FAMILY NAMES.*
Ma. BARING-GOULD has given, 13s here a big book,—it contains more than four hundred pages. But he has not touched, and, indeed, could not hope to touch, more than a small part of his vast subject. The index contains over three thousand names ; but how many English. fiarnanies 4r0 there That is a question which •ie. One Can ansWer, but we may give some figures. In the first• six pages of the letter "C " in the Clergy List there are thirty-four 'names, and some of them well-known names—" Capel " is an etample—awhich are not in the index, and ten which are NOW ," 0" occupies ninety pages in the List ; so if the same. proportion obtains we get five hundred and ten absentees to & hundred and fifty present. This is not meant. in disPa.ragatuent ; it only proves how vast the field is, and we hasten. to add that Mr. Baring-Gould will be found a very instructive and entertaining guide by those. who will follow him in such explorations as he has been able to make. 'In his intro- ductory chapter he gives us some curious inetances of how a confusion, naturally great, has been worse confounded by ignorance and carelessness, but -in the next he brings us to somewhat firmer ground, and shows how names have developed. The first distinctions were tribal only ; the tribal name gave way to the personal; the personal name had to be supplemented by descriptive appellations; last of all, the surname became hereditary. The date of this last change is an important matter, -because not a few fictitious genealogies are founded on it. Our author tells us first of a certain Mr. Gill who claimed descent from Harald Gill, a usurping King of Norway—really an Irish impostor of the name of Gillchrist (" servant of Christ ")—long before Scandi- navian surnames became hereditary, and next of two worthy clergymen for whom a Country paper claimed the other day that they were descendants of S. Bonifaze ! It would not be difficult for any of our readers to match these instances. Blit • Family Names and their Story. By S. Baring-Gould. London: Seclu aad Co. [7s. Od. net.i to return to the subject of the vast variety of names, we °easily see how it came about. Pride, vanity, dislike, affection, the desire to make others ridiculous or to escape being so, and .other motives were active in this way. A beardless man may have been styled in ridicule Marriott (" Little Mary"), Gilbert Folliot (the great adversary of Becket) may have been called Filliot Little Girl ") by some sarcastic partisan of the Archbishop, and have preferred to change it, so Mr. Baring- Gould conjectures, to Folliot (" Little Fool"). This sounds a little wild, except that the more we go into the subject the less we think of credibility. We cannot attempt to follow our author in his jouriaeyings in. this obscure region; but we may give as an example some of the names which came into being in one province of life, service. Chamberlain, Castle (Castellar), Constable. Cook, Engineer (appearing as Ginner, and 'Telmer), Falconer, Gardener, Hind, Marshall (a groom), Parker (the keeper of the park), Porter, and so on. We promise the readers of the volume plenty of amusement, and doubtless not a few occasions of debate.
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