Surnames from french and continental places

That many of our aristocratic surnames preserve the names of places in France has long been known and a craze for claiming a Norman origin has produced a crop of the wildest guesses. A mere superficial resemblance in spelling has derived Barwise from Barvaux and Pudsey from Puisey, despite the existence of places of these names in Westmorland and Yorkshire, whilst Baring-Gould’s derivation of Bisset, really a nickname ‘dark’, from Bissey rivals in absurdity his explanation of Longfellow as ‘a mutilated name from Longueville’ and of Longshanks as ‘a barbarous alteration of Longchamps’. 1 As a Devonshire man, he should have known that Vowles is a Devon pronunciation of Fowle and not from Veules, Fauvel or Vauville. Twopenny has no connexion with Tupigny. It is a nickname, whatever its real meaning may be.