Bridesman
A bridesman is a close male friend and/or relative of the bride, one who walks down the aisle in the bridal ceremony in the traditional place of a bridesmaid. Charlotte Brontë made reference to bridesmen, seemingly in the modern sense, in the final chapter of her 1859 novel Shirley, which is set in Yorkshire in 1811–12: "Amongst the bridal train the most noticeable personages were the youthful bridesmen, Henry Sympson and Martin Yorke." The term, however, has an ancient and obscure, possibly confabulated origin.