Chapter Ii); Down Is Usually Local, At the Down or Dune; Dunn Is

medieval le dun, a colour nickname; names in Ead-, Ed-, are usually from the medieval female name Eda (Chapter VI); Sibbs generally belongs to Sibilla or Sebastian; Tait must sometimes be for Fr. Tete, with which cf. Eng. Head; Tidd is an old pet form of Theodore; and Wade is more frequently atte wade, i.e. ford. Even Ebbs and Epps are more likely to be shortened forms of Isabella, usually reduced to Ib, or Ibbot (Chapter X), or of the once popular Euphemia.

To sum up, we may say that the Anglo-Saxon element in our surnames is much larger than one would imagine from Bardsley's Dictionary, and that it accounts, not only for names which have a distinctly Anglo-Saxon suffix or a disguised form of one, but also for a very large number of monosyllabic names which survive in isolation and without kindred. In this chapter I have only given sets of characteristic examples, to which many more might be added. It would be comparatively easy, with some imagination and a conscientious neglect of evidence, to connect the greater number of our surnames with the Anglo-Saxons.

Thus Honeyball might very well represent the Anglo-Sax. Hunbeald, but, in the absence of links, it is better to regard it as a popular perversion of Hannibal (Chapter VIII). In dealing with this subject, the via media is the safe one, and one cannot pass in one stride from Hengist and Horsa to the Reformation period.

"HIDEOUS NAMES"

Matthew Arnold, in his essay on the Function of Criticism at the Present Time, is moved by the case of Poor Wragg, who was "in custody," to the following wail--

"What a touch of grossness in our race, what an original shortcoming in the more delicate spiritual perceptions, is shown by the natural growth amongst us of such hideous names-Higginbottom, Stiggins, Bugg!"

But this is the poet's point of view. Though there may have been "no Wragg by the Ilissus," it is not a bad name, for, in its original form Ragg, it is the first element of the heroic Ragnar, and probably unrelated to Raggett, which is the medieval le ragged. Bugg, which one family exchanged for Norfolk Howard, is the Anglo-Saxon Bucgo, a name no doubt borne by many a valiant warrior. Stiggins, as we have seen (Chapter XIII), goes back to a name great in history, and Higginbottom (Chapter XII) is purely geographical.