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ArchivesRe: The name "Kelsi/Kelsey"
in reply to a message by Ryan
In my experience, someone "imagined" the meaning and everybody else copied it. For the record, the surname Kelsey is most common the US, England and New Zealand (about 1 in 18,000). In Ireland it is rare (1 in 290,000), so probably brought by English settlers. "Imagined" etymologies began in the 18th C., before there was really any disciplined field. The Grimms in the 19th C. began the first real analysis and codified the first key laws governing how languages change, but even they got specific etymologies wrong, because they lacked the necessary documents. The surname Kelsey appears very near its modern form in the 13th C.. We know by comparison that the second element is "ey", meaning an island, peninsula (near-island), coastal land or anywhere defined by water (in this case a floodplain). Kelsey (now South Kelsey) appears in the 11th C. Domesday book as Colesi, however North Kelsey a few miles away is spelled Nor(t)chelsei (y replaced i as a scribal convention for clarity). The original may have been "Cole's ey", shifted to Chelsei in a process known as leveling (ch indicates a front |c|, before |e|, compared to a "back" |c| before |o|, not modern English ch in church).
This message was edited 11/2/2017, 6:08 AM
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Replies
Pretty much what the above posters said about books making up name meanings. I have found that when a name book writer can't find (or can't be bothered to find) a name's meaning, they put either "brave" or "beautiful" as the meaning!
However, it's possible that Kelsey, originally a place name, comes from ey ("island; peninsula") + the Old English name Cenel meaning (from "cene" meaning "brave; fierce; valiant"). It may also come from Ceolsige, from Ceol meaning "ship; small flat bottomed boat" + "victory." Ceol was also used as a name in Old English.
However, it's possible that Kelsey, originally a place name, comes from ey ("island; peninsula") + the Old English name Cenel meaning (from "cene" meaning "brave; fierce; valiant"). It may also come from Ceolsige, from Ceol meaning "ship; small flat bottomed boat" + "victory." Ceol was also used as a name in Old English.
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There's no OE name Cenel that I can find, and the place names are not recorded in that form. That again is early antiquarian speculation. The extant forms in the Domesday book imply that the earliest form was Coleseg (g pronounced as |j| as in Jaeger), later Colesei, but that by the founding of North Kelsey the |o| had been leveled to |e| by umlaut, with resulting palatalization of the |c|, hence the spelling Nortchelsei (ch still pronounced as k, but palatal rather than guttural k). Cola, Cole and Col- are recorded in OE names, with a sense of "coal-black". It's part of a thematic class which seems to refer to hair color (various words for red, brown, black or dark are recorded). The recorded forms of Ceol are Ceol, Ciol, Cel or Ceal, not Col, so do not explain the earliest recorded spelling of Kelsey. O shifts to e by umlaut, not the other way round.
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