Description
EVERY NAME IS A STORY. This one belongs to everyone.
“Baker” is the trade made into a name — from the Old English bacan, “to bake,” through bæcere and bakere: the great-house kitchen baker, the keeper of the village communal oven, a hereditary feudal privilege — and the honest fact that there is no single “Baker family.” From that hearth-fire arithmetic unfolds the sweeping story of America’s forty-fourth most common surname: William le Bakere in the Pipe Rolls of Norfolk, 1177; the Hundred Rolls’ bearers a century later; Alexander Baker landing at Boston in 1635; and the German Beckers, Dutch Bakkers, French Boulangers, and Czech Pekařs who folded their names into the American loaf.
This stunning coffee-table volume traces the Baker name through eight richly illustrated chapters — the occupational chain, the first records, the long road west, the progressive reformer who ran a world war (Newton D. Baker, Cleveland’s mayor and Wilson’s Secretary of War), real coats of arms with their swan’s-heads and honest vendor warnings (and the truth about “family crests”), a gallery from Josephine Baker to Ella Baker, the mountains and streets and thermometers that wear the name, and the census portrait: 419,586 bearers, ranked #44 in 2010 — down six places from 2000, told straight.
Printed in an elegant 8.5″ × 11″ large format with clean white pages, dark ink, and gold accents — a museum-print look where every plate sits as a framed panel, Baker: A Surname History is the perfect gift for anyone who bears the name — and a beautiful addition to any library.
Find your name. Find your story.
Tamara Gribble is the creator of The Surname Histories. Baker is the twenty-fourth book in the series, behind Nelson at #43.
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