Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

Hedgers, dykers, and mowers:

Gonners, maryners, and shypmasters:

Chymney-swepers and costerde-mongers:

Lodemen and bere-brewers:

Fysshers of the sea and musket-takers.

CHAPTER VI.

'NICKNAMES.'

IF we may trust the accredited origin of the term nickname — viz., that it is prosthetically put for 'an ekename,' that is, an added name — it may seem some-what inconsistent to entitle a special branch of my book by that which in reality embraces the whole. But I do not think I shall be misunderstood, since, whatever be the original meaning intended, the word has now so thoroughly settled down into its present sphere of verbal usefulness that it would be a matter of still more lengthened explanation if I were to put it in its more pretentious and literal sense. By ' nickname,' in this chapter, at any rate, I intend to take in all those fortuitous and accidental sobriquets which, once expressive of peculiar and individual characteristics, have survived the age in which they sprang, and now preserved only in the lumber-room of our directories, may be brought forth once more wherever they help to throw a brighter light upon the decayed memorials of a bygone era. It will be seen at a glance that it is no easy task that of assorting a large body of nondescript and unclassed terms, but I will do my best under pleaded indulgence.

We are not without traces of this special kind of sobriquets even in the early days before the Norman