Definition
Vee de name is an archaic term from old English law, derived from the Law French, denoting the wrongful refusal to deliver up or return goods that had been taken as a distress. When a distrainor seized property and then refused to release it — whether in defiance of a legal order, a tender of the debt owed, or a proper replevin demand — that refusal constituted vee de name. The term is closely related to, and sometimes used interchangeably with, vetitum namium, its Latin equivalent, and withernam, the remedy that arose in response to it.
The practical significance of the concept lies in what it triggered: a party whose distrained goods were wrongfully withheld could pursue withernam, a legal process allowing the sheriff to seize substitute goods from the distrainor as a counter-distress. Vee de name was thus less a cause of action in itself than a factual predicate — the wrongful act that set the remedy of withernam in motion.
Common Confusion
Vee de name, vetitum namium, and withernam form a cluster of related but distinct concepts that historical sources sometimes conflate. Vee de name and vetitum namium are essentially the same thing — the former is the Law French rendering, the latter the Latin — and refer to the wrongful act of refusing to return distrained goods. Withernam is the remedy that followed from that act: the sheriff's authority to take substitute goods in reprisal. Researchers encountering any of these terms in old English records should be careful not to treat them as synonyms; one names the wrong, the other names the legal response.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in medieval and early modern English legal records and treatises. Researchers are unlikely to encounter vee de name in any practical modern context; its relevance is confined to historical legal research involving the English law of distress.
Several navigational points are worth keeping in mind:
First, the spelling is unstable across historical sources. Law French orthography was inconsistent, and variant spellings — including vee de naam and related forms — may appear. When searching manuscript or early print sources, broad search strategies are advisable.
Second, Britton (cited in Burrill as Britt. cc. 19, 20, 103) is one of the primary sources for this term. Britton is a late thirteenth-century treatise on English law, written in Law French and attributed to John le Breton. Researchers working with this material should be aware that the treatise survives in multiple manuscript versions with some textual variation.
Third, the substantive law underlying vee de name — the law of distress — was a complex and heavily litigated area of medieval English property and landlord-tenant law. Understanding vee de name in isolation is difficult without grounding in how distress worked: who could distrain, for what debts, under what constraints, and through what procedures goods could be reclaimed. The term only makes sense within that framework.
Fourth, the connection between vee de name and withernam is essential. Any research trail beginning at vee de name will almost certainly need to continue through withernam and vetitum namium to be complete.
Historical Dictionary Support
Burrill's Law Dictionary is the primary historical dictionary source for this entry, and its treatment is terse but accurate. Burrill correctly identifies vee de name as Law French with a Latin equivalent (vetitum namium), situates it in old English law, defines it as refusal to deliver or return distrained goods, notes the near-equivalence with withernam, and cites Britton. The cross-reference to vetitum namium in Burrill is the more developed entry and should be consulted alongside this one.
What Burrill does not provide — and what no single dictionary entry can easily supply — is the procedural context: the sequence of distraint, demand, refusal, and counter-seizure that gave vee de name its legal meaning. For that, the treatise literature (Britton, Bracton, Fleta) is necessary.
Jurisdictional Note
This term is specific to the historical law of England. It has no recognized application in American, Scottish, or other common law jurisdictions, and had become obsolete well before American legal institutions developed. It appears in research contexts only when dealing with medieval or early modern English legal records.