The question now to consider is--What is the value and meaning of this vowel-ending, which was only given to simple names and never to compounds? It might be, in some cases, used simply as a sort of euphonic rounding-off of a name which might seem meagre and insignificant without something of the sort. We ourselves appear to use _s_ in the same manner in the case of some very short names, such as Wills and Epps, in which the final _s_ may perform the same service that was rendered by the vowel-ending. But there is also another principle which I think obtains, and which, indeed, may be the guiding principle in such cases. In Anglo-Saxon (and the same principle applied to other Teutonic dialects), the addition of _a_ to a word implied connection with it. Thus, from _scip_, a ship, is formed _scipa_, one connected with a ship, a sailor. Now, going back to the remote origin of names, there were many cases in which a man took a name from an abstraction, such as war, peace, glory, victory, or from a weapon, as the sword or the spear, and it is obvious that in such cases he required something to connect his name with it, and this is, as it seems to me, what was effected by the ending in question. And the principle is still a living one among us, and we form names daily in accordance with it, though we no longer use the ending in _a_, which has been superseded by that in _i_.[8] A connection with anything whatever is expressed by this ending, as when a stupid person is called "Duncey," one with a remarkable nose "Nosey," or one with a halting gait "Stumpy." The French seem to have retained their old ending, and, when they form names of this sort, to do it with the ending in _o_ (_eau_) which appears to be in accordance with the genius of their language, as that in _i_ (_ey_) is with that of ours.