Surname Origins, Their Source and Significations (1875)

and 'Tories,' and yet some of these taken literally are offensive enough, especially the political ones. But, as we know, all that attached to them of odium has long ago become clouded, obscured, and forgotten, and now they are the accepted, nay, proudly owned, titles of the party they represent. Were it not for this we might be puzzled to conceive why in these early times such a name as ' le Bonde,' significant of nothing but personal servitude and galling oppression, was allowed to remain. That ' le Free' and ' le Freman' and ' le Franch-homme' should survive the ravages of time is natural enough. But with 'Bond' it is different. It bespoke slavery. Yet it is one of our most familiar names of to-day. How is this ? The explanation is easy. The term was used to denote personality, not position; the notion of condition was lost in that of identity. It was just the same with sobriquets of a more humorous and broad character, with nicknames in fact. The roughest humour of those rough days is oftentimes found in these early records, and the surnames which, putting complimentary and objectionable and neutral together, belong to this day to this class, form still well-nigh the largest proportion of our national nomenclature. There is something indescribably odd, when we reflect about it, that the turn of a toe, the twist of a leg, the length of a limb, the colour of a lock of hair, a conceited look, a spiteful glance, a miserly habit of some in other respects unknown and long-forgotten ancestor, should still five or six centuries afterwards be unblushingly proclaimed to the world by the immediate descendants therefrom. And yet so it is with our 'Cruickshanks' or 'Whiteheads' or 'Meeks' or 'Proudmans;' thus it

'NICKNAMES.'

is with our 'Longmans' and 'Shortmans,' our 'Biggs' and 'Littler,' and the endless others we shall speedily mention. Still these represent a better class of surnames. As time wore on, and the nation became more refined, there was an attempt made, successful in many instances, to throw off the more objectionable of these names. Some were so utterly gross and ribald as even in that day to sink into almost instant oblivion. Some, I doubt not, never became hereditary at all.

In glancing briefly over a portion of these names we must endeavour to affect some order. We might divide them into two classes merely, physical and moral or mental peculiarities; but this would scarcely suffice for distinction, as each would still be so large as to make us feel ourselves to be in a labyrinth that had no outlet. Nor would these two classes be sufficiently comprehensive ? There would still be left a large mass of sobriquets which could scarcely be placed with fitness in either category: nicknames from Nature, nicknames from oaths, or street-cries, or mottoes, or nicknames again in the shape of descriptive compounds. Names from the animal kingdom, of course, could be set under either a moral or physical head, as, in all cases, saving when they have arisen from inn-signs or ensigns, they would be affixed on the owner for some supposed affinity he bore in mind or body to the creature in question. Still it will be easier to place them, as well as some others, under a third and more miscellaneous category. These three divisions I would again sub-divide in the following fashion: —