Chapter VIII

).

Several places and families in England are named Hide or Hyde, which meant a certain measure of land. The popular connection between this word and hide, a skin, as in the story of the first Jutish settlement, is a fable. It is connected with an Anglo-Saxon word meaning household, which appears also in Huish, Anglo-Sax. hi-wisc. Dike, or Dyke, and Moat, also Mott, both have, or had, a double meaning. We still use dike, which belongs to dig and ditch, both of a trench and a mound, and the latter was the earlier meaning of Fr. motte, now a clod, In Anglo-French we find moat used of a mound fortress in a marsh. Now it is applied to the surrounding water. From dike come the names Dicker, Dickman, Grimsdick, etc. Sometimes the name Dykes may imply residence near some historic earthwork, such as Offa's Dyke, just as Wall, for which Waugh was used in the north, may show connection with the Roman wall. With these may be mentioned the French name Fosse, whence the apparently pleonastic Fosdyke and the name of Verdant Green's friend, Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke. Delves is from Mid. Eng. dell, ditch. Jury is for Jewry, the quarter allotted to the Jews, but Jewsbury is no doubt for Dewsbury; cf. Jewhurst for Dewhurst.

Here may be mentioned a few local surnames which are hard to classify. We have the apparently anatomical Back, Foot, Head, and, in compounds, -side. Back seems to have been used of the region behind a building or dwelling, as it still is at Cambridge. Its plural has given Bax. But it was also a personal name connected with Bacon (