The surname Mortimer has a Norman origin, deriving from the village of Mortemer, Seine-Maritime, Normandy. A Norman castle existed at Mortemer from an early point; one 11th century figure associated with the castle was Roger, lord of Mortemer, who fought in the Battle of Mortemer in 1054.[1] The 12th century abbey of Mortemer at Lisors near Lyons-la-Forêt is assumed to share the same etymological origin, and was granted to the Cistercian order by Henry II in the 1180s. According to the toponymists Albert Dauzat and later, François de Beaurepaire, there are two possible explanations for such a place name:
First, a small pond must have already existed before the land was given to the monks and have already been called Mortemer like the two other Mortemers, because the word mer "pond" was not used anymore beyond the Xth century. This word is only attested in North-Western France and of Frankish or Saxon origin mari/meri "mere", "lake"; mort(e) "dead" is also quite common to mean "stagnant" (in Port-Mort "the port with stagnant water", Morteau "dead water", etc.).[2] Second, the monks could have given the name Mortemer to their drainage lake to remember the other Mortemer for any kind of reason we don't know, making a pun at the same time with Mer Morte "Dead Sea".
Medieval magnates
Arms of Mortimer (Mortimer of Wigmore): Barry or and azure, on a chief of the first two pallets between two base esquires of the second over all an inescutcheon argent
Kenneth Mortimer, President Emeritus of Western Washington University, eleventh president of the University of Hawai`i system and Chancellor of the University of Hawai`i at Manoa 1993–2001
↑C. P. Lewis, Mortimer Roger (I) de (fl. 1054-c. 1080) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.
↑François de Beaurepaire, Les noms des communes et anciennes paroisses de la Seine-Maritime, éditions Picard, 1979, p. 113 ISBN2-7084-0040-1.
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