In the first place we have clearly learned that in tracing the connexion of the tribal system with local names, the fixing of a particular personal name to a locality implies _settlement_. It implies not only a departure from the old nomadic habits on the part of the whole tribe, but also the absence within the territory of the tribe of those redistributions of the tribesmen among the homesteads--the shifting of families from one homestead to another--which prevailed apparently in Wales and certainly in Ireland to so late a date. Following the parallel experience of the Irish and Welsh tribal system we may certainly conclude that in the early semi-nomadic and shifting tribal stage described by Cæsar the names of places, like those of the Irish townlands, would follow local peculiarities of wood or stream or plain, and that not until there was a permanent settlement of particular families in fixed abodes could personal names attach themselves to places, or suffixes be used which in themselves involve the idea of a fixed abode. «They are suggestive of the _tribal household_.» Then with regard to the nature of the tribal settlements which these local names with a patronymic [p351] suffix may represent, surely the actual evidence of the Welsh laws and the 'Record of Carnarvon,' as to what a _tribal household_ was, must be far more likely to guide us to the truth than any theoretical view of the 'village community' under the German mark-system, or even actual examples of village communities existing under complex and totally different circumstances at the present time, valuable as such examples may be as evidence of how the descendants of tribesmen comport themselves after perhaps centuries of settlement on the same ground. «The joint holding of a family down to second cousins.» Now we have seen that the tribal household in Wales was the joint holding of the heirs of a common ancestor from the _great-grandfather_ downwards, with redistributions within it to make equality, first between brothers, then between cousins, and finally between second cousins; the youngest son always retaining the original homestead in these divisions. The _Weles_, _Gwelys_, and _Gavells_ of the 'Record of Carnarvon' were late examples of such holdings. They were named after the common ancestor and occupied by his heirs. Such holdings, so soon as there was fixed settlement in the homesteads, were obviously in the economic stage in which, according to German usage, the name of the original holders with the patronymic suffix might well become permanently attached to them.[530] «The division, the youngest retaining the family homestead.» We may then, following the Welsh example, fairly expect the distinctive marks of the tribal household to be joint holding for two or three _generations_, and then the _ultimate division of the holding among male heirs_, the _youngest retaining the original ancestral homestead_. [p352]