Smelt

Male
CPL
4 of 5

Discussion of the name

Smelt is a masculine OE name corresponding to the noun smelt, the word for a type of small fish, documented in an eighth-century glossary (OED: smelt, n.1, sense a). The delicate flavour of the European smelt (Osmerus eperlanus) is so distinctive as to make it likely that the OE word was used precisely for this species, as it was in Middle English and still is, rather than a generic term for small sea-fish of similar types. Smelt are abundant and easily caught, and would have been known all around the Channel and North Sea coasts of Anglo-Saxon England.

Only one person called Smelt is recorded from Anglo-Saxon England, a king’s priest who appears both as a charter witness and as a TRE landowner in DB (Smelt 1).

The name Smelt may have been a genuine Christian name rather than a byname (cf. Tengvik 1938: 358). Fishy bynames are not entirely unknown in Anglo-Saxon England, though less common than animal and bird bynames (Tengvik 1937: 361, 363). Smelt appears often enough as a Middle English surname in different parts of the country (Reaney 1997: 415; MED: smelt (n.), sense b) to suggest multiple origins, and hence repeated use as a personal name.

The alleged use of smelt as a byname, which has been widely cited (e.g. Tengvik 1938: 365; von Feilitzen 1937: 367 note 1), is almost certainly based on a misunderstanding. It occurs only once, in the name of a witness to Harthacnut’s confirmation of Cnut’s grants to the Norman abbey of Fécamp (S 982; Haskins 1918). The name appears there as Alwinesmelt (taken as Alwine smelt), but the witness list (in a text known only through eighteenth-century extracts from a lost cartulary) includes some strange readings and one demonstrable example of confusion over the status of a byname: the king’s thegn Osgot clapa (Osgot 4) appears as if two separate witnesses, Ansgoth and Clapp. Alwinesmelt should therefore be read as a blundered conflation of the names of two witnesses, Alwine and Smelt. Whether the witness list was corrupt in the cartulary copy or only in the antiquarian transcript is immaterial. Alwinesmelt appears after and before the names of known royal priests of the early 1040s, namely Herman, afterwards bishop of Ramsbury and Sherborne (Herman 2), and Spirites (Spirites 1), and there was certainly a king’s priest called Alwine (Barlow 1979: 156–8) as well as one called Smelt.

The name gave the Norman scribe of GDB some trouble. All three occurrences are written starting with Esm– rather than Sm–, reflecting how speakers of French articulated an unfamiliar combination of consonants (von Feilitzen 1937: 72 § 51). One of the three has turned the second half of the name from –meld (as it appears in the DB entry immediately following) into the more familiar name element –mund.

Bibliography

Barlow 1979: Frank Barlow, The English Church 1000–1066: A History of the Later Anglo-Saxon Church, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1979)

Haskins 1918: Charles H. Haskins, ‘A charter of Canute for Fécamp’, English Historical Review, 33 (1918), 342–4

MED: On-line Middle English Dictionary

Reaney 1997: 

P. H. Reaney, A Dictionary of English Surnames, 3rd edn with corrections and additions by R. M. Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)

S: P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968), revised by S. Kelly, R. Rushforth et al., The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, published online through Kemble: The Anglo-Saxon Charters Website, currently at http://www.esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html 

Tengvik 1938: Gösta Tengvik, Old English Bynames, Nomina Germanica 4 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1938)

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: Esmellt, Esmeld, Esmund

Spellings in IA: Sinet

Forms in modern scholarship:

  von Feilitzen head forms: Smelt

  Phillimore edition: Smelt (Kent), Esmelt (Suss.)

  Alecto edition: Smelt

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
Kent M9 St Margaret's at Cliffe Esmellt Smelt king's priest unnamed canons of Dover Unnamed canons of Dover in 1086 Robert the black 2.00 1.00 1.50 A Map
Sussex 11,63 Nonneminstre Esmund Smelt king's priest Edward, king Roger, earl unnamed abbess of Almenêches 13.00 20.00 25.00 A Map
Sussex 11,64 Nonneminstre Esmeld Smelt king's priest - Roger, earl unnamed abbess of Almenêches 1.00 1.50 1.50 A Map
Totals