Definition
A surname; the family name or last name by which a person is identified as a member of a particular lineage or family group, as distinguished from a given name or forename. The term derives from Law French and appears primarily in early English legal texts concerned with the proper identification of parties in pleadings and proceedings.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in medieval and early modern English legal records will encounter *sournoun* almost exclusively in Law French sources and treatises dealing with pleading practice. Its primary significance lies in the rules governing the sufficiency of a party's designation in writs, indictments, and other formal instruments — a misnomer or omission of a surname could render a proceeding defective. When searching the Law Mind corpus, note that the concept this term names is far more commonly treated in later sources under *surname*, *addition*, or *nomina* (the general Latin heading for names in pleading). Cross-referencing entries on additions and pleading form will yield richer doctrine than the term *sournoun* itself, which was already archaic in English legal writing by the early modern period. The single Burrill citation to *Fet Assaver* signals that this is a term of art from technical Norman-French pleading manuals rather than from the common law reports or equity practice.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary defines *sournoun* simply as "a surname," citing *Fet Assaver*, § 33, a medieval Law French formulary. Burrill offers no elaboration, reflecting the term's narrow documentary life — it functioned as a label within a technical vocabulary rather than a term carrying contested or evolving doctrine. Historical dictionaries do not diverge on the meaning; the term is consistent across the sources that acknowledge it at all. What the historical dictionaries largely omit is any treatment of the downstream legal consequences that attached to the sournoun in pleading practice — the rules on additions of estate, degree, or mystery that required the sournoun to be correctly stated alongside a person's forename in criminal proceedings. Researchers seeking that doctrinal substance should look to treatises on pleading rather than to dictionary entries for this term.
Jurisdictional Note
The term belongs entirely to the Anglo-Norman legal tradition and has no independent doctrinal life in American law. U.S. researchers will encounter it, if at all, only when consulting English sources predating the displacement of Law French from legal writing.