To say, too, that Ptolemy's term _Saxon_ was a native name would be hazardous. We can only say that when we get definite information respecting the districts to which it applied it was _not_ so. It was no Nordalbingian name to the _Stormarians_, no Nordalbingian name to the _Holsatians_, no Nordalbingian name to the men of _Ditmarsh_, no Nordalbingian name to any of the islanders. It was no native name with any specific import at all. It was a general name applied to the countries in question, as it was to many others besides; and it was the Franks who applied it. It had been specific once; but, when it was so, no one knew who bore it, or who gave it. It may have been Slavonic applied to Slavonians, or German applied to Germans, or German applied to Slavonians, or Slavonic applied to Germans. Which was it? Who bore it? In the first instance the occupants of the northern bank of the Elbe, and some of the islands of the coast of Holstein and Sleswick; men of the _wooded districts_ of _Holt_-satia, whose timber gave them the means of building ships, and whose situation on the coast developed the habit of using them to the annoyance of their neighbours. This is all that can be said. Who spread it abroad? The Romans first, the Franks afterwards. They it was who called by the name of _Saxon_ men who never so called themselves, _e.g._, the Angrivarians, the Westphalians, the Saxons of Upper Saxony. How did the Romans get it? From the Kelts of Gaul and Britain. How came the Kelts by it? The usual answer to this: that they got it from the Saxons themselves, the Saxons being, of course, Germans. But the main object of the present chapter has been to shew the extremely unsatisfactory nature of the evidence of any Germans having so called themselves. Assuredly, if they stopped at the present point, the reasons for believing the name to have been native would be eminently unsatisfactory. The best fact would be in the language of Beda, who, as we have seen, called the Westphalians _Old-Saxons_. But Beda often allowed himself to use the language of his authorities, most of whom wrote in Latin, and some of whom were Gauls or Britons. But four fresh ones can be added-- 1. There is the element -_sex_ in the names Es-_sex_, Wes-_sex_, Sus-_sex_, and Middle-_sex_. 2. The name _Sax_-neot was that of a deity, whom the Old Saxons, on their conversion to Christianity, were compelled to foreswear. This gives us the likelihood of its being the name of an _eponymus_. 3. The story about _nimeþ eowre Seaxas_=_take your daggers_, and the deduction from it, that _Saxons_ meant _dagger-men_, is of no great weight; with the present writer, at least. Still, as far as it goes, it is something. 4. The Finlanders call the Germans _Saxon_.