Chapter XV

). Bull and Muddiman are singularly appropriate for Rugby scrummagers, though the first may be from an inn or shop sign, rather than from physique or character. It is equivalent to Thoreau, Old Fr. toreau (taureau). Muddiman is for Moodyman, where moody has its older meaning of valiant; cf. its German cognate mutig. The weather on the day in question gave a certain fitness both to the original meaning and the later form.

The above names are, with the exception of Hancock, Hudson, and Muddiman, easy to solve; but it must not be concluded that every list is as simple, or that the obvious is always right. The first page of Bards Dictionary of Surnames might well serve as a danger-signal to cocksure writers on this subject. The names Abbey and Abbott would naturally seem to go back to an ancestor who lived in or near an and to another who had been nicknamed the abbot.

But Abbey is more often from the Anglo-French entry le abbé, the abbot, and Abbott may be a diminutive of Ab, standing for Abel, or Abraham, the first of which was a common medieval font-name. Francis Holyoak describes himself on the title-page of his Latin Dictionary (1612) as Franciscus de Sacra Quercu, but his name also represents the holly oak, or holm oak (Tree Names,