If I Wasn't a Footballer... Trivia Quiz

Answer: Carpenter

'Wright' comes from the Old English 'wryhta', or 'craftsman'. It chiefly referred to working with wood. 'Carpenter', from the French 'charpentier', entered popular usage following the Norman conquest of England, though 'wright' is still used in Scotland to mean a skilled woodworker; the Trades House of Glasgow has a section known as the Incorporation of Wrights for woodworkers.

When 'wright' is prefixed with another word, such as 'Wainwright' or 'Cartwright', it refers to a type of craftsperson who built a specific object: wagons for a wainwright, carts for a cartwright, and so on. Even today, people who write plays are still referred to as playwrights.

Answer: Cloth

'Walker' in this context has nothing to do with walking with one's legs; it actually comes from 'waukin' or 'waulking', a process used in the manufacturing of cloth. This process was also known as fulling and was where the name Fuller comes from. Fulling involved scouring a cloth, usually made from wool, and beating it with hands or a club; in Scotland, women would sing songs known as 'waulking songs' while rhythmically beating the cloth to thicken and strengthen it.

The cloth would then be stretched on a frame called a tenter, to which it was attached with tenterhooks (and that's where we get the phrase 'to be on tenterhooks' from).

The name Walker is thought to originate in Yorkshire which, incidentally, is Kyle Walker's home county (he's from Sheffield).

Answer: A mill

Milner is a variation of the more common surname Miller, found in northern England (where James Milner, a native of Leeds, is from) and Scotland; the 'n' in the name comes from the Scandinavian influence in those places. If you go to Yorkshire, you might notice places with names ending in 'thorpe' (such as Scunthorpe) or 'by' (such as Whitby or Selby); these are former Viking settlements. Müller is the German equivalent of 'Miller'. Several German families with the surname Müller have mill wheels or windmills on their family crests. Möller - as in Eintracht Frankfurt's Andreas Möller - is a regional variation in northern and central Germany.

Answer: Administrative/clerical

'Clarke', or 'Clark', means 'clerk' and the word 'clerk' itself comes from 'clericus', a cleric or clergyman. In Ireland, 'Clarke' comes from the Irish surname 'O'Cléirigh', which originally belonged to a family of scribes and secretaries. Nowadays, the job of clerk does not have religious connotations, but back in medieval times, the clergy were often the only people who could read and write, hence the term 'clerical' eventually coming to mean work that involves filing, keeping records, writing letters and suchlike.

Modern-day courts in the UK have a court clerk, whose job is to keep records and administer oaths. As any fan of Kevin Smith's films will know, a clerk is also another name for a shop assistant, although it is used more commonly in that context in the US than in the UK.

Answer: Cows

The Dutch name 'Koeman' literally means 'cowman' in modern Dutch, and 'Cowman' itself is a surname in its own right, albeit a rare one (it is mainly found in Ireland). Interestingly, 'Koeman' originally was not associated with cows and actually comes from 'Koopman', an old Dutch word for 'merchant'.

Incidentally, one of Ronald Koeman's signings during his time as Everton manager was striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who also has a bovine element to his surname. 'Calvert' comes from 'calfhirde', a name for a cow herder who looked after calves.

Answer: Clergy

All of these surnames are associated with the church. 'Pope', from the Latin 'papa' or 'father', also refers to the head of the Catholic Church and the Bishop of Rome. Originally, it denoted a male clergy member before being restricted to bishops, and then to the Pope himself. 'Monk', from the Old English 'munuc', originally denoted a servant at a monastery, before taking on the religious meaning we know today. 'Bishop' comes from the Old English 'biscop', which itself comes from the Greek 'episkopos', or 'overseer'.

A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy with the power to ordain others. 'Pressman' comes from 'priest's man', or the servant of a priest, and originates in Staffordshire. Finally, 'Dean' comes from the Middle English 'deen', which in term comes from the Latin 'decanus', the leader of a group of ten monks.

In the Church of England, a dean is the chief cleric of a cathedral, or the head of a theological college.

Answer: Nails

The name 'Smith', like 'Wright', is a name associated with crafts; while a wright works with wood, a smith works with metal, a blacksmith being the most obvious example. 'Naismith' is a craftsperson who makes nails or knives; the 'nai' part is thought to come either from the Old English 'cnif' ('knife') or 'noegel' ('nail').

It originates in Scotland, in the historic county of Renfrewshire. Naysmith, as in Scotland and Everton's Gary Naysmith, is a spelling variant. A name with a similar meaning is 'Cutler', which comes from the Old French 'coutel', or 'knife'; it is from this word that we get 'cutlery' as the catch-all term for knives, spoons and forks.

Answer: The roof

The job of a thatcher involves building and repairing roofs made from thatch, a mixture of densely packed dry vegetation such as straw or rushes, which is still used in some places today. Many pubs and cottages in the UK still have thatched roofs. The practice of thatching is thought to date back as far as the Paleolithic period. Thatch was the most common type of roofing material used in the UK up until the Industrial Revolution and the advent of slate mining in Wales, with slate being exported around the UK and replacing thatch as a roofing material.

Although thatching began to die out as a result, it has recently experienced a revival in the UK due to the need to preserve historic buildings, as well as attempts at using more sustainable building materials.

Answer: A pilgrim

The Spanish surname 'Romero' is a name for a Christian pilgrim making a pilgrimage from Rome to the Holy Land, via the Byzantine Empire. It also denotes a guardian of a religious shrine and a citizen of Rome. The name has its roots in the following regions: Galicia, Aragon, Valencia, Catalonia, Castile and Andalusia. Regional variants include Romeu, as in Spain and Southampton's Oriol Romeu, and Romeo, as in Argentina's Bernardo Romeo. An English surname relating to pilgrimage is 'Palmer', as in Sheffield Wednesday's Carlton and Liam, which refers to the practice of wearing a palm leaf while making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

This palm leaf would be folded into a cross.

Answer: Graham Taylor

'Sneijder' is the Dutch spelling of 'Schneider', a German surname that means 'tailor' - the same profession that gave rise to 'Taylor', one of the most common occupational surnames in the UK. The name 'Schneider' was also used in the past to refer to a woodcutter, coming from the German verb 'schneiden' ('to cut'), but in modern German, a tailor would be called 'der Schneider', and German Schneiders moving to English-speaking countries and wishing to anglicise their surnames would take Taylor as a surname.

The name 'Taylor' itself is actually of French origin, and comes from the Old French 'tailleur', or 'cutter'.