Origin of the Name

The name COFFIN derives from the Greek cophínos, via Latin, Italian and French words - all of which mean a ‘container’ of some sort. The modern Italian cofano, meaning a strong-box or the boot (trunk) of a car, and the Spanish cofín are cognate words. In medieval times in Europe, the name was an occupational one, and its first possessors seem to have been makers, or sellers, of baskets or boxes of some kind - the word having been transferred (by what etymologists call metonymy) to the persons from the objects they dealt with.

This was initially the view of an English historian of surnames, the Rev. Cuthbert Bardsley, in his English Surnames (1873): "It is to some carpenter [that we owe] our 'Coffins', once synonymous with 'Coffer'". The similar etymology of the French words coffre and coffin illustrates the fact that in early times baskets and boxes seem to have been confused. The Rev. Bardsley quoted Wyclif's translation of Mark vi. 43 to support his case that in the 14th century 'coffin' and 'coffer' were alternative names for the same thing: "And they token the relyves of broken mete, twelve coffins full" - translated in the Authorised Version as "And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments".

However, in Bardsley's later work (Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames, 1901) he went back to a different Latin root, and suggested that COFFIN derived from the Latin calvinus, a diminutive form of calvus (meaning 'bald'), and was thus cognate with other names such as CHAFEN, CHAFFINE, etc., which are generally agreed to be derived from the French chauve. If this were correct, the name, like many others, would be a nickname - 'Baldy'. But the idea is now generally discounted.

An American genealogist, John Coffin Jones Brown, in an article in 1881 on The Name and Armorial Bearings of the Coffin Family, thought that the first form of the name in England belonged to one Colvin, or Colvinus, who (he claimed) held several manors at the time of the Domesday survey (1085). According to Brown, the 'l' in the name was customarily silent in pronunciation at that time, and was later omitted in writing, so that the name "appears after A.D. 1200 as Cophin; after A.D. 1300 as both Cophin and Kophin, and Coffyn; after A.D. 1400 as Coffyn and Coffyne. Shortly after 1600 "i" became the fixed character to represent the short sound of "y", and took its place in the name of Coffin. In this form the name is interwoven with history for more than two centuries; and the foolish idea which some of that name have, of returning to the ancient method of spelling, would sever their descendants historically from connection with most worthy ancestors."

Brown suggested no parallels, or linguistic authority, for the dropping of the letter "l" from Colvin; and even if the identity of Colvin and Coffin were accepted, this offers no help in explaining the origins of the name. If Colvinus or Colvin were a Latin or Norman name from which the "l" disappeared, it might have been expected that the initial "c" would then have been followed by an "h" (on the analogy of the transformation of the Latin calvus into the French chauve).

Brown's attempt to link the supposed landowner Colvinus with the later (and more plebeian-sounding) Coffins itself arouses suspicion, in the absence of confirmatory evidence. Moreover, variations in the spelling of the latter name can be found in parish records (as Coffyn, Coffen, etc.) long after 1600, when Brown suggested that the name had become fixed. But this says nothing as to the origins of the name, in an age when no-one - parish clerks, clergymen or even lawyers - attached much importance to spelling.

Where doubt remains, as here, the simplest explanation is likely to be as good as any other. It seems reasonable to conclude that the name Coffin has an occupational origin, and that its earliest possessors were makers, or sellers, of boxes or baskets. In any case, it is unlikely to have been passed on from father to son among ordinary folk in England before about 1300 A.D. Hereditary surnames were well established in the southern counties by about 1350. But even then, many names of people had not yet become a matter of inheritance, outside the landowning classes.

 Obtained from http://www.ecoffin.freeserve.co.uk/index.htm

Several theories are advanced regarding the origin of the family surname Coffin, or Coffyn, as was the earlier spelling. Allen Coffin, Esq., says, “Coffin is a word of Hebrew origin signifying a small basket. Whether the Israelitish hosts were sufficiently enlightened to be in the enjoyment of baskets before the Egyptians, or whether the chosen of God were especially favored with the knowledge of basket making while the rest of the world plodded on with a less commodious means of transit, are matters which cannot at this remote period of time be satisfactorily answered.”

From Arthur’s derivation of family names, we find that Coffin is in Welch, Cyffin, which signifies a boundry, a limit or a hill; cefyn, a ridge of a hill. This authority also says that the name has its origin from “co”, high, exalted, and “fin”, a head, extremity, boundary, but the family surname is probably not indebted to either of these last named derivations. It is believed by many that sometime before the Norman Conquest of England by William, which took place in 1066, the family of Coffin lived in Normandy, a duchy of France, which the Norsemen had made peculiarly their own by invasion and by conquest.

Bardsley, in his “English Surnames,” says, “It is to some dealer in earthenware we owe our name of Pots, some worker in metals our Hammers, some carpenter our Coffins, once synonymous with coffer.”

Contributed by Mrs. E. H. Wescott, Plattsmouth, Nebr.