ten signs himself "your servant
and bedesman."

CHAPTER XXI. OF NICKNAMES IN GENERAL

"Here is Wyll Wyly the myl pecker,
And Patrick Pevysshe heerbeter,
With lusty Hary Hangeman,
Nexte house to Robyn Renawaye;
Also Hycke Crokenec the rope maker,
And Steven Mesyllmouthe muskyll taker."

(Cocke Lorelles Bote.)

[Footnote: This humorous poem, inspired by Sebastian Brandt's
Narrenschiff, known in England in Barclay's translation, was printed
early in the reign of Henry VIII. It contains the fullest list we
have of old trade-names.]

Every family name is etymologically a nickname, i.e. an eke-name,
intended to give that auxiliary information which helps in
identification. But writers on surnames have generally made a special
class of those epithets which were originally conferred on the bearer
in connection with some characteristic feature, physical or moral, or
some adjunct, often of the most trifling description, with which his
personality was associated. Of nicknames, as of other things, it may
be said that there is nothing new under the sun. Ovidius Naso might
have received his as a schoolboy, and Moss cum nano, whom we find in
Suffolk in 1184, lives on as "Nosey Moss" in Whitechapel. Some of our
nicknames occur as personal names in Anglo-Saxon times (Chapter VII),
but as surnames they are seldom to be traced back to that period, for
the simple reason that such names were not hereditary. An Anglo-Saxon
might be named Wulf, but his son would bear another name, while our
modern Wolfe does not usually go farther back than some Ranulf le wolf
of the thirteenth or fourteenth century. This is of course stating
the case broadly, because the personal name Wolf also persisted and
became in some cases a surname. In this and the following chapters I
do not generally attempt to distinguish between such double origins.

Nicknames are formed in very many ways, but the two largest classes
are sobriquets taken from the names of animals, e.g. Hogg, or from
adjectives, either alone or accompanied by a noun, e.g. Dear,
Goodfellow. Each of these classes requires a chapter to itself, while
here we may deal with the smaller groups.

Some writers have attempted to explain all apparent nicknames as
popular perversions of surnames belonging to the other three classes.
As the reader will already have noticed, such perversions are
extremely common, but it is a mistake to try to account for obvious
nicknames in this