Of nicknames Brown, Clark, and White are by far the commonest. Then comes King, followed by the two adjectival nicknames Sharp and Young. The growth of towns and facility of communication are now bringing about such a general movement that most regions would accept Brown, Jones and Robinson as fairly typical names. But this was not always so. Brown is still much commoner in the north than in the south, and at one time the northern Johnson and Robinson contrasted with the southern Jones and Roberts, the latter being of comparatively modern origin in Wales (Chapter IV). Even now, if we take the farmer class, our nomenclature is largely regional, and the directories even of our great manufacturing towns represent to a great extent the medieval population of the rural district around them. [Footnote: See Guppy, Homes of Family Names.] The names Daft and Turney, well known in Nottingham, appear in the county in the Hundred Rolls. Cheetham, the name of a place now absorbed in Manchester, is as a surname ten times more numerous there than in London, and the same is true of many characteristic north-country names, such as the Barraclough, Murgatroyd, and Sugden of Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. The transference of Murgatroyd (Chapter XII) to Cornwall, in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, must have been part of the intentional topsy-turvydom in which those two bright spirits delighted. Diminutives in -kin, from the Old Dutch suffix -ken, are still found in greatest number on the east coast that faces Holland, or in Wales, where they were introduced by the Flemish weavers who settled in Pembrokeshire in the reign of Henry I. It is in the border counties, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford, and Monmouth, that we find the old Welsh names such as Gough, Lloyd, Onion (Enion), Vaughan (Chapter XXII). The local Gape, an opening in the cliffs, is pretty well confined to Norfolk, and Puddifoot belongs to Bucks and the adjacent counties as it did in 1273. The hall changes hands as one conquering race succeeds another-- "Where is Bohun? Where is de Vere? The lawyer, the farmer, the silk mercer, lies perdu under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say nothing" (Emerson, English Traits), but the hut keeps its ancient inhabitants. The descendant of the Anglo-Saxon serf who cringed to Front de Boeuf now makes way respectfully for Isaac of York's motor, perhaps on the very spot where his own fierce ancestor first exchanged the sword for the ploughshare long before Alfred's day. CHAPTER V. THE ABSORPTION OF FOREIGN NAMES