Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

Conquest was dreamt or thought of. I have already instanced the Venerable Bede as speaking of two missionaries who, both bearing the name of Hewald, were distinguished by the surnames of 'White' and ' Black,' on account of their hair partaking of those respective hues. In the ninth century, too, Ethelred, Earl of the Gaini, was styled the 'Mucel' or 'Mickle' — ' eo quod erat corpore magnus et prudentiâ grandis.'With the incoming of the Normans, however, came a great change. The burlesque was part of their nature. A vein for the ludicrous was speedily acquired. It spread in every rank and grade of society. The Saxon himself was touched with the contagion, ere yet the southern blood was infused into his veins. Equally among the high and the low did such sobriquets as 'le Bastard,' 'le Rouse,' 'le Beauclerk,' 'le Grisegonel' (Greycloke), 'Plantagenet,' 'Sansterre,'and 'Coeur-de-lion' find favour. But it did not stay here; the more ridiculous and absurd characteristics became the butt of attack. In a day when buffoonery had become a profession, when every roughly-sketcheddrawing was a caricature, every story a record of licentious adventure, it could not be otherwise. The only wonderment is the tame acquiescence on the part of the stigmatized bearer. To us now-a-days, to be termed amongst our fellows 'Richard the Crookbacked,' 'William Blackinthemouth,' 'Thomas the Pennyfather' (that is, the Miser), or 'Thomas Wrangeservice ' (the opposite of Walter Scott's 'Andrew Fairservice'), would be looked upon as mere wanton insult. But it was then far different. The times, as I have said, were rougher and coarser, and the delicacy of feeling which would have shrunk

'NICKNAMES.'

from so addressing those with whom we had to deal, or from making them the object of our banter, would have been perfectly misunderstood. Apart from this, too, the bearer, after all, had little to do with the question. He did not give himself the nickname he received it; pleasant or unpleasant, as he had no voicein the acquisition, so had he none in its retention. There was nothing for it but good-tempered acquiescence. We know to this very day how difficult was the task of getting rid of our school nicknames, how they clung to us from the unhappy hour in which some sharp-witted, quick, discerning youngster foundout our weak part, and dubbed us by a sobriquet, which, while it perhaps exaggerated the characteristicto which it had reference, had the effect which a hundred admonitions from paternal or magisterial head-quarters had not, to make us see our folly and mend our ways. None the less, however, did the affixremain, and this was our punishment. How often, when in after years we come accidentally across somequondam schoolfellow, each staring strangely at the other's grizzly beard or beetled brow, the old sobriquetwill crop up to the lips, and in the very naturalness with which the expression is uttered all the separationof years of thought and feeling is forgotten, and we are instantly back to the old days and the old haunts, and pell-mell in the thick of old boyish scrapes again.Yet perchance these names were offensive. But they have wholly lost their force. We had ceased to feel hurt by them long before we parted in early days. See how this, too, is illustrated in the present day in the names of certain sects and parties. We talk calmly of 'Capuchins,' 'Quakers,' 'Ranters,' 'Whigs'