way. Any of us who retain a vivid recollection of
early days can call to mind nicknames of the most fantastic kind, and
in some cases of the most apparently impossible formation, which stuck
to their possessors all through school-life. A very simple test for
the genuineness of a nickname is a comparison with other languages.
Camden says that Drinkwater is a corruption of Derwentwater. The
incorrectness of this guess is shown by the existence as surnames of
Fr. Boileau, It. Bevilacqua, and Ger. Trinkwasser. It is in fact a
perfectly natural nickname for a medieval eccentric, the more normal
attitude being represented by Roger Beyvin (boi-vin), who died in
London in 1277.

FOREIGN NICKNAMES

Corresponding to our Goodday, we find Ger. Gutentag and Fr. Bonjour.
The latter has been explained as from a popular form of George, but
the English and German names show that the explanation is.
unnecessary. With Dry we may compare Fr. Lesec and Ger. Duerr, with
Garlick Ger. Knoblauch (Chapter XV), and with Shakespeare Ger.
Schuettespeer. Luck is both for Luke and Luick (Liege, Chapter XI),
but Rosa Bonheur and the composer Gluck certify it also as a nickname.
Merryweather is like Fr. Bontemps, and Littleboy appears in the Paris
Directory as Petitgas, gas being the same as gars, the old nominative
(Chapter I) of garcon--

"Gars, a lad, boy, stripling, youth, yonker" (Cotgrave).

Bardsley explains Twentyman as an imitative corruption of twinter-man,
the man in charge of the twinters, two-year-old colts. This may be
so, but there is a German confectioner in Hampstead called Zwanziger,
and there are Parisians named Vingtain. Lover is confirmed by the
French surnames Amant and Lamoureux, and Wellbeloved by Bienaime.
Allways may be the literal equivalent of the French name Partout. On
the other hand, the name Praisegod Barebones has been wrongly fixed on
an individual whose real name was Barbon or Barborne.

It may seem strange that the nickname, conferred essentially on the
individual, and often of a very offensive character, should have
persisted and become hereditary. But schoolboys know that, in the
case of an unpleasant nickname, the more you try to pull it off, the
more it sticks the faster. Malapert and Lehideux are still well
represented in the Paris Directory. Many objectionable nicknames
have, however, disappeared, or have been so modified as to become
inoffensive.

Sometimes such disappearance has resul