6. For the rest of the out-of-the-way names MR. LOWER mentions I can give no more explanation than of many thousands others which have been probably produced by some peculiarity or incidents in the first nominee, or some corruption of a better known name. As to this class of fancy names, I can give MR. LOWER a hint that may be of use to him. It used to be the custom at the old Foundling Hospital and in all parish workhouses, to give the children what I venture to call _fancy_ names. I remember being shocked at the heterogeneous nomenclature that was outpoured on fifty or a hundred poor babes at the Foundling. I happened once to accompany a noble lady--the daughter of a great sea officer--to one of these Foundling christenings, when the names of Howe, Duncan, Jervis, and Nelson, were in fashion, and they were each given to half-a-dozen children; and while this was going on, my fair and noble friend whispered me, "What a shame! all these poor little creatures will grow up to be our cousins." Sometimes the names given were grotesque, such as ought not to have been permitted; and sometimes the children brought into the hospital, pinned to their clothes, names in which I suppose the poor mother may have had a meaning, but which seemed to us fantastical and extravagant. Illegitimacy is a considerable source of strange names. I could give some droll instances. Corruption is another; there are half-a-dozen names of labourers in my village which are mere corruptions by vulgar pronunciation of some of the noblest names of the peerage. MR. LOWER cannot have failed to observe the {593} great tendency in the United States to vary the orthography, and of course, I suppose, the pronunciation of some of their old English patronymics; not from any dislike to them, for the contrary sentiment, I believe, is very prevalent, but the emigrants who carried out the names were ignorant or indifferent as to the true orthography or pronunciation, and in time the departure grows more wide. Instances of this may be also found in the small towns of England, where MR. LOWER will find on the signs frequent deviations from the usual spelling of the commonest as well as of the rarer names. C. In glancing through Cole's MSS. in the British Museum, my eye rested on two paragraphs, which perhaps may be unknown to MR. LOWER. In Additional MSS. No. 5805. p. iv., Cole says: "Before surnames were in use they were forced to distinguish one another by the addition of _Fitz_ or _Son_, as John Fitz-John, or John the son of John, or John Johnson, as now in use. This was in the first Edward's time: nay, so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in some places in France they had no surnames, but only Christian names, as the learned Monsieur Menage informs us: 'Il y a environ cent ans, à ce que dit M. Baluze, qu'à Tulle on n'avait que des noms propres, et point de surnoms.'--_Menagiana_, tom. i. p. 116. edit. 1729."