the kingdom; and, in the case of certain well-known families, the charters can still be produced by which the ancestral Thanedom was converted into a Barony. The earlier system was traceable in the Highlands as late as the opening of the seventeenth century, when the proprietors were divided into Lords, Lairds--greater and lesser Barons--and royal Bailies of lands, the latter holding in fee-farm, and answering to the Thanes of an earlier period.[324] The patronymic, as distinguished from the surname, still lingered in the same quarter, where the _Tighern_ was known for his descent, rather than from his property, though the custom was even then fast giving way; and at the present time, in no part of the United Kingdom is the territorial appellation so generally used as in the Scottish Highlands, where “the Laird” is often better known by the name of his property than by his own surname. A similar change had been in progress in ancient _Scotia_ long before it penetrated to the wilds of _Moravia_ and Argyle; and after the introduction of the charter, when the privileges of free and gentle birth, hitherto attached to a certain degree of relationship to a thane, were transferred to the chartered freehold, the freeholder, whether of native or foreign origin, gradually became known from his barony or freehold; and as none but the greater Norman barons were distinguished, as at present, by a separate surname, the property itself supplied a designation for its owner. Thus by degrees the whole of the freehold proprietary, without distinction of race, relinquishing the shifting patronymic which had hitherto belonged as much to the Saxon and the Northman as to the Gael, adopted surnames from those chartered properties, which ensured to them the privileges of free and gentle birth, which had formerly attached to descent.[325]