[24] “It is probable that all the primitive villages in whose name the patronymic _ing_ occurs were originally colonized by communities united either really by blood or by the belief in a common descent (see Kemble)”--Stubbs (Const. Hist). “Harling abode by Harling and Billing by Billing, and each ‘wick’ and ‘ham’ and ‘stead’ and ‘tun’ took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt together in it. In this way the house or ham of the Billings was Billingham, and the township of the Harlings was Harlington”--Green (‘Making of England,’ p. 188). “Many family names appear in different parts of England.... Thus we find the Bassingas at Bassingbourn.... The Billings have left their stamp at Billing, in Northampton; Billingford, in Norfolk; Billingham, in Durham; Billingley, in Yorkshire; Billinghurst, in Sussex; and five other places in various other counties. Birmingham, Nottingham, Wellington, Faringdon, Warrington, and Wallingford are well-known names formed on the same analogy.... Speaking generally these clan names are thickest along the original English coast, etc.”--Grant Allen (Anglo-Saxon Britain,’ p. 43). [25] “The German theory, formerly generally accepted, that free village communities were the rule among the English, seems to have little direct evidence to support it” (Social England, i. 125). [26] Ibid. i. 130; cf. Canon Taylor: “The Saxon immigration was doubtless an immigration of clans.... In the Saxon districts of the island we find the names not of individuals, but of clans.” [27] The exceptions that he admits are too slight to affect this general statement. [28] Stubbs, _ut supra_. [29] Canon Taylor relies on the passage, “Ida was Eopping, Eoppa was Esing,” etc. [30] Saxons in England, i. 449–456, where he treats such names as “Brytfordingas” as “patronymical.” [31] Ed. 1888, p. 79. [32] I do not overlook the possibility of ‘hall’ (_hala_) being a subsequent addition (as in post-Domesday times), but in these cases it was part of the name at least as early as the Conquest, and the presumption must be all in favour of the name being derived from an individual not from a clan. [33] Saxons in England, i. 56. [34] Ibid. i. 58 _et seq._ [35] “Hence we perceive the value of this word [_ing_] as an instrument of historical research. For a great number of cases it enables us to assign to each of the great Germanic clans its precise share in the colonization of the several portions of our island.” [36] Anglo-Saxon Britain, pp. 81–2. [37] Heming or Haming was a personal name which occurs in Domesday, and which has originated a modern surname. [38] Even by Kemble, as in ‘Saxons in England,’ i. 60–79; but he terms it a “slight” cause of inaccuracy.