Let us take yet one more name, _Gay_, a little more complicated in its connections than the others, and endeavour to trace it up to its origin. "Nay! but what better origin can we have," I can fancy the reader saying at starting, "than our own word 'gay', French _gai_?" I would not undertake to say that our name is not in any instance from this origin, but what I say is that a proved Anglo-Saxon _name_ is better than any assumed _word_, however suitable its meaning may seem to be. Moreover, the same Anglo-Saxon word will account, not only for Gay, but for a whole group of names, _Gay_, _Gye_, _Gedge_, _Gage_, _Kay_, _Key_, _Kegg_, _Kedge_, _Cage_,--all variations, according to my view, of one original name. It must inevitably be the case that a name dating back to a remote antiquity, and in use over a wide area, must be subject to many phonetic variations. And it matters nothing to etymology, so long as her own strict rules are complied with, if some of these names have not a single letter in common. Given, then, an Anglo-Saxon name Gagg, Gegg, with its alternative form Cagg, Keg, and we get from it all the forms that are required. For the English ear is averse, as a matter of euphony, to a final _g_, and while it most commonly changes it into _y_ (which is in effect dropping it), as in A.S. _dag_, Eng. _day_, A.S. _cæg_, Eng. _key_, it also not unfrequently changes it into _dg_, as in A.S. _bricg_, Eng. _bridge_, &c. To come, then, to the Anglo-Saxon names concerned, Kemble, in his list of original settlers, has both Gagingas, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Gag, and Cægingas, _i.e._ descendants or followers of Cæg. And the Anglo-Saxon names cited below, one of them the exact counterpart of Gay, are deduced from place-names of a later period. The Old German names do not, in this case, throw any light upon the subject, as, on account of the stem not being so distinctly developed as it is in Anglo-Saxon, they have been placed by Foerstemann to, as I consider, a wrong stem, viz. _gaw_, patria. _Anglo-Saxon names._--Gæcg, Geagga, Geah, Cæg, Ceagga, Ceahha (Gæging, Gaing, _patronymics_). _Old German names._--Gaio, Geio, Kegio, Keyo, Keio. _Present German._--Gey, Geu. _Present Friesic._--Kay, Key. _English surnames._--Gay, Gye, Gedge, Gage, Kay, Key, Kegg, Kedge, Cage. As to the origin and meaning of the word, I can offer nothing more than a somewhat speculative conjecture. There is a stem _gagen_, _cagen_, in Teutonic names, and which seems to be derived most probably from O.N. _gagn_, gain, victory. We find it in Anglo-Saxon in Gegnesburh, now Gainsborough, and in Geynesthorn, another place-name, and we have it in our names _Gain_, _Cain_, _Cane_. It is very possible, and in accordance with the Teutonic system, that _gag_ may represent the older and simpler form, standing to _gagen_ in the same relation as English _ward_ does to _warden_, and A.S. _geard_ (inclosure), to _garden_.