A chapman (plural ''chapmen'') was an
itinerant dealer or hawker in
early modern Britain
Early modern Britain is the history of the island of Great Britain roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Major historical events in early modern British history include numerous wars, especially with France, along with the E ...
.
Etymology
Old English ''céapmann'' was the regular term for "dealer, seller", cognate with the Dutch ''koopman'' with the same meaning.
Old English ''céap'' meant "deal, barter, business". The modern adjective ''cheap'' is a comparatively recent development from the phrase ''a good cheap'', literally "a good deal" (cf. modern Dutch ''goedkoop'' = cheap).
The word also appears in names such as
Cheapside
Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London, which forms part of the A40 London to Fishguard road. It links St. Martin's Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where ...
,
Eastcheap
Eastcheap is a street in central London that is a western continuation of Great Tower Street towards Monument junction. Its name derives from ''cheap'', the Old English word for market, with the prefix 'East' distinguishing it from Westcheap, ...
, Chepstow and the prefix
Chipping: all markets or dealing places. The name of the Danish capital
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
has a similar origin, being derived from ''Køpmannæhafn'', meaning "merchants' harbour" or "buyer's haven".
By 1600, the word ''chapman'' had come to be applied to an itinerant dealer in particular, but it remained in use for "customer, buyer" as well as "merchant" in the 17th and 18th centuries. The slang term for man, "chap" arose from the use of the abbreviated word to mean a customer, one with whom to bargain.
The word was applied to hawkers of
chapbooks,
broadside ballads
A broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between th ...
, and similar items.
Their stock in trade provides a graphic insight into the methods of political and religious campaigners of the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
period, for example.
Chapman is also a common personal name of the class derived from trades.
See also
*
People
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
with the name Chapman
*
Places and things named Chapman
References
*Oxford English Dictionary.
External links
An example of the use of the word in 1739
Obsolete occupations
Sales occupations
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