Some contexts of possible meaning
The frequently repeated claim that Plant means a 'gardener' lacks
certainty – it relies on the names Plantebene and
Planterose while ignoring other medieval English names such as
Plantegenest, Plantefolie, Plantefene and de
Plantes. Earlier for example in 1198, the name de Planteiz
occurs near the settlement of le Plantis in Normandy indicating that de
Plantes in England likely refers to origins from that same place.
In France, Plante and
Plantard
are held to refer to someome living at or near a newly planted place (e.g.
with vines). On the other hand, possible interpretations of Plant as a
nickname, instead of being locative, have been proposed. For
Plante and Plantie in SW France, there is an 1881
attestation of a Langue D'Òc phrase una bella planta d'homme
(a handsome sprig of a man) which is said to be an ironical reference to a
small man. Also, for the main English Plant homeland, there is
comprehensive dated evidence for deconstructing modern science to give sense
as a basic soul (man's vegetative soul), perhaps one yet to be
instilled with the intellective Word of God, though a threefold division of
God's planted soul (vegetative, animal, intellective) had hardly taken hold
at the time of the first evidence for the medieval Plant name in Western
Europe. That aside, the name Plantul, which dates back in Normandy
to the 1190s, means a seedling or young plant and so also did the word plant
in early times. Thus, we have Plant as a possible ontological metaphor for
a young person or child or novice, as included in the full version of the
Oxford English Dictionary (OED n1 1b, Obsolete).
Much depends on the medieval context. Understanding the circumstances
relevant to the early Plant surname present challenges for a modern mind.
Key to the Plant name, there was the 12th-century flowering of chivralry and
knighthood especially in the contested lands of Normandy, followed by a 14th
century decline with famine and pestilence and then the 16th-century
dissolution in England of the monasteries. Various attempts have been made
to represent some of this in relatively easy to follow films, some being
less faithful to the medieval record than others. For example, a film that
is somewhat sensitive to backwards travel through time is Bresson's
'Lancelot du Lac'; this addresses the present with ancient myth and is known
for its 'constant anachronisms' as a deliberate signal to some problematic
differences of time. For example, the odd inclination of cinematic knights
to wear armour at all times is here given meaning, when king Arthur enjoins
it as a mark of preparedness. This film's ruined habitations, bare walled
rooms and unadorned tents are appropriate to tenacious monastic dedication
in an age of earthly decline. [Williams p388]
[WILLIAMS, David J, Sir Gawain in Films, pp 385-392 in
A Companion to the Gawain Poet, edited by Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson,
1997, ISSN 0261-9814]
These simple nods to differences in the times are not incongruous with
the Plants' 14th-century homeland, with its knightly manor at Horton
adjoining Leek's Cistercian abbey moorlands. For this, we are especially
blessed with the written words of the local 14th-century poem, Sir Gawain
and the Green Knight, which is recognised by advanced scholars as a tour de
force of Middle English literature. Though at heart it is an Arthurian
myth, it provides rare medieval insights into the detail and feel of
relevant surroundings. A meaning for Plant as 'a plant of God's craft'
makes more sense here than most might believe.
The French past participle planté means planted and this
might have held a special significance for those medieval lords who took in
hand extra lands in England following the largely permanent loss of Normandy
by England in 1204. Lands and castles were lost in Normandy by the earl of
Chester and the earl William Longspée, with their losses being not
far from the first recorded instance of the Plante name: this first
known record is for 1180, when Durand Plante was fined at Coutances for
fighting duels – this was near the western coast of the Cotentin
peninsular in Normandy. If we assume that men called Plante were
not themselves displaced to England, though that is not inconsistent with
the existing DNA evidence, we still have that these Chester-Longspée
lords could have brought with them a culture for the name Plante to
ascribe to some of their peasants, likely ones who lived at or near a
'planted place' thereby retaining an already established sense for the Plant
name. This might relate for example to a freshly established settlement
with newly assarted lands, which was the circumstance of Dieulacres Abbey
founded by the earl of Chester during 1214-32. The adjoining manor at
Horton was granted in 1218 to Henry de Audley, both estates lying near the
border of north Staffordshire with Cheshire.
More widely, origins for the Plant name can be seen through a lens that
plant was a simple Latin word for setting down basic life to spring up,
around which various shades of understanding have developed. The Roman
Empire and Church spread its Latin senses for more than a millennium before
the Plant surname formed alongside such languages as: Old English;
Anglo-Norman; dialects of Middle English; the langue d'oïl of Anjou;
the Gascon dialect of langue d'òc; old Aquitainian; Swiss Romansh;
and for example Welsh. In the full version of the Oxford English
Dictionary, the entry for plant is much longer than most, with some meanings
that are relevant to standard types of surname, some having become archaic
to a modern mind.
In particular, there was the Latin Vulgate Bible throughout western
Europe with related senses applicable to the Plant name. Such senses as the
aforesaid Old and Middle English 'a plant of God's virtuous craft'
(OED v 3a, C9th) seem applicable especially in a religious
setting, such as in the Lichfield diocese which includes the most populous
homeland for the early Plant name, especially around Dieulacres Abbey. This
'planted craft' sense occurs in an Old English translation by king Alfred of
a work by Boethius who was the translator of the bible into Latin and it can
be considered alongside other biblical senses of 'planted people' in a
'planted place'. It would seem mistaken to ignore such an old sense for
plant as a surname, bearing in mind that biblical names were the source of
many English Christian forenames alongside the retained names of some potent
Norman invaders.
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An introductory outline to a feature of interest
The outline below relates to a topic
that has attracted some interest; it concerns the earliest evidence for the
Plant name. The 19th-century claim that Plant descends from the royal name
Plantagenet has been debunked, not least by y-dna evidence. However it
remains the case that the partly-similar Plant surname shares a
12th-century time and place with the first evidence for the Plantagenet name
suggesting some cultural overlap of meaning.
Main Plant homeland, with Plants by 1360
Many pathways point to Plant name origins, such as... Julius Planta,
46AD, a friend of the Roman Emperor Claudius; Durand Plante, Normandy 1180,
fighting duels, with William Plantapeluda nearby, meaning hairy shoot or
hairy leaf, and the Plantegenest nickname also nearby in both Normandy and
Greater Anjou for the English king Henry II's father whose name is
associated with the broom plant which is hairy when young; a geneat called
Galfrido Plauntegenet, Oxford 1266; and, in the Welsh Marches, a bailiff
Robert Plonte, 1280, in the Bristol Avon and Richard Plant with rights to
coal, 1301, near Chester ...as well as very many more early records listed
here.
Earliest evidence and
possible meanings of Plant
In the second half of the 20th century, Plant was commonly supposed to
mean 'gardener'. The reasoning for this relies on just a part of the
evidence. A more detailed study shows that it is misleading to claim that
there are no other meanings that are at least equally possible, such as
'shoot, offshoot, child' or living near a 'planted place'. As a result of
my accumulated studies since the turn of the millennium, all of these
possible meanings are currently included in the 2016 Oxford Dictionary of
Family Names of Britain and Ireland [update here].
The earliest known, late medieval occurrences for this surname
include the spellings Plante (1180) in western Normandy, de
Planteiz (1198) near le Plantis in southern Normandy and de la
Planta (1202) in Anjou. The last one of these was for a landowner at
two castles in the Plantagenets' initial homeland of Greater Anjou. His
name de la Planta might have referred to his having come from a
place as far away as a region called la Planta in the Alps or from
some other much nearer 'planted place' such as a vineyard.
The ancient name Planta in the
Alps. Much earlier in 46AD, Julius Planta had been a friend and
advisor of the Roman Emperor Claudius with responsibilities at Trento in the
Italian Alps. By late medieval times, there were Alpine branches of a noble
family called Planta. The locations of the surviving names von
Planta and Planta suggest that the name could mean, for
example, from the Engadine (Romansh for 'Inn Garden') implying from the
'fertile source of the River Inn'. Even in England, though distant, there
is an early link from the Alps: the London priest Henry Plante
(1350) was from Risole, evidently Risoul in the French Alps.
Rhaetian museum Planta, Alps
The 1202 name de la Planta in Greater
Anjou (a region of northern France to the south of Normandy) might mean from
an Alpine region called 'la Planta' alongside the 'garden' meaning of the
Engadine. More generally however, the Plant name might refer to similar
places nearer their late medieval homeland.
More generally in England, it seems that any Alpine meaning for Plant
could have morphed, or the name could have arisen independently. That has
been proposed for an isolated gardener near Hull (1377) whom it has been
supposed was called Plant because of his occupation. That said, his
occupation gardener could have been simply a coincidence of his 'living near
a garden' since there were several very different occupations, other than
gardener, that are recorded for earlier bearers of the Plant name. Indeed,
it cannot be ruled out that all those receiving the Plant name were living
near either a 'garden' or some other 'planted place'. That would avoid the
obvious contradictions to their having occupations other than a gardener,
though there are still some other possibilities not involving their
location.
Gardener
The sense of Plant could have been locational or topographical, such as
having come from a place called la Planta or having an address of living
'near a garden' or a 'planted' or 'founded' place. The last of these
relates to an early English meaning of plant: to found or establish. This
appears in such early usage as 'to plant (establish) a settlement' or 'to
plant (found) a church' (OED).
A populous homeland.
For example, around the region of the Plant name's most populous homeland,
by 1360, its first known precise location (1362, 1373) was at Midgeley in
England – this is on the county border between Wincle Chapel (see
below), which is in south-east Cheshire, and the mythical Luds Church in
north-east Staffordshire.
Luds Church
On that basis, we might presume that a Plant
family could have acquired a 'planted place' sense to their name as a result
of living near the Black Prince's 'newly founded vaccary' here
(ca.1360). An assumption that the Plant naming was connected to this
'vaccary' (cattle raising plant), would more or less tally with the finding
that Plant records have been found in this vicinity from 1360 onwards.
However, it turns out that there were already several called Plant here by
that time, suggesting that the name might have originated somewhere nearby
some years earlier, unless we presume that the name rather oddly was coined
here just once for a group of several different people.
For earlier times, there is a possible clue
that can be linked to this subsequently-known main Plant homeland though
that clue is not particularly near in the geographical sense. The Plant
name in 1301 had been 50 miles away at Eweloe – this is near Poulton
lands that belonged to Dieulacres Abbey and we can add that this abbey was
located at the heart of the Plants' most populous homeland adjoining to the
south of the aforesaid Lud's Church.
Dieulacres
Inadequate records prevent us knowing precisely
when the Plant name might have first occurred in connection with this
homeland, though it could have been near Dieulacres a few miles south of
Midgeley and in connection to the abbey's earlier site at Poulton. This
then opens up other possibilities, such as local Plants might have been so
named because they lived near the newly planted abbey, or because they
tended its herb gardens, or because they planted isolated farmsteads in
connection with this Cistercian abbey's granges. Dieulacres had been
refounded from Poulton Abbey in 1214 by the 6th earl of
Chester.
Some local noble overlords. In the
Longspée-Audley hypothesis, a line of nobles appear to have been the
feudal lords over more or less all early Plant name locations. As well as
in Normandy, there are several locations perhaps showing the possible
'footprints' of these Lord's influence on the formation of the Plant name in
England which is first known by 1262 with the influence perhaps ongoing to
the name's known locations for a century or so later. At later dates, these
initial footprints could have been 'trampled' and lost as the Plant name
expired, or perhaps after some migrations away from these evident early
locations.
For example, the Audley manor of Horton adjoined Dieulacres Abbey and the
Plant name could have spread around other Audley lands throughout locations
in north Staffordshire in particular. Perhaps several genetically unrelated
Plants might have been employed in the various Audley estates, each with a
similar 'planting' role.
Audley
That would tally with our Y-DNA results which suggest that Plant
ancestors around north-east Staffordshire belonged to several different,
genetically-distinct Plant families. That is not the full story however.
More widely, the Y-DNA evidence shows that there was particularly one
unusually large genetic family of these Plants which travelled far,
apparently from early times in nearby western Staffordshire.
Longspée
The Plant name might have come to England from Normandy as a French
fashion if not by the migration of someone who was already called Plant or
similar for example such as Planterose. Early Anglo-Norman associations can
be related, for example, to the influence of the Tosny-Longspée
family from Normandy which descended through a mistress called Ida de Tosny
of the first 'Plantagenet' king (Henry II). This Longspée line
subsequently married into the Audley family of Heleigh castle in north-west
Staffordshire.
Strong Anglo-Norman
links. The travels of Henry II's illegitimate son, William
Longspée (from whom we speak of our Longspée-Audley
hypothesis), included for example western Normandy with its aforementioned
evidence of the Plante name in 1180. He was also associated with
Staffordshire for example, the county with the highest population of
Plants.
As an example of longer lasting links from Normandy, the Chester earls
had held lands around western Normandy since before the Norman conquest of
1066 and gained their additional lands in England, especially those known as
the honour of Chester. These including lands around the northern
boundaries of Staffordshire.
Chester
These earls held their cross-Channel lands until England lost Normandy
(1204), after when the 6th earl returned to western Normandy on occasion.
Ranulph III, who became earl of Lincoln as well as Chester, took charge of a
campaign into France from his erstwhile lands around the Normandy-Brittany
border in 1231, at which time a charter from Dieulacres Abbey was presented
to its old mother house Savigny Abbey in western Normandy. The region
around Savigny was amongst those that were temporarily under the 6th earl's
control during his leadership of English forces into France.
The long lasting connections of the Chester earls provided a strong
cultural framework within which can be placed both Dieulacres abbey and, more
widely, a basis for the Longspée-Audley hypothesis for the Plant
name.
As indicated, feudal connections such as these could have brought to
England a naming convention based on the French past participle
planté of plant, as in coming from, or living near a planted
place. The French early surname spelling Plante is found in
records for England alongside a revised spelling Plant and there
were associable place names (e.g. Planty and la
Planteland) on both sides of the Channel. If 'planted' was descriptive
of a minor topographical feature, it might well have been largely unknown
elsewhere, though with the 'de' form it could have referred to rather more
distant travel from a more established and widely known place-name.
As a specific example, the name Henry de Plantes occurs in 1282
in south-eastern England with the name evidently developing as Plantes and
Plante. This name seemingly meant from the place called le Plantis
in southern Normandy.
Such locative and topographical meanings for Plant and Plante are now
included in The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names of Britain and Ireland
along with the other favoured possibilities: gardener or child.
The possible child meaning. It remains to clarify
the meaning 'child'. This relates to the meaning 'shoot', 'offshoot' of the
medieval word plant (Latin planta). There was a similar name Ranulph
Plantul in south Normandy (ca.1189-99) which had much the same meaning
'sprig', 'bouture' or 'seedling'.
In p-Celtic (Breton, Cornish, Welsh) plant means 'children' in Wales
(where the Welsh language still survives). In q-Celtic, there is the
different pronunciation cland of plant ('scion', 'offspring' 'clan') in old
Irish. In Englsh, clan is more readily seen as associable with the
'offspring meaning than the somewhat-changed more modern English meanings of
'plant'.
In Cheshire, the usage 'child' or 'young person' is attested singular in
English (1621) despite Cheshire adjoining Wales where the modern usage is
'children'. This dilemma of singular or plural ('child' or 'children') can
be resolved to an extent by noting that the English word 'offspring' can
mean one or many. This is not dissimilar to the ambiguities of identifying
individuals in creepers (spreading plants), which serve as a metaphorical
basis for an undefined number of children as is implied by the word
'offspring'.
It is unclear how early the Plant name was first in Ireland, though there
was a Sir John Plant (ca.1480) who was head of the Dublin household of the
Archbishop Primate of Ireland — he was perhaps connected to a John
Plant junior in a list of 98 east Cheshire worthies (1445). Such seniority
is compatible with an education for some that could have stretched to a
literary understanding of such a poem as the 13th-century Roman de la
Rose.
A little later than the Rose poem, at Riseley in Bedfordshire, John
Plaunte, 1309, was taxed in the Subsidy Rolls and is considered to be almost
certainly identical with John Planterose, similarly taxed in 1332. This
suggests the meaning 'rose grower'. Less obviously, there are also some
symbolic meanings, consistent with the contemporary religious exegesis.
Child
A well-used ontological metaphor from
medieval times relates to begetting a child from the Tree of Life. The
14th-century poem Piers Plowman states 'this tre hatte
Trewe-love ... this is a propre plonte' and, alongside religious love,
this poem conflates religious and human love as in the illustration above;
this also underlies much in a young man's quest for his 'rose' in the
13th-century Roman de la Rose. The popularity of these poems is
evidenced by their many survivng copies and they contain clues to a
contemporary understanding of nature and the vegetal as perceived throughout
western Europe. The 14th-century poet of 'Sir Gawin and the Green Kinght'
has survived in a single contemporary manuscript and is more tightly
associated, not least by its Middle English dialect, with the most populous
Plant homeland in the NW Midlands of England.
Deep ancestry Y-DNA results for the Plants of the aforesaid
well-travelled 'main' genetic Plant family suggest that, much earlier, their
ancient ancestral male-line had likely travelled up the Atlantic coast from
near Iberia over a timescale of two or more millennia. The details of this
are hindered not least by legal restrictions on DNA testeting in France.
However, many ancient genetic cousins of the 'main' Plant
family, with the shared lineage of these 'very distant cousins' dating back
to long before the adoption of surnames, have been found a step nearer to
Staffordshire, not least especially in Cornwall especially (SW tip of
England). Hence, we might ponder whether an Atlantic coast arrival was
somehow longtime compatible with a p-Celtic pronunciation for Plant (from
Breton, Cornish, Welsh) instead of q-Celtic cland, albeit with the variation
'child' in Cheshire of the Welsh meaning 'children'.
In keeping with a Celtic trek, the male-line of the main family might
have arrived near Chester in small steps from Gascony in south-west France
or possibly more nearly in larger leaps. This might have been as late as
with king Edward I's 13th-century Gascon crossbow men in the conquest of
north Wales, for example, or the Gascon wine trade, or trade involving
Cornish tin and copper in the Bronze Age. That said, the influence for the
Plant name (as opposed to the male-line of the most populous genetic Plant
family) could have travelled very differently and, for example, late
medieval surnames were often ascribed to peasants by their superiors.
Though we do not know of any examples of the Plante name in SW France before
1441, the names Plante and Plantie are now found clustered around there and,
for example in 1512-15, a priest Bernard Planté of Aignan was
supplying red wine to local merchants. A favoured meaning of Plante here is
hence for someone living near a vineyard.
As examples of biblical usage of the word 'plant', there is
reference to Jacob 'supplanting' his brother Esau in the womb and David
praying that these (senior) sons of Israel be as new 'plantings'.
Jacob's dream of the ladder, Wenceslaus Hollar 1607-77
Stairway to Heaven, Robert Anthony Plant lyrics (1971):
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings ...
Such wording as that in the biblical Song of Solomon 4:12-13,18 can be
brought to life for some more modern listeners if we compare these words
with those by the singer Robert Plant in his song: Houses of the Holy, 1975,
'Let me be yours ever truly, Can I make your garden grow, ..., Let me wander
in your garden, And the seeds of love I'll sow.' In the King James Version
of this in the bible, there is: [4:12-13] 'A garden inclosed
is my sister, my spouse; ... Thy plants are an orchard .. with pleasant
fruits:' [4:18] 'Let my beloved come into his garden and eat
his pleasant fruits'.
Vegetal senses in allusions to the generation of shoots, offshoots and
offspring are usefully euphemistic, in avoiding direct descriptions of
sinful man's carnal flesh; they have long been appropriate to religious
love, such as in the 'enclosed garden of the church' or for a monastic
setting. Indeed, in translations from Latin into Old English by king Alfred
the Great, the word plant is used for God's planted 'craft' alongside
biblical usage of the word plant for the founding of a place of prayer or a
religion or a church (OED).
In the most populous Plant homeland,
there are additional biblical layers of meaning for God's planted people in
a planted place, which are found alongside an enchanted planted parkland
describing the poetic home of the celebrated Green Knight. In the lands of
Dieulacres abbey, evidently the heart of the Plants' main homeland, the
Plants can be regarded as God's children, with contemporary usage of the
word 'plant' referring to both God's planted vertue (sic) and, a little
later, to His planted Word (see illustrated inscription below). These
spiritual meanings are made real in substance in the so-called 'exegetic'
understandings of late medieval times. This suggests such a meaning
relating to Cistercian novices or 'conversi': that is, converted lay
brethren [cf. the surname Converse]. In particular, the more abundant
evidence of the Plant name in its most populous medieval homeland, suggests
a sense of lay brethren, or abbey retainers, who have received God's planted
craft well enough to be regarded as abbey offshoots. Hence, as well as a
possible metonym for a 'gardener' with its conflict with known occupations,
the Plant name is also a metonym for 'One planted with God's craft'
including a generative 'kinde-craft'; I discuss such matters further
here.
Wincle Chapel in main homeland
Here Doe O Lord Svre Plant thy Word
The balance of the earliest evidence for the
most populous Plant homeland fits especially an early attested local sense
of plant as a 'seedling or foetus, shoot, offshoot or
offspring' forming an ontological metaphor for
human life. Since most living Plants descend from this homeland, as judged
by y-dna and distribution data, I have outlined the earliest known surviving
Plant records ('1360 onwards') in some detail elsewhere on this website; this
includes support for a possible sense as a trained 'abbey
offshoot', perhaps more specifically one
'planted' around the local moorlands and its
fringes to support the economic and neighbouring land rights of the abbey.
Along with this, the nearby Longspée-Audley and Warren gentry
families, with their Plantegenest descent, could have contributed an Angevin
twelfth-century vegetal tradition to this formative name's meaning more
widely as well as to the culture which is amply evidenced in particular
detail in the Leek-Macclesfield most populous Plant homeland.
The local contemporary Pearl-poetry includes
the epic 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'
Biblical usage of the word plant mixed with
a noble vegetal tradition is consistent with the aforesaid 'planted offshoot' meaning for the formative
Plant surname. A similar combination of biblical teachings alongside
courtly ideals is found in particular in the local homeland medieval
writings of the so-called Pearl-poet (also called the
Gawain-poet).
Homeland militancy and monks was more
than just fiction around Dieulacres abbey
There is some evidence of miltancy, in the earliest
surviving records for the main Plant homeland, in connection with local
noble tensions involving Plants as retainers of Dieulacres abbey:
- Thomas Plant (1363-82 records) in a
boundary dispute and abetting a beheading on behalf of the abbey, Thomas
accused but receives a king's pardon;
- Richard Plant (21 Dec 1437) licence from the abbot to enclose
abbey lands adjacent to Richard's own, stating, we shall 'for ever defend
the aforesaid parcel so far as it pertains to us'.
On the other hand, the defended enclosure and other records might refer to
the medieval wine trade from Bordeaux to Chester and along the saltways etc
through the main homeland, also explaining some associations with the
aristocracy and gentry. As at April 2023, after considerring afresh all of
the many medieval records that I have accumulated over the past quarter of a
century, two particular meanings stand out for the Plant name, as I outline
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