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Surnames/tags: Blood Bloud Blud

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Contents 1 Blood as Word & Name in English History 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Caveat Indagator 1.3 Blood vs. Blood from 1150 to 1650 1.3.1 Blod 1.3.2 Blode & Blodde 1.3.3 Blud(e), Bludd(e), Bloud(e), Bloudde 1.3.4 Blood & Bloode 1.4 Conclusions 1.5 Notes & Sources

Blood as Word & Name in English History

Author: Garry M. Blood, 18 Nov 2022

Introduction

Identifying the origins of the surname Blood has thwarted every attempt at solving by generations of researchers. Given the lack of extensive personal records from the 12th and 13th centuries, the period in which the surname first appears, it’s unlikely we will ever be able to prove the precise intended meaning or purpose of the name, assuming there was only one.

But what is clear from the sparse record is that, in every era in which the surname appears, and in every variant in which it appears, that same word as a noun in the form of English spoken at that time primarily referred to the bodily fluid blood. Early on, it only ever referred to the bodily fluid, but even when other meanings developed in Middle English, such as blood as a metaphor meaning close family or kin (e.g., “we are of the same blood),” these were still based on the fact that the other person was of the same bloodline, meaning they shared blood in the physical sense. So, blood as a term for the human bodily fluid is the meta or overarching definition of the noun in each era. The evolution of the surname Blood has followed the evolution of the English word for blood in lockstep for the last 800 years. This paper will explore this evolution by examining the main variants of blood, both as noun and as surname, in chronological order. See Blood Name Study: The Variant Spellings for more information on the minor variants.

Caveat Indagator

When I discuss the various spellings of the surname Blood in different periods, please note that in the majority of cases this isn't a statement of how that person spelled their surname, because in the majority of cases the person who bore the name was completely illiterate. The spelling of the surname was that selected by the scrivener, clerk, or court official who heard them say their name, then wrote down his best approximation of what he heard. And what this paper will show is that, in every era what the person doing the writing heard was the same as the current word for blood in that form of English.

Blood vs. Blood from 1150 to 1650

Blod

The Surname: Blod is the oldest recorded form of the surname Blood, dating to the second half of the 12th century and possibly to the early 12th century. There are well over one hundred records of Blod used as a surname during the period when Middle English was spoken (from about 1100 to about 1500). Even though there are no examples of the surname Blod in the period in which Old English was spoken –- likely because it almost certainly didn’t exist yet -– it seems probable the Old English word was an influence on the very earliest examples of the surname, especially since the transition from Old English to Middle English was a gradual and uneven process, taking more time in some parts of England than in others.

The Noun in Old English: Even though our date range starts during the period when Middle English was already established, it's clear the Old English word for blood directly continued into early Middle English virtually unchanged. Therefore, it's best to do a quick explanation of the history of the OE form, which would have been in use from at least 450 CE.

Old English blod (represented as blód or blōd in modern translations), meaning “the fluid that circulates in the arteries and veins,” comes from the Proto-Germanic *blodam (blood). This same root is also the source of Old Frisian blod, Old Saxon blôd, Old Norse bloð, Gothic bloþ (blōth), Middle Dutch bloet, Modern Dutch bloed, Old High German bluot, and Modern German Blut. According to some scholars, the Proto-Germanic *blodam comes from the Proto Indo-European *bhlo-to-, with a reconstructed meaning of “to swell, gush, or spurt,” or “that which bursts out.”^[1] Thus the word blood may have evolved as a euphemism for the bodily fluid instead of the bodily fluid itself; i.e., it is “that which gushes out.” Proto-Germanic had one or more words for the bodily fluid, but there appears to have been a cultural taboo that prevented their spoken use, leaving only the euphemism.^[2]

The Noun in Middle English: Blod continued to mean blood in Middle English.^[3]

Pronunciation: In both Old and Middle English blod was pronounced with a closed long vowel (the closed long-o or ō) and would have rhymed with the Modern English words code and toad.^[4]

Blode & Blodde

The Surname: Blodde is first attested in Westminster in 1321, while Blode is first documented in Hereford in 1393, Hereford being a place where the original Blod spelling had previously been extensively documented for well over one hundred years. They are very clearly minor variants of each other, as the the -d- and -dd- in English make the same sound. This appears to be a matter of personal spelling styles by individual scribes, something that would later cause the explosion of Early Modern English variants. While Blodde is now extinct, Blode is the second-oldest variant of the surname that still exists today. But it is nonetheless very rare.

The Noun in Middle English: The word blode existed in Middle English as the dative case of blod and eventually as a word for blood in its own right.^[5] It also developed a meaning in Middle English of “a blood-relation, a person, a living being,”^[6] but this meaning only evolved well after the surname was already established in its original Blod form, and so cannot be the origin of a surname that pre-dates it.

Pronunciation: In Middle English, the closed long-o (code, toad) coexisted with open long-o (stone, bone),^[4] and so in early Middle English blode/blodde could have been pronounced with either the closed long-o or the open long-o. But the Great Vowel Shift in Middle English, which started about 1400, morphed long-o (ō) into long-u (ū), as in the modern word school. Had the change stopped there, blod/blode/blodde and blood would now rhyme with brood or food.

Blud(e), Bludd(e), Bloud(e), Bloudde

The Surname: Despite their antiquated look (especially Bludd and Bludde) these variants are all from Early Modern English, the form spoken from about 1500 to 1650. From only two widespread versions of the surname, Blod and Blode, there was an explosion of variations in the early modern period as significant changes to both spelling and pronunciation altered Middle English into its modern form. While much diminished in numbers, the Blod and Blode variants also survived into the era of Early Modern English. The variants Blud, Blude, Bludd, and Bloud still exist in small numbers today.

The Noun in Early Modern English: These are all attested variants of the word for blood in Early Modern English.^[7]

Pronunciation: The Great Vowel shift, which had already altered blod from rhyming with road to rhyming with stool, kept going. By the transition to Early Modern English in 1500, the Great Vowel Shift was well on its way changing the long-u (ū) sound into various versions of the short-u (ŭ) sound in many words, such as good, book, hook and crook.^[4] But in two cases, the shift continued to a full short-u sound. Flood and blood would be pronounced the same in Modern English if they were spelled flud and blud, something that isn’t the case for the less-shifted examples -- book could not be rendered as buk nor hook as huk in Modern English. The next closest example would instead be roof, which in some regional North American accents is pronounced ruf. Nonetheless, all these words retain the -oo-, a fossilized echo of their long Middle English pronunciations. The plethora of spellings of Blood in this period is probably down to different people speaking different regional versions of English in different parts of the country all trying to adapt to an on-going change in word pronunciation in an era in which literacy was low and standardisation of spelling simply did not exist. A more in-depth and precise study of the exact geographic origins of some of these variants would likely reveal that regional accents were a significant factor in their formation. Interestingly, there are several examples in the period of Early Modern English of scribes or clerks using the spelling Blud/Bludd or Bloud/Bloude to write about people who themselves we know for certain used the spelling Blood when writing their own names (i.e., from their autograph signatures), in some cases even when signing the very document in which their name was spelled as Blud or Bloud. Given the lack of standardised spelling in English until well into the 18th century, these scribes and clerks clearly heard something they rendered as equivalent to the Old English long-o or the equivalent Middle English double-o (especially for the Blude and Bludde examples, which appear to be attempts to render blūd) or as something they heard as the modern fully shortened blŭd (i.e., for Blud and Bludd). The Bloud/Bloude spelling was most likely an attempt to use the French -ou-, which matched the -oo- in food -- in which case it would have most likely been merely a variant of Blude/Bludde if they were in fact meant to render blūd. An alternative, that the -ou- was intended to represent the -ou- in loud or proud, seems unlikely as there is no known example of any variant of Blood rhyming with those words.

Blood & Bloode

The Surname: The Bloode spelling is older than Blood, being first attested in Wiltshire in 1400 during the Middle English linguistic period and at the start of the Great Vowel Shift. It is also found in 1475 in Buckinghamshire, but became much more widespread in the mid-1500s, appearing in larger numbers in Norfolk and London. The dominant modern spelling, Blood, is not attested with certainty until 1569 in Norfolk and Northamptonshire and then from 1570 in London.^[8]

The Noun in Middle English and Early Modern English: Bloode existed as a spelling for blood in late Middle English and Early Modern English and blood is found in Early Modern English.^[7] They both refer to the bodily fluid.

Pronunciation: The first instance of the surname variant Bloode occurs just at the beginning of the Great Vowel Shift and is almost certainly an attempt to match the spelling of the surname to the evolving way of pronouncing the noun. So, we can be reasonably confident that this instance of the surname Bloode from 1400 rhymed with food and brood. It seems likely that later in the Great Vowel Shift, bloode/blood would have transitioned through a period when they would have shortened somewhat to rhyme with book or foot. The early loss of the -e from bloode in Early Modern English is probably an indication that the long -oo- had given way to one of the shorter-o pronunciations by then. And ultimately, as we’ve seen already, the -oo- in only this word and flood shorted all the way to full short-u, and so by the time Early Modern English had fully transitioned into Modern English in the second half of the 17th century, blood would almost certainly have been pronounced as blŭd, rhyming with flood.

Conclusions

Language Family: Whatever the origin of the surname Blood, it seems indisputable at this point that it comes from the West Germanic family of languages. This is a worthwhile outcome given that in the early Middle Ages the island of Britain was host to two language families, West Germanic (the four dialects of Old English) and Insular Celtic (Brittonic and Goidelic). This analysis of the evolution of the surname versus the noun strongly indicates the ancestors of the Bloods should be placed within the community of original West Germanic speakers, or within a native population that was assimilated by West Germanic speakers, or at least one that adopted the Old English language along with the accompanying Anglo-Saxon material culture. We know from the Y-DNA analysis that, for the Midlands Bloods at least, it’s the first one: that group of English Bloods carry distinct West Germanic genetic markers.

Meaning of the Name: The extremely close parallel relationship between the surname Blood and the bodily fluid blood indicates there must have been some relationship. It seems clear when people in the Middle Ages heard the surname, they also heard the noun for the bodily fluid, to the extent that both evolved in parallel for centuries. This gives us our first criterion for any hypothesis concerning the origin of Blood: The meaning of the surname must have been so closely linked to the word blood in all versions of English that the two have evolved in lockstep ever since.

That the surname appeared in at least four and possibly as many as seven different areas in England in the space of about two hundred fifty years tends to indicate that, whatever the origin, Blood had an association with blood that was well known enough that several English families in different areas of the country adopted it as a surname once the need arose. This gives us our second evaluation criterion that any hypothesis must fulfill: The meaning behind the surname must have been widely recognized and widely understood by people in different parts of England.

NEXT>>>>>Origins of the Bloods: Surname Distribution in England, 1100 to 1750

Notes & Sources

1. ↑ Compare Gothic bloþ (pronounced as blōth) with bloma (blōma), the Gothic word meaning flower. Bloom is still a synonym for flower in English, and “to bloom” is the verb for a flower opening up, or bursting out, of its bud. Likewise, Blume (blūma) is the modern German word for flower as well, both the English and German having come from the same Proto-Germanic root.
2. ↑ The Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=Blood
3. ↑ The Middle English Dictionary -- entry for blọ̄d, meaning 1a. Published by the Regents of the University of Michigan, last updated Nov 2019, online at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary / entry for blọ̄d at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED5268
4. ↑ ^{4.0 4.1 4.2} “Blood is thicker than water,” The Oxford Etymologist, a blog by Anatoly Liberman, 19 Sep 2018. Online at https://blog.oup.com/2018/09/etymology-blood-is-thicker-than-water/
5. ↑ Bradley, Henry. A Middle English Dictionary, Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1891. Online at https://archive.org/details/middleenglishdic00stra/
6. ↑ Mayhew, A.L. and Skeat, Walter W. A Concise Dictionary of Middle English, Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1888. Online at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10625/pg10625-images.html
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} The Lexicon of Early Modern English, online at https://leme.library.utoronto.ca/
8. ↑ It may have occurred twice in Willesden near London in 1441, but this needs verification from the original documents.