earliest date when surnames came into general use. Lower also informs us that the surname Wade itself (a). The compiler acknowledges the deep debt of gratitude due to his friend Mr. Wm. Addison Hervey, A.M., Instructor in Germanic Languages and Literatures. Columbia University, New York City, for a considerable and valuable portion of this first chapter. To his painstaking...