I shall have, in the course of this work, frequently to refer to the Teutonic system, and to names which do, or do not, according to my judgment, enter into it. And I will therefore, before going further, endeavour to explain what I mean by the Teutonic system. There is, then, a class of words which, at a time of remote antiquity, have been adopted as stems upon which, in some cases by a sort of phonetic accretion, in some cases by the addition of a diminutive ending, in some cases by forming a patronymic, in some cases by taking in another word as a compound, a number of other names have been formed. Thus, when we find such a group of names as _Dill_, _Dilly_, _Dillow_, _Dillen_, _Dilling_, _Dilke_, _Dilwyn_, or as _Budd_, _Budden_, _Buddle_, _Budding_, _Buddrich_, _Budmore_, we may take it that these are all ancient names, of which _Dill_ and _Budd_ are respectively the stems. And whenever we find a group of names with endings such as it is my object in the present chapter to explain, and in compounds such as will be dealt with in a succeeding chapter, we shall be warranted in assuming the antiquity of the group. The endings in _a_, _ay_, _ah_, _ey_, _ie_, _o_, _oe_, _ow_. And in the first place, let us take the endings in _a_, _i_, and _o_, of which the above are nothing more than arbitrary variations of spelling. Now ancient Teutonic names formed of one single word had commonly, though not invariably (and the same thing applies also to ancient Celtic names), a vowel-ending in _a_, _i_, or _o_; this ending is in our names sometimes dropped and at other times retained. (It is to be observed, however, that even in Anglo-Saxon times it is not an unfrequent thing to find the same name variously with and without a vowel-ending, of which some instances may be noted in Chapter V.) Thus we have _Abbe_, _Abba_, and _Abbey_, we have _Bell_, _Belly_, and _Bellow_, we have _Earl_ and _Early_, we have _Dand_, _Dandy_, and _Dando_, we have _Brand_ and _Brandy_, we have _Todd_ and _Toddy_, we have _Dane_ and _Dana_, we have _Marr_, _Marry_, and _Marrow_. These are all ancient names, variously with and without the vowel-ending, and it will be readily seen how apt the addition is to disguise the name, and to give it the appearance of something else.