ut
merely to show that the etymological study of surnames has scarcely
been touched at present, except by writers to whom philology is an
unknown science. I have inserted, as a specimen problem (ch. xvi.),
a little disquisition on the name Rutter, a cursory perusal of which
will convince most readers that it is not much use making shots in
this subject.

My aim has been to steer a clear course between a too learned and a
too superficial treatment, and rather to show how surnames are formed
than to adduce innumerable examples which the reader should be able to
solve for himself. I have made no attempt to collect curious names,
but have taken those which occur in the London Directory (1908) or
have caught my eye in the newspaper or the streets. To go into proofs
would have swelled the book beyond all reasonable proportions, but the
reader may assume that, in the case of any derivation not expressly
stated as a conjecture, the connecting links exist. In the various
classes of names, I have intentionally omitted all that is obvious,
except in the rather frequent case of the obvious being wrong. The
index, which I have tried to make complete, is intended to replace to
some extent those cross-references which are useful to students but
irritating to the general reader. Hundreds of names are susceptible
of two, three, or more explanations, and I do not profess to be
exhaustive.

The subject-matter is divided into a number of rather short chapters,
dealing with the various classes and subdivisions into which surnames
fall; but the natural association which exists between names has often
prevailed over rigid classification. The quotations by which obsolete
words are illustrated are taken as far as possible from Chaucer, whose
writings date from the very period when our surnames were gradually
becoming hereditary. I have also quoted extensively from the
Promptorium Parvulorum, our earliest English-Latin Dictionary (1440).

In ch. vii, on Anglo-Saxon names, I have obtained some help from a
paper by the late Professor Skeat (Transactions of the Philological
Society, 1907-10, pp. 57-85) and from the materials contained in
Searle's valuable Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge, 1897).
Among several works which I have consulted on French and German family
names, the most useful have been Heintze's Deutsche Familiennamen, 3rd
ed. (Halle a. S., 1908) and Kremers' Beitraege zur Erforschung der
franzoesischen Familienname