in which surnames
could be formed. At the time of compilation they were not hereditary.
Thus the last man on the list is Simon Johnson, but his father was
John Neilson, or Nelson (Chapter X), and his son would be ---- Simpson,
Sims, etc. This would go on until, at a period varying with the
locality, the wealth and importance of the individual, one name in the
line would become accidentally petrified and persist to the present
day. The chain could, of course, be broken at any time by the
assumption of a name from one of the other three classes (Chapter I).

CHAPTER III. SPELLING AND SOUND

"Do you spell it with a V or a W?" inquired the judge.

"That depends upon the taste and fancy of the speller, my lord,"
replied Sam. "I never had occasion to spell it more than once or
twice in my life, but I spells it with a V."

(Pickwick, ch. xxxiv.)

Many people are particular about the spelling of their names. I am
myself, although, as a student of philology, I ought to know better.
The greatest of Englishmen was so careless in the matter as to sign
himself Shakspe, a fact usually emphasized by Baconian when speaking
of the illiterate clown of Stratford-on-Avon. Equally illiterate must
have been the learned Dr. Crown, who, in the various books he
published in the latter half of the seventeenth century, spelt his
name, indifferently Cron, Croon, Croun, Crone, Croone, Croune. The
modern spelling of any particular name Is a pure accident. Before the
Elementary Education Act of 1870 a considerable proportion of English
people did not spell their names at all. They trusted to the parson
and the clerk, who did their best with unfamiliar names. Even now old
people in rural districts may find half a dozen orthographic variants
of their own names among the sparse documentary records of their
lives. Dugdale the antiquary is said to have found more than 130
variants of Mainwaring among the parchments of that family. Bardsley
quotes, under the name Blenkinsop--

"On April 2 3, 1470, Elizabeth Blynkkynesoppye, of Blynkkynsoppe,
widow of Thomas Blynkyensope, of Blynkkensope, received a general
pardon"--

four variants in one sentence. In the List of Foreign Protestants and
Aliens in England (1618) we have Andrian Medlor and Ellin Medler his
wife, Johan Cosen and Abraham Cozen, brethren. The death of Sarah
Inward, daughter of Richard Inwood, was registered in 1685.

VARIANT SPELLINGS

Medieval spelling was ro