ly strong-wash. The Joannes Acutus
whose tomb stands in Florence is the great free-lance captain Sir John
Hawkwood, "omitting the h in Latin as frivolous, and the k and w as
unusual" (Verstegan, Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, ch. ix),
which makes him almost as unrecognizable as that Peter Gower, the
supposed founder of freemasonry, who turned out to be Pythagoras.

ALTERNATIVE ORIGINS

Many names are susceptible of two, three, or more explanations. This
is especially true of some of our commonest monosyllabic surnames.
Bell may be from Anglo-Fr. le bel (beau), or from a shop sign, or from
residence near the church or town bell. It may even have been applied
to the man who pulled the bell. Finally, the ancestor may have been a
lady called Isabel, a supposition which does not necessarily imply
illegitimacy (Chapter X). Ball is sometimes the shortened form of the
once favourite Baldwin. It is also from a shop sign, and perhaps most
frequently of all is for bald. The latter word is properly balled,
i.e., marked with a ball, or white streak, a word of Celtic origin;
cf. "piebald," i.e., balled like a (mag)pie, and the "bald-faced
stag." [Footnote: Halliwell notes that the nickname Ball is the name
of a horse in Chaucer and in Tusser, of a sheep in the Promptorium
Parvulorum, and of a dog in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII.
In each case the name alludes to a white mark, or what horsy people
call a star. A cow thus marked is called in Scotland a boasand cow,
and from the same word comes the obsolete bawson, badger.] From the
same word we get the augmentative Ballard, used, according to Wyclif,
by the little boys who unwisely called to an irritable prophet--

"Stey up ballard" (2 Kings ii. 23).

The name may also be personal, Anglo-Sax. Beal-heard. Rowe may be
local, from residence in a row (cf. Fr. Delarue), or it may be an
accidental spelling of the nickname Roe, which also survives in the
Mid. English form Ray (Beasts, Chapter XXIII).

But Row was also the shortened form of Rowland, or Roland. Cobb is an
Anglo-Saxon name, as in the local Cobham, but it is also from the
first syllable of Cobbold (for either Cuthbeald or Godbeald) and the
second of Jacob. From Jacob come the diminutives Cobbin and Coppin.

Or, to take some less common names, House not only represents the
medieval de la house, but also stands for Howes, which, in its turn,
may be the plural of how, a hill (Chapter XII), or th