Police sergeant Joe Friday never actually said “just the facts ma’am” on the vintage television show Dragnet, according to Snopes. Rather, the character played by Jack Webb uttered different lines. People later confused things and created the classic phrase now erroneously attributed to the show.
A similar confusion surrounded the suffix “-fax” appended to surnames and place names. Ditto for surnames that later became place names. So -fax had an interesting etymology as described in Wiktionary and in other sources:
“From Middle English, from Old English feax (‘hair, head of hair’), from Proto-Germanic *fahs? (‘hair, mane’), from Proto-Indo-European *poksom- (‘hair’, literally ‘that which is combed, shorn, or plucked’), from Proto-Indo-European *pek- (‘to comb, shear, pluck’).”
It also noted cognates that existed in Dutch, German, Norwegian, Icelandic and Sanskrit. Generally they translating to something like hair, head of hair, mane, and so on.
This might lead one to conclude that English place names ending in -fax might have something to do with hair. Those theories certainly existed with frequency. I substantiated some, debunked others, and couldn’t resolve the rest. Thus, it resembled the Joe Friday situation, where he sort-of uttered his famous catchphrase using different words. I even thought of a second title for this article — since I’m in the mood for bad puns — “Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.”
I focused on four -fax place names that traced to England. Of course feel free to cite others, and particularly their etymologies.
Fairfax
Fairfax grabbed my attention right away. This was both a county and an embedded independent city in Virginia (map). It sat just outside of Washington, DC, and quite near where I live. Longtime readers might recall my epic journey to the City of Fairfax highpoint a number of years ago. I called this my so-called Water Tower Tour.
Fairfax had the cleanest history, etymology and past association with hair. County and city both derived from Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron. The county earning its name during the colonial era and the city afterwards. In this instance the peerage originated with the surname so one must start there.
I’ll help readers avoid a pile of sleazy baby-naming pages and sketchy genealogy websites peddling advertisements. Let’s skip directly to an etymological dictionary. Fairfax meant “fair haired”. Easy, right? So the million-plus residents of Fairfax, Virginia can decide whether that confers some kind of exalted level of status upon them or not.
Colfax
Nearly every Colfax was located in the United States and many traced their names from Schuyler Colfax. He was the scandal-plagued Vice President who served under President Grant during his first administration (1869-1873).
One such Colfax town named for him, the one in Louisiana, had particular historical significance (map).
As described by the Public Broadcasting Service,
“On April 13, 1873, violence erupted in Colfax, Louisiana. The White League, a paramilitary group intent on securing white rule in Louisiana, clashed with Louisiana’s almost all-black state militia. The resulting death toll was staggering. Only three members of the White League died. But some 100 black men were killed in the encounter. Of those, nearly half were murdered in cold blood after they had already surrendered.”
An historical marker reflected the other side of the story, as noted by an article in the New Pittsburgh Courier Online. It stood outside of the Grant Parish Courthouse in Colfax since 1950. The marker stated, “On this site occurred the Colfax Riot in which three white men and 150 negroes were slain. This event on April 13, 1873 marked the end of carpet bag misrule in the South“. To be fair, the nation underwent racial turbulence during the 1950’s and the marker reflected certain sentiments of that period. Nonetheless the marker still stands today (street view image). UPDATE: Officials finally removed it in 2021.
American Surnames discussed two possible etymologies for Colfax. From German, Kohlfuchs referred to a specified color for horses, “dark sorrell or liver chestnut”. The fuchs part referring specifically “a very dark red”. Alternately, from Old German, it could refer to the previously-noted hairy explanation. I couldn’t find anything definitive either way.
Halifax
The preponderance of Halifax place names in North America traced back to George Montagu-Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax (1716-1771). These included, for example, Halifax in Nova Scotia, North Carolina and Virginia.
Unlike Fairfax, the Halifax peerage derived from a location rather than a surname. The original underlying Halifax both for the earldom and the primary North American locations was Halifax in West Yorkshire, England (map).
Legends floated across the Intertubes about how Halifax descended from “holy hair”. They included some fanciful tale about a pious virgin who was executed and her hair displayed in public. This explanation has fallen out of favor though, making way for a much more mundane theory about how it may have derived “from the Old English halh-gefeaxe, meaning an ‘area of coarse grass in the nook of land.‘”
Carfax
Readers from the United States likely did a double-take after seeing Carfax mentioned. That’s because it’s better known there as a company that bombards viewers relentlessly with advertisements for vehicle history services. No worries, the Carfax reference in England seemed to be completely coincidental.
Carfax, a crossroads, marked the central point of Oxford, England. Carfax itself also had a central point, Carfax Tower, the remnants of a medieval church (map). It’s a tourist attraction now. For a modest fee, they let visitors climb the tower and experience panoramic views.
Most sources seemed to believe that Carfax derived from the French carrefore, “a place where four ways meet” and and earlier Latin quadrifurcus, “four-forked.” Some earlier sources discounted that etymology largely on the grounds that French place names weren’t common in England, and halfheartedly wondered if hair figured into the etymology. Those theories didn’t seem to reach beyond the 19th Century, though.
Overall, -fax was a mixed bag: one usage likely related to hair; another a maybe, and two probably not.
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