The names Badcock, Adcock, Pocock, Bocock, Meacock, and Maycock, as also Cook and Cox, are all familiar ones in London or Cockayne. As Prof. Weekley observes, "many explanations have been given to the suffix _cock_, but I cannot say that any of them have convinced me. Both Cock and Cocking are found as early personal names."[202] In London or Cockaigne, coachmen used to swear, "By Gog and Magog,"[203] and it may prove that "By _Gosh_" is like the surnames Goodge and Gooch, an inflection of Gog. Cogs are the teeth or rays upon a wheel, and that cog meant sun or fire is implied by the word _cook_, _i.e._, baked or fried. _Coch_ is Welsh for _red_, _kakk_ was the Mayan for fire; in the same language _kin_ meant _sun_ and _oc_ meant head, and among the Peruvians _Mama Cocha_ was the title of the Mother of all Mankind. As _coke_ is cooked coal, one might better refer that term to _cook_, than, as officially at present, to _colk_, the core of an apple. It is difficult to appreciate any marked resemblance between coke and the core of an apple. The authorities connote Cockayne with _cookery_, and there is undoubtedly a connection, but the faerie Cockayne was more probably the Land of All Highest Ayne. The German for cock is _hahn_, and the cock with his jagged scarlet crest was pre-eminently the symbol of the good Shine. Chanticleer, the herald of the dawning sun, was the cognisance of Gaul, and East and West he symbolised the conqueror of darkness:-- Aurora's harbinger--who Scatters the rear of darkness thin. The Cockayne of London, France, Spain and Portugal was a degraded equivalent to the Irish Tir nan Og, which means the Land of the Young, and the word Cockayne is probably cognate with Yokhanan, the Hebrew form of John, meaning literally, "God is gracious". According to Wright, "the ancient Greeks had their Cockaigne. Athenæus has preserved some passages from lost poets of the best age of Grecian literature, where the burlesque on the golden age and earthly paradise of their mythology bears so striking a resemblance to our descriptions of Cockaigne, that we might almost think, did we not know it to be impossible, that in the one case whole lines had been translated from the other."[204] The probability is, that the poems, like all ancient literature, were long orally preserved by the bards of the two peoples. In Irish mythology, it is said of Anu, the Great Mother, that well she used to cherish the circle of the Gods; in England Ked or Kerid was "the Great Cherisher," and her symbol as being _perpetual love_ was, with great propriety, that ideal mother, the hen. The word _hen_, according to Skeat, is from the "Anglo-Saxon _hana_, a cock," literally "a singer from his crowing". But a crowing _hen_ is notoriously a freak and an abomination.