Chapter IX

) or of Noll, i.e. Oliver.

Therefore, when Mr. X. asserts that his name has always been spelt in such and such a way, he is talking nonsense. If his great-grandfather's will is accessible, he will probably find two or three variants in that alone. The great Duke of Wellington, as a younger man, signed himself Arthur Wesley--

"He was colonel of Dad's regiment, the Thirty-third foot, after Dad left the army, and then he changed his name from Wesley to Wellesley, or else the other way about"

(KIPLING, Marklake Witches);

and I know two families the members of which disagree as to the orthography of their names. We have a curious affectation in such spellings as ffrench, ffoulkes, etc., where the ff is merely the method of indicating the capital letter in early documents.

The telescoping of long names is a familiar phenomenon. Well-known examples are Cholmondeley, Chumley, Marjoribanks, Marchbanks, Mainwaring, Mannering. Less familiar are Auchinleck, Affleck, Boutevilain, Butlin, Postlethwaite, Posnett, Sudeley, Sully, Wolstenholme, Woosnam. Ensor is from the local Edensor, Cavendish was regularly Candish for the Elizabethans, while Cavenham in Suffolk has given the surname Canham. Daventry has become Daintree, Dentry, and probably the imitative Dainty, while Stepson is for Stevenson. It is this tendency which makes the connection between surnames and village names so difficult to establish in many cases, for the artificial name as it occurs in the gazetteer often gives little clue to the local pronunciation. It is easy to recognize Bickenhall or Bickenhill in Bicknell and Puttenham in Putnam, but the identity of Wyndham with Wymondham is only clear when we know the local Pronunciation of the latter name. Milton and Melton are often telescoped forms of Middleton.

DIALECTIC VARIANTS

Dialectic variants must also be taken into account. Briggs and Rigg represent the Northern forms of Bridges and Ridge, and Philbrick is a disguised Fellbrigg. In Egg we have rather the survival of the Mid. English spelling of Edge. Braid, Lang, Strang, are Northern variants of Broad, Long, Strong. Auld is for Old while Tamson is for Thompson and Dabbs for Dobbs (Robert). We have the same change of vowel in Raper, for Roper. Venner generally means hunter, Fr. veneur, but sometimes represents the West-country form of Fenner, the fen-dweller; cf. Vidler for fiddler, and Vanner for Fanner, the winnower.

We all the difficulty we have in catching a new and unfamiliar name, and the subterfuges we employ to find out what it really is. In such cases we do not get the help from association and analogy which serves us in dealing with language in general, but find ourselves in the position of a foreigner or child hearing unfamiliar word for the first time. We realize how many imperceptible shades there are between a short i and a short e, or between a fully voiced g and a voiceless k, examples suggested to me by my having lately understood a Mr. Riggs to be a Mr. Rex.

We find occurring in surnames examples of those consonantal changes which do not violate the great Phonetic law that such changes can only occur regularly within the same group, i.e. that a labial cannot alternate with a palatal, or a dental with either. It is thus that we find b alternating with p, Hobbs and Hopps (Robert), Bollinger and Pullinger, Fr. boulanger; g with k, Cutlack and Goodlake (Anglo-Sax. Guthlac), Diggs and Dix (Richard), Gipps and Kipps (Gilbert), Catlin and Galling (Catherine); j with ch, Jubb or Jupp and Chubb (Job); d with t, Proud and Prout (