reader an adequate conception of the popularity of this name four hundred years ago. It is one more conspicuous instance marking the change which the Reformation and an English Bible effected upon our nomenclature. IV.—_Names chosen from Festivals and Holydays._ We may here refer to a group of appellatives which are derived from the names of certain days and seasons. I dare not say that all I shall mention are absolutely sprung from one and the same custom. Some, I doubt not, were bestowed upon their owners from various accidental circumstances of homely and individual interest. Neighbours would readily affix a nickname of this class upon one who had by some creditable or mean action made a particular season remarkable in his personal history. But these, I presume, will be exceptional, for there is no manner of doubt that it was a practice, and by no means a rare one, to baptize a child by the name of the day on which it was born, especially if it were a holiday. We know now how often it happens that the Church Calendar furnishes names for those born upon the Saints’ days—how many ‘Johns’ and ‘Jameses’ and ‘Matthews’ owe their appellations to the fact that they came into the world upon the day marked, ecclesiastically, for the commemoration of those particular Apostles. This is still a custom among more rigid Churchmen. In early days, however, it was carried to an extreme extent. Days of a simply local interest—days for fairs and wakes—days that were celebrated in the civil calendar—days that were the boundaries of the different seasons—all were familiarly pressed into the service of name-giving. These, springing up in a day when they were no sooner made part of the personal than they became candidates for our hereditary nomenclature, have in many cases come down to us. Thus, the time when the yule log blazed and crackled on the hearth has given us ‘Christmas,’ or ‘Noel,’ or ‘Yule,’ or ‘Midwinter.’ This last seems to have been an ordinary term for the day, for we find it in colloquial use at this time. In Robert of Gloucester’s ‘Life of William the Conqueror,’ he speaks of it’s being his intention to Midwinter at Gloucester, To Witesontid at Westminster, to Ester at Wincester.