In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, a change took place. By a silent and unpremeditated movement over the whole of the more populated and civilized European societies, nomenclature began to assume a solid lasting basis. It was the result, in fact, of an insensibly growing necessity. Population was on the increase, commerce was spreading, and society was fast becoming corporate. With all this arose difficulties of individualization. It was impossible, without some further distinction, to maintain a current identity. Hence what had been but an occasional and irregular custom became a fixed and general practice—the distinguishing sobriquet, not, as I say, of premeditation, but by a silent compact, became part and parcel of a man’s property, and passed on with his other possessions to his direct descendants. This sobriquet had come to be of various kinds. It might be the designation of the property owned, as in the case of the Norman barons and their feudatory settlements, or it might be some local peculiarity that marked the abode. It might be the designation of the craft the owner followed. It might be the title of the rank or office he held. It might be a patronymic—a name acquired from the personal or Christian name of his father or mother. It might be some characteristic, mental or physical, complimentary or the reverse. Any of these it might be, it mattered not which; but when once it became attached to the possessor and gave him a fixed identity, it clung to him for his life, and eventually passed on to his offspring. Then it was that at length local and personal names came somewhat upon the same level; and as the former, some centuries before, had stereotyped the life of our various Celtic and Slavonic and Teutonic settlements, so now these latter fossilized the character of the era in which they arose; and here we have them, with all the antiquity of their birth upon them, breathing of times and customs and fashions and things that are now wholly passed from our eyes, or are so completely changed as to bear but the faintest resemblance to that which they have been. To analyse some of these names, for all were impossible, is the purpose of the following chapters. I trust that ere I have finished my task, I shall have been able to throw some little light, at least, on the life and habits of our early English forefathers. The reader will have observed that I have just incidentally alluded to five different classes of names. For the sake of further distinction I will place them formally and under more concise headings:— 1. Baptismal or personal names. 2. Local surnames. 3. Official surnames. 4. Occupative surnames. 5. Sobriquet surnames, or Nicknames. I need scarcely add that under one of these five divisions will every surname in all the countries of Europe be found. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I.