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NON NOBIS TANTUM NATI We Are Not Born For Ourselves Alone
The surname Warner appears to
be patronymical and occupational in
origin: From the English, meaning 'Son of Warner (protecting warrior)',
an
officer employed to watch over the game in a park, was derived from
the Old French warrennier. This term, which would have
been introduced
to England following the Norman Invasion of 1066, was still in use as
late as the seventeenth century,
when one of Cobbe's prophecies of 1614
is that "The warriner knows there are rabbits in breeding"! Other twists
on the
name are warnier, derived from the Old Norman French; and
warinhar from the Old German, meaning simply "army". We find
an example
of this derivation in 1203, when the Curia Regis Pipe Rolls for Dorset
refer to one Geoffrey Warner of Surey,
Peter le Warner in Yorkshire
Rolls of 1214 & Richard le Warner of Cambridgeshire in the Hundred Rolls
of 1273.
Once everyone was known by a single name but this lead to
confusion and so an extra name was adopted. Thus, a man named
John whose
father was Warner might be known as 'John (son of) Warner', and William
who was a warriner as 'William (the)
Warner', the additional name in
each case eventually becoming hereditary as a surname. There are now
over 116,000
bearers of the name in the United States alone, and it was
among the first surnames to become established here, a list
of
passengers "to be transported to New England imbarqued in ye Increase,"
sailing from London Port in April, 1635,
including one John Warner,
husbandman, aged 20. Also among early emigrants from England to America
was Augustine Warner
who is recorded in Virginia in 1635. Seth
Warner(1743-1784) was an American Revolutionary officer. Back in
England,
Sir Edward Warner (1511-1565) was Lieutenant of the Tower of
London. The Coat of Arms, officially documented in Burke's
General
Armory as: Or, a bend between six roses gules barbed vert. Translated:
Gold; a red engrailed diagonal bend between
six red roses with green
barbs. The Crest: A man's head proper couped below the shoulders,
habited chequy or and
azure wreathed, or and gules capped argent. The
crest (above the shield and helmet) trnaslated: A naturally colored
man's
head, severed below the shoulders, his clothing checkered gold and
blue, wreathed about the temples in gold and red, on
his head is a
silver cap. The Warner motto: Non nobis tantum nati, is translated as
'We are not born for ourselves
alone' Writers of the past have
attributed symbolism to the tinctures and charges of heraldry thus, Or
(gold)
is said to have denoted generosity, valor and perseverance; and
Guels (red) represented fortitude, creative power and magnanimity.
There
can be no doubt that the frequent use of roses in English armory is
greatly due to the adoption of the badges
of the red and white rose in
the Wars of the Roses.
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