gh to remember the
confusion between initial v and w which prompted the judge's question
to Mr. Weller. The vulgar i for a, as in "tike the kike," has been
evolved within comparatively recent times, as well as the loss of
final -g, "shootin and huntin," in sporting circles. In the word
warmint--

"What were you brought up to be?"

"A warmint, dear boy"

(Great Expectations, ch. xl.),

we have three phonetic phenomena, all of which have influenced the
form and sound of modern surnames, e.g. in Winter, sometimes for
Vinter, i.e. vintner, Clark for Clerk, and Bryant for Bryan; and
similar changes have been in progress all through the history of our
language.

In conclusion it may be remarked that the personal and accidental
element, which has so much to do with the development of surnames,
releases this branch of philology to some extent from the iron rule of
the phonetician. Of this the preceding pages give examples. The
name, not being subject as other words are to a normalizing influence,
is easily affected by the traditional or accidental spelling.
Otherwise Fry would be pronounced Free. The o is short in Robin and
long in Probyn, and yet the names are the same (Chapter VI). Sloper
and Smoker mean a maker of slops and smocks respectively, and Smale is
an archaic spelling of Small, the modern vowel being in each case
lengthened by the retention of an archaic spelling. The late
Professor Skeat rejects Bardsley's identification of Waring with Old
Fr. Garin or Warin, because the original vowel and the suffix are both
different. But Mainwaring, which is undoubtedly from mesnil-Warin
(Chapter XIV), shows Bardsley to be right.

CHAPTER IV. BROWN, JONES, AND ROBINSON

"Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs and such-like folk, have led armies
and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be
somewhat astonished-if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken-to
find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of
the Browns." (Tom Brown's Schooldays, ch. i.)

Brown, Jones, and Robinson have usurped in popular speech positions
properly belonging to Smith, Jones and Williams. But the high
position of Jones and Williams is due to the Welsh, who, replacing a
string of Aps by a simple genitive at a comparatively recent date,
have given undue prominence to a few very common names; cf. Davies,
Evans, etc. If we consider only purely English names, the triumvirate
would be Smith, Tayl