Also note the English counties of Wessex (West Saxons), Sussex (South Saxons), Essex (East Saxons), and Middlesex (Middle Saxons), relating to ancient Saxon settlements. Why is there no Nossex? Some say that there once was a Nossex, but they died off under mysterious circumstances…
In any event, there is a Norfolk, i.e. “North Folk” or, more loosely, “North People” or “People of the North”.
The hypothesis that the modern frequencies of names has developed randomly is in the nature of a “null hypothesis” in science. In order to reject the null hypothesis, you need to make a fairly convincing case that some definite factor was involved. What you’re proposing is essentially untestable and IMO not very convincing.
It’s not really untestable. We just need figures on the frequencies of these names in the 13th-14th centuries. Lazy gave us 1881 numbers in post 17. Similar numbers should be available going further back; I just don’t know where to find them.
It looks like the most authoritative resource won’t be available for another year or two:
You could test whether or not frequencies of names have changed over time. However, if the frequencies were different at the start, it would be very difficult to test whether there were “more reasons” to give the name West than others, which is the part of Isilder’s proposal I meant was untestable.
Also, when people change their names for whatever reason, “West” has positive, hopeful and badass connotations that other directional names kind of don’t.
Kind of related: Was Clint Eastwood’s family originally named Oswald?
Wikipedia has a list of people called pink- but apparently it originally meant small.
Rabbi Lionel Blue is quite well known in Britain.
After that there’s this old thread.
[aside] Southern blotting is/was (i’m outa that game so not sure if it’s used anymore) a technique for detecting DNA that was invented by a guy whose last name is Southern. Other techniques using similar principles to detect different things were subsequently invented and given related directional names, e.g. northern blotting, western blotting, as deliberate riffs on the original eponym. Such is the whimsical nature of molecular biologists.[/aside]
Not a surname.