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CHAPTER X.
NICKNAMES (continued)

Our last chapter was devoted to the consideration of nicknames of a particular class – viz., animal names. We said that, to all intents and purposes, Sly and Fox were the same – one representing a term for cunning, the other a type. But while re-asserting this statement, we are met by a difficulty. Many generations have elapsed since such a nickname as Sly was fixed upon its original bearer. Did the word “sly” then mean what it now means? Was the name “Sly” given as a disparaging sobriquet, or a compliment? Most probably the latter. Sly, or Sleigh, implied honest dexterity long before the juggler with his sleight-of-hand tricks ruined its verbal reputation. Even two hundred years ago only, when a well-known poet spoke of a good man as one whom —

 
“Graver age had made wise and sly,”
 

he was not misunderstood.

It is so with many other nicknames; and this explains the fact of their existence. Had Sly or Sleigh or Slee been confined to its present meaning three hundred years ago, we should not have found it in our directories in 1878. Our Seeleys and Selymans, our Sillys and Sillymans would probably have become nominally defunct, if silly had conveyed its modern meaning to the ears of our forefathers. “Silly,” in former days, implied guilelessness; we still use it in this sense in the phrase “silly lamb.” An old proverb says: —

 
“Whylst grasse doth growe,
Oft starves the seely steede.”
 

The best instance, however, I know of this use of the word is in Foxe’s Martyrology, where, describing the martyrdom of a young child not seven years old, he says: “The captain, perceiving the child invincible, and himself vanquished, committed the silly soul, the blessed babe, the child uncherished, to the stinking prison.” Here, of course, silly is the equivalent of innocent, or inoffensive. Our Sillymans and Sillys and Seeleys may fairly claim that theirs was a complimentary nickname. I mention these as instances only of a large class.

When we come to bonâ-fide cases, we shall discover, not with any surprise, that almost all our nicknames are complimentary! Our forefathers must have been a most highly respectable set of fellows, judging by this famous Directory. They never got drunk, for who can find a man who but rarely transgressed the limit of sobriety in our directories? There is not a trace of meanness or cowardice about them. ’Tis true Coward is a common name, but then, as already shown, it is not a nickname at all, but an occupation, being none other than our old friend the cow-herd. On the other hand, see what a large number of Doughtys there are, and Bolds, and Gallants, and Prews, all backed up by Hardy, who worthily sits in the Cabinet. We meet with courtesy in our Curtis’s and Curteis’s; with nobility in our Goodharts and Trumans; with humility in our Humbles and Meeks; with kindliness in our Gentles and Sweets; with firmness in our Steadys and Graves; and with liveliness in our Sharps, Quicks, and Wittys. Nor are more abstract charms wanting. It can be truly said that there are plenty of Graces, for at least twelve appear. Faith and Hope are there, – only Charity is wanting. Honour, Virtue, and Wisdom, however, make up in some degree for the absence of that gentle quality. Some people are “Good,” but to be “Goodenough” and “Thorowgood” or “Thoroughgood,” let alone “Toogood,” seems only possible in our nomenclature. Many people, too, are “Perfect” in it, and “Sin” is not there, though “Want” is. Some cynic may say that Truth is conspicuous by its absence, but how can that be in the presence of five “Veritys”? Not merely are we in the atmosphere of constant Spring, and Blossoms, and Budds, but twenty-five Summers appear in the same year, and Rosinbloom blows the twelve months round! The “Tabernacle,” the “Temple,” and endless Churches for Churchfolk, Kirks for Scotch people, and Chapells for Nonconformists, are to be descried on every hand. Service is carried on from year to year, to suit all tastes; there are seven Creeds; Heaven and Paradise, with their attendant Bliss, complete the picture. Oh, what a wonderful community we seem to be in this directory of ours! Human nature would appear to have overridden and crushed all its weaker infirmities, and issued forth into something like what its poets have loved to depicture it. The London Directory is the great parish register of Utopia.

That some sad infirmities did once really exist our olden records show, if our directories of to-day do not. Who could conceive, after this last picture, that Bustler and Meddler once loved to make their objectionable presence felt; that Foolhardy and Giddyhead won for themselves a vain notoriety; that Cruel and Fierce delighted to display their unbridled passions; that Wilful and Sullen fed their hidden and unconsumed fires; and that Milksop and Sparewater had the impudence to show their faces in polite society? Yet such was the case! If there had been a directory of London published by authority under the reign of Henry the Seventh, all these names, and a hundred others of a similar kind, would have found habitation in its pages.

We may here notice that two modern instances of nicknames occupied public attention a few months ago. They are of advantage as showing how easily and even naturally sobriquets of this class fix themselves upon the bearers, and how readily they are accepted by the same. They are the more worthy of attention because they are borne by men of high estate. It was less than a year ago that the English papers announced the death of a well-known native Indian merchant who had been knighted by Her Majesty. What was his surname? Nothing more nor less than Readymoney! The worthy merchant commonly signed himself as such. He was notorious for his princely generosity, and one of his peculiarities was to pay down at once whatever sums he devoted to the different charities he patronised. So well-known was he for this practice, that he acquired the nickname of Readymoney. The other instance is that of the King of Bonny. He was brought up in England, and is one of the first African potentates who has embraced and been trained, in the religion of Jesus Christ. A large amount of pepper has come to England every year from his dominions, so the traders got into the way of styling him King Pepper. The natives being more accustomed to liquid letters, turned it into Pepple. What is the consequence? The king has taken it for his surname; and when he appeared two years ago at St. Paul’s Cathedral, in the service held by the Pan-Anglican Synod, the newspapers did not fail to note the fact, and without any thought of depreciation of his high position as an African potentate, gravely announced that in the vast congregation that swelled the limits of the metropolitan cathedral, was to be seen, joining reverently in the service, His Majesty King Pepple! What can more vividly demonstrate to us in the nineteenth century the ease with which these nicknames – some sober, some ludicrous, some complimentary, some the reverse – would be affixed to certain of our forefathers four or five hundred years ago, and cling to them and to their posterity to all time?

Every old list of names had its large proportion of nicknames. Take the members of the York Corpus Christi Guild of the fifteenth century. We find such associates as Henry Langbane (Longbone), John Ambuler (from his gait), Thomas Chaste, William Fellowship (from his social habits), Agnes Blakmantyll (Black-mantle, from some favoured garment she wore), Margaret Amorous, Thomas Brownlace, William Fairbarne (pretty child), Agnes Fatty, William Goodbarne (good child), William Goodlad, John Godherd (if not Goddard, then Good-herd), Richard Gayswain, Richard Preitouse, John Young, Robert Pepirkorne, John Makblyth (Make-blithe, a very pretty name), Isabella Maw, William Wyldest, Peter Trussebutt, John Handelesse, John Corderoy, John Bentbow, Robert Sparrow, and William Nutbrown. These are all trades members of the same guild in the then small city of York. Their origins are as simple as they are various. In Makeblithe, Fellowship, and Gayswain, we see a joyous disposition; in Peppercorn and Truss-butt, the owners’ business; in Amorous, Chaste, or Goodbairn, moral characteristics; in Blackmantle and Brownlace, peculiarities of habit; in Longbone, Handless, and Nutbrown, bodily idiosyncracies. And so on with the rest. What a mine of surnames is here opened out to view! How largely representative is the London Directory, we have already seen in the case of animal names, to which class belongs Robert Sparrow in the above list.

In continuing the subject, it is at once manifest that we can but generalize. We have had to do so with all the other classes; especially are we compelled in the division we have styled “Nicknames.”

Look at bodily peculiarities. There is not a shape man can assume, but is described in the Directory. There is not an accident that can befall him but it is there recorded, just as if it were the entry book of cases for a London hospital. There is not a peculiarity in his style of dress, or management of his limbs, or complexion of his skin, or colour of his hair, that is not set down with as great a care as if he were a suspected character in a detective’s notebook. Nevertheless, let us be careful not to fall into a trap. A hundred local names look very like nicknames. Tallboy occurs twice in our Directory. These gentlemen represent the Norman Talboys frequently found in Domesday Book. Longness, Thickness, and Redness, may not mean Longnose, Thicknose, and Rednose, although nose was “ness” in the days when these surnames arose. Thickness is known to be local. Any sharp promontory on the coast is a Naze or Ness (i. e. a Nose). Hence such a name as Dengeness in Kent. A Miss Charlotte Ness inquired the meaning of the logical terms abstract and concrete. The answer was given in verse:

 
“Say what is abstract, what concrete?
Their difference define.”
“They both in one fair person meet,
And that, dear maid, is thine.”
 
 
“How so? The riddle pray undo.”
“I thus your wish express:
For when I lovely Charlotte view,
I then view loveli-Ness.”
 

Still we may safely assume of the great majority that they are what they seem to be. We will at once proceed to inspect some of them.

Let us begin with the head, keeping our eye meantime on the pages of the Directory for evidence.

We have Heads (often local) and Tates many; indeed, they are truly tête-à-tête in the Directory, for of the latter no less than eleven are in immediate proximity. We have Silverlock, Whitelock, or Whitlock, Blacklock, and the remains of an old fashion common to mediæval beaux in Lovelock. Redhead, and Whitehead, and Hoar or Hoare, and White and Brown, and Rouse, and Sangwine, and Black, and Blund or Blunt, are an innumerable force. Beard and Blackbeard are to the fore still, though Brownbeard is gone, and probably Bluebeard never was there. The Directory can show its Cheek, like any other fellow of forward disposition, and Joule is not far off. And although it has no Mouth, it possesses at least one Gumm, one Tooth, and two Tongues. “Tooth,” by the way, has been refusing some ecclesiastic dentistry lately; but it will need a good deal of tugging to get him out of the Directory. There is no Gumboil, I am glad to say, at present, but he may make his appearance any day, as he is known in other parts of England. There are eleven Notts to be seen, and two Notmans, whose progenitors were remarkable for their shorn heads. A man was said to have a not-head who presented this appearance, and in the old rolls was set down as Peter le Not, or William le Not. So although Must, and Cant, and Shall, and Will, look as if the Directory (they are all in it) had a strong will of its own, we must not argue the matter so far as Nott is concerned.

Looking at man’s extremities the feet, we again find that it is hard to decide whether the termination “foot” is of local or nickname origin. The Directory has all manner of feet: a Brownfoot, a Whitefoot, a Crowfoot, a Barefoot, a Proudfoot, a Lightfoot, and a Harefoot. Lightfoot has just footed it all the way to the episcopal palace of Durham. We may all, in congratulating the learned Professor, pray that by God’s aid he may be a light unto the feet of his clergy, and guide them in true and safe paths. Remembering too, his predecessor, the firm, yet “kindly Baring,” we might concoct an epigram of our own, and say, with many apologies to the coachman for the liberty we take, —

 
Come, Lightfoot, mount, the ribbons take,
When roads are downward on the brake
Set not thy foot too lightly,
And though the reign of Baring’s o’er,
Hold bearing-rein as tightly.
 

Or we might put another play on the name: —

 
Lightfoot has gone to Durham’s see:
If name and mind in him agree,
Of foes he’ll have not any;
For then a lantern he will be
To light the feet of many.
 

Bishop Baring was so staunch a churchman as to put his foot on Ritualism. Hence a young curate in his diocese said, with more wit than warrant, that the difference betwixt him and his bishop was that he was under Baring, while the other was over-bearing. Speaking of Lightfoot, however, I have heard my father tell of a minister appointed many years ago somewhere in the neighbourhood of Ashton-under-Lyne, whose name was Light. Coming unexpectedly into a room where a prayer-meeting was being held that a good pastor might be sent to them, he heard them singing the two lines well known to most of my readers, —

 
“Sometimes a Light surprises
The Christian while he sings.”
 

It is said he was inclined to look upon it as an augury that he had done rightly in accepting the post. Foot we have already said is very common, but there is only one Toe, and, as is but proper, only one Nail. An old epigram says:

 
“’Twixt Footman Sam and Doctor Toe
A controversy fell,
Which should prevail against his foe
And bear away the belle;
The lady chose the footman’s heart:
Say, who can wonder? No man:
The whole prevailed above the part —
’Twas Footman versus Toe, man.
 

Rawbones is not a pleasant name, and would be by no means suggestive of agreeable associations to its possessor. Some will recall Praise God Barebones, as he has been wrongly styled, for his name was Barebone, and it was never otherwise called till about a hundred years ago. There is all the difference in the world between Barebone and Barebones, and a good deal of point is lost, therefore, in the elder Disraeli’s remark, “There are some names which are very injurious to the cause in which they are engaged; for instance, the long parliament in Cromwell’s time, called by derision the Rump, was headed by one Barebones, a leather-seller.” The reason of the change is simple enough. That assembly went by the style of Barebone’s parliament, and thus people forgot that the “s” did not belong to the name. The name is found in James’ reign as Barbon, and stripped of the two “e’s” ceases to be ludicrous in any sense whatever.

One of the earliest ways of forming a surname of the nickname class was to compound with the baptismal name an adjective of size, age, relationship, or condition. We are all familiar with such a name as Little-john, which may well stand as a typical illustration, for I see in my London Directory nine instances occur. The father of the original bearer was doubtless John, and the son being baptized by the same agnomen, the neighbours would readily get into the way of styling him Little John. The grandson would accept this as his surname, and thus the sobriquet would become a permanency. These compounds of John are not uncommon, for that was the commonest baptismal name in those days, save William. Thus we have Mickle-john, i. e. big John; Brown-john; Hob-john, i. e. clownish John; and Young-john, an instance of which I saw in Kidderminster not long ago. By means of French importation, or through our Norman forefathers, we have also Pru-jean, Gros-jean, and Petit-jean. Proper-john, though not in the London Directory, is very common in some parts of the country, and implied that the original bearer was a well-formed, shapely youth. This old use of the term is preserved in our Authorized Version, where St. Paul is made to speak of Moses as “a proper child.” Our Properjohns need not be ashamed of their designation. Speaking of Youngjohn, I may state that in one of our Yorkshire local directories may be seen John Berry, and immediately below Young John Berry. Doubtless the son was baptized “Young John,” to distinguish him from his father; and thus an old custom was but restored in a more formal manner at the font. As Young John Berry has now grown to man’s estate, as is proved by the fact that he occupies a place of his own in the aforementioned directory, we may, perhaps, some day see in a future issue of that same public register, “Still Younger John Berry” as the title of the representative of the third generation! The most interesting name in its associations, however, is that of Bon-jean or Bon-john, i. e. Good John, corrupted into Bunyan. So early as the year 1310 there dwelt in London a householder of the name of Jon Bonjon. My readers will deem it, I doubt not, a happy coincidence that when we speak of the author of the immortal “Pilgrim’s Progress” as “Good John Bunyan,” we are simply saying twice over “Good John”: once in English, and once in French. Probably the ancestor of the dreamer of Bedford was a Norman tradesman, who had come over to London to better himself.

Speaking of these Norman-French names ending in Jean, such as Gros-Jean, Petit-Jean, or Bon-Jean, we are reminded that this mode of forming surnames was much more common in France than in England. A single glance at the Paris Directory will amply demonstrate this. We find Grand-jean (Big-John), Grand-perret and Grand-pierre (Big-Peter), Grand-collet (Big-Nicholas), and Grand-Guillot (Big-William). Of an opposite character we light upon Petit-collin (Little Nicholas), Petit-guillaume (Little-William), Petit-perrin and Petit-pierre (Little-Peter), and Petit-jeannin, corresponding to our English Little-john already alluded to. These instances, which might be amplified to any extent, will suffice to prove that nicknames of this class are far more prevalent with our French neighbours than ourselves.

But while such qualificatory terms as “good,” “long,” “young,” and “proper,” were freely applied to baptismal names, they were not limited to such. Long-skinner used to exist as a surname, also Young-smith and Good-groom. One of our most aristocratic names is Beau-clerk; and its opposite, Mau-clerk, once familiar enough to our ears, still exists in the corrupted form of Manclerk. Talking, however, of ears, the name that sounds most curious upon the modern tympanum is that of Good-Knave. This is no corruption, and meant exactly what it seems to mean – that the original bearer was a good honest knave! But then, as many of my readers are aware, there was a time when a knave was nothing more than a servant or page. Shakespear speaks of one who is but

 
“Fortune’s knave,
A minister of her will.”
 

Young-husband, of which there are four representatives in our London Directory, is a very familiar instance of this class, although husband had no doubt a much wider significance in the day that the surname arose. Goodfellow is also well known; and, above all, one of our American cousins has made Longfellow famous to all time. If you come to analyse the name of the author of “Evangeline,” it has not a very attractive origin. The earliest instances I can find are in our Yorkshire records, and there it is set down Long-fellay. Even now in Lancashire and Yorkshire a fellow is always a “felley.” I wonder if Henry Longfellow ever heard of Thomas Longfellow, landlord of the Golden Lion Inn at Brecon, who must have made a somewhat long face when he saw the following lines inscribed upon a panel of his coffee-room: —

 
“Tom Longfellow’s name is most justly his due:
Long his neck, long his bill, which is very long, too;
Long the time ere your horse to the stable is led;
Long before he’s rubbed down, and much longer till fed;
Long indeed may you sit in a comfortless room
Till from kitchen long dirty your dinner shall come;
Long the oft-told tale that your host will relate;
Long his face while complaining how long people eat;
Long may Longfellow long ere he see me again:
Long ’twill be ere I long for Tom Longfellow’s Inn.”
 

The well-known publishers, Messrs. Longman, represent, of course, but another form of the same name. Indeed, as will be seen at a glance, this class could be extended indefinitely; so indefinitely that, were I to set all the instances down one by one, I should have to write a big book instead of a small one. This is exactly what the Editor does not desire; for which reason – not to hint that the reader might be weary – I withhold my hand: and indeed it is time.