may term the _clan-name_; and the third, the cognomen, corresponded with our present _surname_. Thus we have such treble appellations as ‘Marcus Tullius Cicero,’ or ‘Aulus Licinius Archeas.’ If a manumitted slave had the citizenship conferred upon him, his single name became his cognomen, and the others preceded it, one generally being the name of him who was the emancipator. Thus was it of ‘Licinius’ in the last-mentioned instance. With the overthrow of the Western Empire, however, this system was lost, and the barbarians who settled upon its ruins brought back the simple appellative once more. Arminius, their chief hero, was content with that simple title. Alaric, the brave King of the Goths, is only so known. Caractacus and Vortigern, to come nearer home, represented but the same custom. But we are not without traces of those descriptive epithets which had obtained among the earlier communities of the East. The Venerable Bede, speaking of two missionaries, both of whom bore the name of ‘Hewald,’ says, ‘pro diversâ capellorum specie unus Niger Hewald, alter Albus diceretur;’ that is, in modern parlance, the colour of their hair being different, they came to be called ‘Hewald Black,’ and ‘Hewald White.’ Another Saxon, distinguished for his somewhat huge proportions, and bearing the name of ‘Ethelred,’ was known as ‘Mucel,’ or ‘Great,’ a word still lingering in the Scottish _mickle_. We may class him, therefore, with our ‘le Grands,’ as we find them inscribed in the Norman rolls, the progenitors of our ‘Grants,’ and ‘Grands,’ or our ‘Biggs,’ as Saxon as himself. Thus again, our later ‘Fairfaxes,’ ‘Lightfoots,’ ‘Heavisides,’ and ‘Slows,’ are but _hereditary_ nicknames like to the earlier ‘Harfagres,’ ‘Harefoots,’ ‘Ironsides,’ and ‘Unreadys,’ which died out, so far as their immediate possessors went, with the ‘Harolds,’ and ‘Edmunds,’ and ‘Ethelreds,’ upon whom they were severally foisted. They were but expressions of popular feeling to individual persons by means of which that individuality was increased, and, as with every other instance I have mentioned hitherto, passed away with the lives of their owners. No descendant succeeded to the title. The son, in due course of time, got a sobriquet of his own, by which he was familiarly known, but that, too, was but personal and temporary. It was no more hereditary than had been his father’s before him, and even so far as himself was concerned might be again changed according to the humour or caprice of his neighbours and acquaintances. And this went on for several more centuries, only as population increased these sobriquets became but more and more common.