That’s reaaally stretching it. I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure you’re just wrong on this one.
Yup. Or they might be endowed by, and named after, local landowners, and pubs are often also called after the same families.
Interesting explanations. In Australia we must have inherited the terms. Lots of old country towns would have a Farmers Arms hotel. Builders arms a lot less common.
I don’t know about the collection of “Alms houses”, maybe the names were just because that’s where the farmers went after a days work to take alms (ie, sink a few beers)
They would have been alehouses once. Just somebody’s house where they got good at brewing ale. When the ale was ready the alewife would put a green bush out on a pole to let people know. Perhaps these alehouses did not have names in those days but were referred to by location or by something notable nearby such as “the Baker’s alms alehouse” which was to distinguish it from other alehouses as being the one near the Baker’s Almshouses.
It seems like pure speculation, and tenuous d speculation at that. To be taken seriously as etymology you have to have more than that.
You are not going to find proof from history same as you will not be able to trace the origin of slang words.
I could offer a counter argument to “Arms”. No moneyed or influential family would have wanted an alehouse to use their family name or their coat of arms in the old days. They would have been very offended and might have taken measures to stop this. Alehouses were not savoury places a long time ago. Much worse than Inns or Taverns and like I mentioned above, just a residence where somebody had got good at making ale and was selling it to the locals. So if “Arms” is used in a pub name then for the source of this word we have to look elsewhere than wealthy families with their coats of arms. For me, it being an indirect reference to a nearby almhouse seems more plausible.
I’m sceptical. Can we find any other context in which “almshouse” is shortened to “alms”, or one in which this usage corrupts to “arms”?
The OED does not suggest that “alms” ever meant “almshouse”, in any context. Nor does it suggest that “arms”, in any context, is a corruption of “alms”.
Remember that the primary meaning of “alms” is “charitable relief given to the poor and needy”, and it was in regular use in this sense until well into the nineteenth century. Alms-drink, in particular, was was drink given to another as an act of charity; often the dregs from the unfinished glasses of other drinkers. Pretty much the last thing any seller of beer would want to associate his product with is stuff given away for free to the destitute. The heraldic sense of “arms” looks like a far more plausible account of pub names than this.
I disagree. The local landed family would the the ultimate proprietor of most of the houses in any village, and they would want the village to have the usual amenities of a village, including a pub, a market-house, and alms-house, etc. In fact, it reflected badly on them if it did not. They would often endow the alms-house, as previously mentioned, and possibly also the market-house or an assembly-room, and the naming of the pub in their honour would be taken to show the proper feudal spirit. Plus, they could hardly disclaim any connection with the pub when, in all likelihood, they collected the rent from it.
Your objection also has to get around the fact that a pub called, e.g., the Granby Arms typically did have a sign displaying the arms of the Granby family. So, if the family did take measure to prevent their arms being used in this way, they were mostly not very effective measures.
We don’t know how words were pronounced a long time ago. “Alms” could have sounded like “Arms” and the meaning slid from alms to arms and then people thought it must mean a coat of arms and started using depictions of these coats of arms long after the time.
When I was very young growing up in the West Country then “alms” would have sounded like “arms” and from what I can tell, the West Country had the closest accent to Elizabethan English so perhaps this was true of the whole of middle and southern England at some stage. It might be worth doing an analysis for old pubs names ending in “arms” comparing north with south for the relative frequency.
I don’t see why “alms” can’t be a contraction of “almshouses” or “alms houses” since it is still giving to the poor. It is recognising the act rather than the material gift.
I don’t think moneyed families would have wanted to be associated with alehouses. Inns and Taverns maybe but not alehouses which were for lower society. So I doubt they would want their coat of arms displayed outside such places. And if it is done now then it is done long after the family has ceased to exist.
I disagree. The local moneyed family would not have wanted to be associated or have their family name or coat of arms linked to an alehouse as these were for the lowest level of society. When the Granby family coat of arms appeared in pub signs then it could have been a long time after the family had died out so therefore they would not have been in a position to insist on its removal.
Amazing how one single post has revived a last-century thread just like a tall glass of beer.
Anyway, as you ex-colonials can see, the right to keep and bear arms has been around for longer than you think. And meanwhile it’s amusing to see RolandRB trumpeting so many things as solid fact when they are patently not.
Well, Granby was just an example. But, FWIW, the Granby family has not died out.
And the plain fact is that English country pubs very often are named after the local landed family. For example in Oxfordshire, where the Churchill family, Dukes of Marlborough, have their seat, pub names with “Marlborough” and “Churchill” abound, starting with the Marlborough Arms at Woodstock, which is - literally - opposite the front gate of Blenheim Palace, to this day the seat of the Duke. Similarly, how are we to account for the several pubs in Derbyshire called the “Devonshire Arms”? Derbyshire is a long way from Devon, but large parts of it are owned by the Cavendishes, whose title is “Duke of Devonshire” and whose seat is at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire - and that very village holds one of the county’s “Devonshire Arms” pubs, whose sign displays, yes, the arm of the Duke of Devonshire.
In short, your thesis that landed families would be reluctant to have their names, titles or arms associated with public houses is abundantly contradicted by the observed evidence. Such a connection is extremely common, which suggests either that they had no objection to the connection, or that they were unable to prevent it. And the former seems far more likely.
Can I ask this another way? I so strongly doubt that any of the moneyed families would want anything to do with an alehouse (as opposed to an Inn or Tavern) due to them wanting to get to Heaven that they would have put in stained glass windows in the almhouses with their coat of arms in them to prove to God that they were good people and deserved to go to Heaven but there is no way I am going to accept that they gave their name or coat of arms to any alehouse. Alehouses were lower class and bad. I would want to see documented evidence of them drawing up some sort of contract with a builder to build an alehouse and have their name on it plus their coat of arms on the wall or on the signage before I can believe that “arms” as the last word of a pub name had anything to do with a rich family wanting that name there (a guild, maybe). So I ask if there is any evidence that they controlled any builöding of alehouses and insisrted on having their name and coat of arms on it.
So you demand concrete written evidence that the obvious and accepted etymology is the correct one, while we’re supposed to accept your conjecture about alms = arms as valid because there isn’t written evidence against it?
You are maybe describing a situation that occured many years after a landed family had influence. Nobody is allowed to use another family’s coat of arms and it would not have been allowed at the time when the family was famous. It is like their trade mark and is exclusively theirs. I am suggesting that hundreds of years later, when coats of arms of many families do not matter, that out of respect they make a pub sign that features the name of this person and their coat of arms. But I still think the origin of the word “arms” was “alms” as in “almshouses” because it would be natural for alehouses to not have names but rather be known by their location or local features. Like the “Roaring Donkey” in Swindon due to the donkey tethered nearby on market days. The “Roaring Donkey pub” would not have then been a pub called the “Roaring Donkey” but a pub located where the “roaring donkey” was tethered to distinguish it from pubs in other locations.
As for famous people then it is natural for pubs to get named after them. “The Hero” used to be a common name for a pub. Everybody knew that this was Lord Nelson. And I can see that being reused and ending up as the Nelson Arms featuring his coat of arms some time after his death but only because the confusion about “alms” and “arms” had become the norm.
For me, there are too many examples of pub names coinciding with alms house names, as I have already cited, for me to accept it as pure coincidence. “The Trinity Arms” especially. I don’t know what clearer an example people need.
This is simply not true. There are countless pubs up and down the country that are still on the estate lands of existing aristocratic families, and carry their name and coats of arms.
The Devonshire Arms cited above by UDS has been in existence since 1747, and is located on the Chatsworth Estate and listed as Leasehold by the Land Registry. Which means the land it is on is owned by the Duke of Devonshire. Presumably if he didn’t want a pub named after him, he would change it.
Actual linguists make it their business to trace the origin of slang words.
And now you’re arguing from ignorance. There is actually a lot that linguists know about historical pronunciation in England.
This is a Karl Pilkington-style argument.
Gervais: Man and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
Pilkington: But why couldn’t that have happened?
As I said, I come from the Baker’s Arms area, and it is ‘common knowledge’ that the pub was named after the almshouses. The folk etymology is even given on the wiki page I linked to above.
Common knowledge can of course be wrong, and many pubs are named after the heraldic coat of arms of the local family. But some, or perhaps many, might have a connection with local almshouses.
Since the Baker’s Almshouses themselves only date to 1866, I suspect that the pub and almshouses were named at the same time, and are little more than a Victorian play on words, or a pun of some sort. They had a slightly different sense of humour in those days.