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Bucca

Discussion of the name

Bucca is a masculine OE name identical with the common noun bucca, the word for a male goat and perhaps by the eleventh century for a male deer, a buck in the modern sense (OED: buck, n.¹). Plainly it originated as a nickname, and it was still used as such in the later eleventh century, in the byname of Godwig se bucca, who bought the freedom of a slave dairywoman in Somerset some time in William I’s reign (K 936; Pelteret 1990: no. 76). But it was also used as a regular forename in the 720s (Buca 1) and the 880s (Bucca 1), and there is no reason to suppose that the solitary example in DB was other than a personal name.

Bibliography

K: John M. Kemble, Codex diplomaticus aevi saxonici, 6 vols (London: English Historical Society, 1839–48)

Pelteret 1990: David A. E. Pelteret, Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1990)

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

Forms of the name

Spellings in Domesday Book: Boche

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Bucca

  Phillimore edition: Buck

  Alecto edition: Bucca

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
Shire Kent	Phil. ref. 5,196	Vill Leueberge	DB Spelling Boche	Holder 1066 Bucca 'of Leueberge'	Lord 1066 Edward, king	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Odo, bishop of Bayeux	1086 Subtenant Thurstan Tinel	Fiscal Value 0.56	1066 Value 0.40	1086 Value 0.40	Confidence A	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

People of this name

• Bucca 3 - Bucca ‘of Leueberge’ (Kent), fl. 1066