Blanchflower Family History

From Old French and Middle English blanche ‘white’ + Old French flur flour, Middle English flour flower denotes both ‘flower’ and ‘flour, white powder’. The 1300 example cited below seems to imply a comparison with a white flower as a symbol of beauty, but so was white flour, which was a traditional epithet in medieval romances for someone whose skin was perfectly smooth and white.

Alternatively, Blancheflour might have been given to a flour miller or to a baker of white bread (Old French and Middle English blanc pain), either of whom will have had their hair and body covered in flour dust.