What's in a Name?
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
~William
Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The Tapscott name and its variations first
appear in the middle 1500s, almost fifty years before Will S. wrote his famous
lines. The earliest Tapscott records are found in Southwest England, the “West
Country,” which encompasses the counties of Somerset,
Devon, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Cornwall, and the City and County of Bristol. The name emerged shortly after 1538,
when Thomas Cromwell, the Vicar General under Henry VIII, decreed that Anglican clergy should record in a book all christenings,
marriages, and burials for the preceding week after each Sunday service in the
presence of the churchwardens. Before then the few records made were written on
loose sheets, which were almost always lost.
The second syllable of “Tapscott” almost certainly comes
from Old English (OE) “cott” (related to Old Norse “kot”), meaning a small hut.
From this origin come the words “cottage” and “cot.” Early English place names
with the suffix “cott” were attached to humble settlements, often small farmsteads,
and were frequently compounded with a personal name, probably that of an early
tenant. “Tapp” is a county name, originally found almost solely in Devon and Somerset.
The standard singular OE possessive ending was usually “s” or “es” (no apostrophe).
Eventually the location of Tapp’s cottage or farmstead (“Tapps cott”) would
become known as “Tappscott,” and names such as “William of Tappscott” would
become “William Tappscott,” an early variant.
Today, no place name in
the Somerset/Devon area remotely resembles the name “Tappscott,” other
than Tippacott (near Lynton at the far west side of Exmoor) and Tascott, both in Devon.
The latter neighborhood, which is occasionally listed with North Petherwin near the Cornwall border, is named after a local family rather
than the converse. Any “Tappscott” settlement has disappeared in the mists of
time. “Tapps,” a manor of Baldwin de Brionne in Devon, is
listed in the Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, and a cottage,
farmstead, or small settlement associated with this manor could have become a
place name source for “Tapscott,” though there is no evidence of this.
Many West Country names have derivations similar to that
described here—”Nethercot” (lower cottage/farm, from OE “nether”), “Westcott”
(west), “Estcott” (or “Estcot,” east), “Prescott” (priest, from OE “prēost”), “Woolcott”
(or “Wolcott,” stream, from Middle English “wolle”), and “Chilcott” (from the
OE name “Ceola”). A common name source, however, does not necessarily mean a common
bloodline. Unrelated persons may have been associated with a settlement, farm,
or cottage known as “Tappscott,” and more than one location may have had this
designation. Nevertheless, the Tapscott name arose in a limited area, for
relatively few individuals, who may have been related.
The Last Name of TAPSCOTT was a variant of the name Tapper and was an occupational name 'the tapper' one who tapped the barrell, an Inkeeper. Occupational last names primarily denoted the actual occupation followed by the individual. At what period they became hereditary is a difficult problem. Many of the occupation names were descriptive and could be varied. In the Middle Ages, at least among the Christian population, people did not usually pursue uniqueized occupations exclusively to the extent that we do today, and they would, in fact, turn their hand to any form of work that needed to be done, particularly in a large house or mansion, or on farms and smallholdings. In early documents, last names frequently refer to the actual holder of an office, whether the church or state. A north of England name, which was extrapolated from the Old English TOEPPA. Early records of the name mention John le Tapscote, County Cambridge in 1273. Richard Tappscot, registered at Oxford Univeristy in 1614. Thomas Tapper (aged 18) embarked to America on the 'St. Christopher' in 1635. (List of Emigrants). William Tapper married Phebe Davies at St. George's Chapel, Mayfair, London in 1750. The names introduced into Britain by the Normans during and in the wake of the Invasion of 1066, are nearly all territorial in origin. The followers of William the Conqueror were a pretty mixed lot, and while some of them brought the names of their castles and villages in Normandy with them, many were adventurers of different nationalities attached to William's standard by the hope of plunder, and possessing no family or territorial names of their own. Those of them who acquired lands in England were called by their manors, while others took the name of the offices they held or the military titles given to them, and sometimes, a younger son of a Norman landowner, on receiving a grant of land in his new home dropped his paternal name and adopted that of his newly acquired property. The Norman Conquest of 1066 revolutionized our personal nomenclature. The Old English name system was little by little broken up and Old English names became less common, and were replaced by new names from the continent.
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