Æscmann

Male
DWP
4 of 5

Discussion of the name

Æscmann is an Old English masculine name that could either represent a standard personal name comprising the elements æsc ‘ash-tree, spear, ship’ and mann ‘person, man’, or a hypocoristic form of a different name in Æsc-; but because the compound also existed as an appellative æscmann ‘sailor, pirate’ in Old English an origin of the name Æscmann as a byname is more likely (von Feilitzen 1937: 182; von Feilitzen and Blunt 1971: 186; Insley 2003: 375, 379).

There are entries in the PASE corpus for Æscman (recte Æscmann) 1-7, representing moneyers active at Lincoln, Stamford and an unspecified mint between 955 and 1023, and for Æscmann 1 (recte Æscmann 8), a catch-all category for occurrences of this name in DB.

Bibliography

Insley 2003: J. Insley, ‘Pre-Conquest personal names’, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 23 (Berlin and New York, 2003)

von Feilitzen 1937: Olof von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1937)

von Feilitzen and Blunt 1971: O. von Feilitzen and C. Blunt, ‘Personal names on the coinage of Edgar’, in P. Clemoes and K, Hughes, eds, England Before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1971)

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Assemanus

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Æscmann

  Phillimore edition: Aescman

  Alecto edition: Æscmann

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire Phil. ref. Vill DB Spelling Holder 1066 Lord 1066 Tenant-in-Chief 1086 1086 Subtenant Fiscal Value 1066 Value 1086 Value Conf. Show on Map
Suffolk 58,1 Higham Assemanus Æscmann 'of Higham' Robert fitzWimarc Gundwin the chamberlain - 1.00 1.50 1.00 B Map
Totals