Names: and Their Meaning

Why is it called Lloyd's? Why the Green Man? Leopold Wagner traced the origins of everything the Victorians had a name for — countries, tavern signs, flowers, wines, London streets, nicknames and battles — and found a story behind nearly all of them.

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The Word Hoard

Where the everyday words came from — and how badly they got mangled on the way.

Leopold Wagner spent a career chasing words back to their origins, and the best ones turn out to be corruptions, puns and misunderstandings that stuck. Each of these links to the entry it came from.

  1. A pawnbroker is called “Uncle” because of a Latin pun two thousand years old: Roman pawnbrokers hung pledges on a large hook, an uncus. “Gone to the uncus” is the ancestor of up the spout.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames: French
  2. Beefeaters have nothing to do with beef. It is a mangling of Buffetiers — the Yeomen of the Guard under Henry VIII, named for their attendance on the King's buffet, or side-table.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames: Policemen
  3. Policemen were Bobbies and Peelers for the same man twice over. Robert Peel raised the Irish constabulary in 1814 and the London force in 1829, and the nation nicknamed them after both his names.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames: Policemen
  4. A spinster is literally a woman at the spindle. And wife comes from Anglo-Saxon wyfan, to weave — both words for women built out of the cloth trade.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames
  5. A grass widow is a worn-down “grace widow” — a widow by grace, or courtesy, rather than by bereavement.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames
  6. A buggy is a wrecked bourgeois — the carriage for the middle classes. A gig takes its name from the Italian giga, a romp, and the French gigue, a jig, for the way it bounced.Read it: Carriages
  7. The dog-cart earned its name honestly: it was built for sportsmen to drive their pointers and setters to the shoot, in a box under the seat.Read it: Carriages
  8. The Brougham (1839) and the Stanhope are both named for the noblemen who adopted them first — the Victorian equivalent of a car being named after its most famous owner.Read it: Carriages
  9. The Battle of the Standard (Northallerton, 29 August 1138) is named for the English standard, which was a tall crucifix carried on a wagon.Read it: Battles
  10. The Secretary-bird is named for office life: the tufts of feathers on each side of its head look like quill pens stuck behind the ear.Read it: Birds
  11. A miniature was never about being small. It comes from the Miniatori, monks who painted illuminated initials in minium — red lead. The size came later, by accident of association.Read it: Counterfeit Presentments
  12. A profile is Latin per filum, “by a thread” — the outline drawn as a single line.Read it: Counterfeit Presentments
  13. The Charterhouse is an English mouth's attempt at La Chartreuse, the French district where the Carthusians began.Read it: Buildings: Hospital
  14. A hospital was originally a house for travellers, from hospes, a stranger or guest — making hospital and hospitality the same word, separated by centuries of illness.Read it: Buildings: Hospital
  15. Rye House, where the plot to assassinate Charles II was uncovered on 12 June 1683, is named for no grain at all: rye was an old word for a common, from ree, a watercourse.Read it: Buildings: James
  16. The Banqueting Hall in Whitehall is the last surviving fragment of the palace Cardinal Wolsey set aside for the See of York — which is why it was called York House.Read it: Buildings: James
  17. The Savoy is named for Peter of Savoy, uncle to Henry III's queen, who was granted the land in 1249. The chapel standing today replaced the one that burned on 7 July 1864.Read it: Buildings: Savoy
  18. St Andrew Undershaft is called that because its steeple was shorter than the maypole that stood opposite its south door. The church is named for losing a height contest to a pole.Read it: Buildings: Street
  19. The Anabaptists (about 1521) were named by their opponents: having been baptised as infants, they necessarily did it again as adults — so, “re-baptisers.”Read it: Creeds, Sects, and Denomina-: Puritans
  20. The Shakers, first heard of under Charles I, were named for the convulsive movements that formed part of their worship — a nickname that outlived every other thing about them.Read it: Creeds, Sects, and Denomina-: Quakers
  21. Monotheism is presented here as the earliest form of religion on earth, and religion itself derives from Latin religare, to bind.Read it: Creeds, Sects, and Denomina-: Greek
  22. A humbug is defined with lawyerly precision: one whose representations, though sounding plausible enough, are not to be relied upon.Read it: Class Names and Nicknames: Hume
Rights & ReuseThe complete text of Names: and Their Meaning (1891) is in the public domain in the United States — like all works published before 1928 — and is free to read, download, quote, teach from, and reuse. This digital edition (its transcription, restored images, and site design) is © 2026 PhotoOpAI, and any editorial commentary we add is clearly marked as ours; the underlying public-domain text carries no such restriction.