href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@24374@[email protected]#Toc80793" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">ITINERANT MERCHANTS

CHAPTER XX.   OFFICIAL AND DOMESTIC    THE HOUSEHOLD CHAPTER XXI.   OF NICKNAMES IN GENERAL    FOREIGN NICKNAMES    KINSHIP    ABSTRACTS    COSTUME    PHYSICAL FEATURES    IMPRECATIONS    PHRASE-NAMES    MISCELLANEOUS CHAPTER XXII.   ADJECTIVAL NICKNAMES    ARCHAIC MEANINGS    DISGUISED SPELLINGS    FRENCH ADJECTIVES    COLOUR NAMES CHAPTER XXIII.   BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES    BIRDS    HAWK NAMES    BEASTS    FISHES    SPECIAL FEATURES    Advertising material from the end of the book

 

 

THE ROMANCE OF NAMES

 

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

In preparing this revised edition I have been able to make use of much information conveyed to me by readers interested in the subject. The general arrangement of the book remains unchanged, but a certain number of statements have been modified, corrected, or suppressed. The study of our surnames has been mostly left to the amateur philologist, and many origins given by my predecessors as ascertained facts turn out, on investigation, to be unsupported by a shred of evidence. I cannot hope that this little book in its new form is free from error, but I feel that it has benefited by the years I have spent in research since its original publication. I would ask reader to accept it, not as a comprehensive treatise containing full information on any name that happens to occur in it, but as a general survey of the subject, and an attempt to indicate and exemplify the various ways in which our surnames have come into existence.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM. April 1922.

 

 

 

 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

The early demand for a new edition of this little book is a gratifying proof of a widespread interest in its subject, rather than a testimony to the value of my small contribution to that subject. Of the imperfections of this contribution no one can be more conscious than myself, but I trust that the most palpable blemishes have been removed in this revised edition. The student of etymology seldom passes a day without coming across some piece of evidence which throws new light on a difficult problem (see Chapter XVI), or invalidates what had before seemed a reasonable conjecture. I have to thank many correspondents for sending me information of value and for indicating points in which conciseness has led to misunderstanding. Some of my correspondents need, however, to be reminded that etymology and genealogy are separate sciences; so that, while offering every apology to that Mr. Robinson whose name is a corruption of Montmorency, I still adhere to my belief that the other Robinsons derive from Robert.

ERNEST WEEKLEY.

NOTTINGHAM March 1914.

 

 

 

 

 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The interpretation of personal names has always had an attraction for the learned and others, but the first attempts to classify and explain our English surnames date, so far as my knowledge goes, from 1605. In that year Verstegan published his Restitution of