Richard Stephen Charnock

Richard Stephen Charnock (11 August 1820 – 2 March 1905) was an English lawyer, philologist, and antiquary (Ph.D., FSA, FRGS, FRSSA, FRSNA ). He published several works on etymology, onomastics, and dialect, and contributed to the Oxford English Dictionary, as well as a number of journals, His etymological work was received negatively both by his contemporaries, His parents were cousins, and perhaps because of this, one of his siblings was "very weak"; another, who was disabled, became a skilled woodworker. His oldest sister was born around 1818. Charnock attended King's College London, Charnock later inspired characters in Meredith's novel The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, especially "Hippias Feverel, the dyspeptic wine-bibber and author of scholarly treatises". Meredith's friend Lionel Robinson described Charnock to Edward Clodd as "a 'character', a real antiquarian of doubtful morals and for many years one of the 'old boys' of the Arundel Club of Bohemian ways and days. Meredith put him (much disguised) into Richard Feverel as the uncle",

In 1870 he was admitted as a member of Gray's Inn, ), and by 1875 had become the president of the breakaway London Anthropological Society. He was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, Philological Society, Royal Asiatic Society, and Royal Geographical Society, a member of the Royal Nordic Society of Antiquaries, Leslie Dunkling wrote: "It is necessary to say that an awful lot of nonsense about surname origins has appeared in print, and one must not innocently believe everything one reads. To give just one example, Richard Stephen Charnock, in a book entitled Ludus Patronymicus, or the Etymology of Curious Surnames, seriously explains the name Shakespeare as a corruption of Jacques Pierre. This carries the 'game of names' a little too far."

Books Guide to the Tyrol: Comprising Pedestrian Tours Made in Tyrol, Styria, Carinthia, and Salzkammergut, during the Summers of 1852 and 1853 together with a Skeleton Map of the Country (1857) Local Etymology: A Derivative Dictionary of Geographical Names (1859) Memoir of the Charnock Family (1861) Bradshaw's Illustrated Hand-Book to Spain and Portugal: A Complete Guide for Travellers in the Peninsula, with Maps, Town Plans, and Steel Illustrations (1865–1899) Verba Nominalia; or, Words Derived from Proper Names (1866) Ludus Patronymicus; or, the Etymology of Curious Surnames (1868) On Ancient Manorial Customs, Tenures, Services, Privileges, Serjeanties, Grants, Fines, etc., in the County of Essex (1870) Patronymica Cornu-Britannica; or, the Etymology of Cornish Surnames (1870) The Peoples of Transylvania (1870) Anthropologia; in which are Included the Proceedings of the London Anthropological Society (1874–1876) A Glossary of the Essex Dialect (1880) On the Etymology of Beccles (1880) Prænomina; or, The Etymology of the Principal Christian Names of Great Britain and Ireland (1882) Nuces Etymologicaæ (1889)