I understood that in Scotland Cattley meant Cattle pasture.
At least a Scotsman told me that was the definition of the name Cattley. And, he said
that he knew of a few families where he lived in Scotland..just across the border from
England. Only talked to him for a few minutes at our Pittsburgh airport so I did not have
a chance to ask him exactly where he was from.
Marge Cattley Pa. USA
--- "L L Milnes" <landairwater(a)xnet.co.nz> wrote:
From: "L L Milnes" <landairwater(a)xnet.co.nz>
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 11:46:13 +1300
To: CATLEY-L(a)rootsweb.com
Subject: [CAT...] Does Catley come from "Goat Clearing"?
Does Catley come from "goat clearing" not "cat clearing"?
Suggestion: Does "Catley" come from "goat clearing" rather than
"wild cat
clearing"?
The 'ploughed up again' idea in David's letter (below) fits in well with our
original idea of 'clearing'. The word 'cat' plus 'grassland,
clearing,
ploughed land'. It got me thinking about people in earlier times, and the
words they would have used in order to refer to another local family.
I was muttering "cat-lea, catley" as I did so.
Then I tried saying it with a hard G sound. "Gat-lea". I did this
because, especially before the increasing standardisation of spelling in
written language in (I think) the mid-1800s, the sound K has often become
mixed up with the sound G. That's the hard G as in 'go'. (Similarly
P/B, CH/J, T/D, etc.)
Then I looked up name associations with the word CAT or GAT. I came
across 'goat' and 'gate'.
Both are alternative possible origins in my opinion of the CAT in our family
group name.
GOAT:
Goat appears in surnames and place names a lot, and, importantly, appears
with a short "a" sound.
Gatcombe is one, meaning "goat valley".
Gateley or Gatley, another one, is said to come from "clearing with goats"
or "goats' cliff" (Herefordshire, Cheshire, Old English).
Gatwood or Gatward (found in Essex) is said to be Old English from "goat" or
"gate", but they say earlier usages would be more likely to be "goat"
and
the later ones "gate".
GATE:
Gate, Gates (Sussex), Gatehouse (Dorset): these names are said to derive
from the idea of a gate opening and closing on a field or body of water.
GATE in an area with Danish or Norwegian settlement: the surnames people
say it might mean "road" or "street" (Old Norse).
BTW, what date was the Enclosures Act in Britain? 1837?
I speculate, just my own idle thoughts here, that the Enclosures Act, which
fenced off open common ground into soon-to-be-privately-owned fields,
frustrating poorer people who were trying to graze an animal or two on the
common and get a bit of meat or money for their families, would have made a
"GATE" a very significant landmark at that time. (I am thinking of
possible dialogues of the time. "Where does he live?" "By the ploughed
land with the gate." Or (more unpleasantly): "Who is he?"
"He's that
corrupt horrible person who greased up to the local lord and as a
consequence now llives on the new-ploughed land with the new gate on it, the
same common land we used to graze our sheep on, but now we can't, so our
children haven't tasted meat for four months. Gate-lea."
YATE:
Then there is Yate, meaning gate or gap. Apparently in Old English the
singular had a Y but the plural was sounded as a hard G. So, it sounds
like one Yate, but two Gates. This crops up in surnames and placenames in
Glos, Lancs, Ches, Derbys, Staffs, Salop, Herefords and Bucks. (I
speculate that Bill Gates' ancestors were also rich, then, because they had
more than one gate on their house.) Of course we also have Yates as a
surname today, but this might be a corruption of the OE usage. Otherwise
it would have been Gates, not Yates.
My opinion: "goat" is more likely than "gate", because it has the
short
"a" sound like "cat".
Gatley. Gatcombe. Catley. Quite different from Gates-Yate-Gaitley.
So how about "the cleared land where the goats are"?
Catley would then mean "goat clearing".
This makes a lot more sense to me, as a country-dweller myself, goats being
valuable grazing animals and much more significant markers, than "cat
clearing". Cats move around too fast. Nobody sensible would name a family
because of nearby occasionally-seen wild cats, would they, when more
meaningful markers were available. Life was tough. Goats, yes, they
counted. Cats did not.
Lyn Milnes
in
New Zealand
----- Original Message -----
From: "Meredith-Fam-Hist" <meredith_meredith(a)ntlworld.com>
To: <CATLEY-L(a)rootsweb.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 6:43 AM
Subject: Re: [CAT...] Tofts
In the course of looking-up the 'Toft' and 'Bovate'
references I browsed
other
'lad terms' and noted the following:
Source: The Local Historian's Encyclopedia, by John Richardson. (ISBN 0
9503656
7 X)
'Lea': Grassland, but quite often arable land newly laid for pasture and
then
ploughed up again. Atlernatively spelt lay, leah, lee, 'ley'.
Having visited the Catley Priory site, I wonder......
David Meredith
Nottingham, ENG
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