village adjacent there are several families of this name. Thomas owed its great popularity to Thomas à Becket, who for a time at least was a popular idol. Few baptismal names have laid their impress on the London Directory as this has done. Rows of Thomas’s appear, many hailing from the Welsh border. These are flanked by columns of Thompsons with a “p,” and Thomsons without a “p.” Dancing attendance on these more important members of the Thomas family, are scattered up and down a few Thomassets, and Thomsetts, memorials of the old pet name “Thomaset” (_i.e._ little Thomas). But Thomas seemed to imagine that the “h” in his side ought to be got rid of, so he appears in shoals as Tompkins, with a “p” again, and again as Tomkins without a “p.” Poor relations do not like to make their connection too prominent, for fear of giving offence, so in the background, but close enough to be ready to make good their claim, appear several Toms, Thoms, Tomes, and Tombs. This last looks very funereal indeed, and would seem to be a local name taken from one who has had his dwelling amid the tombs, but “b” was often put at the end in that way. Thus Timbs is from Tims, that is, Timothy. A string of Tomlins and Tomlinsons completes the list. Many will remember the rhyme about Thomas the footman, whom his lady married:— “Dear lady, think it no reproach, It showed a generous mind, To take poor Thomas in the coach, Who rode _before behind_. “Dear lady, think it no reproach, It show’d you loved the more, To take poor Thomas in the coach, Who rode _behind before_.’” There are a fair number of Guns, Gunns, and Gunsons, in our Directory. There is a slang phrase about being the “son of a gun.” This was a common occurrence in old days when such entries as “Richard filius Gunne” were frequently made. The fact is, “Gun” was a baptismal name, and the surnames mentioned above are but sprung from it. It is not many years since Mr. Gunson preached the assize sermon at Cambridge before Mr. Baron Alderson and Mr. Justice Patteson. The following rhyme got abroad:— “A Baron, a Justice, a Preacher,—sons three: The Preacher, the son of a Gun is he; The Baron, he is the son of a tree; Whose son is the Justice I can’t well see, But read him _Pater_son, and all will agree That the son of his father the Justice must be.” Alderson is but a form of Aldrichson, Aldrich being once a common baptismal name; while Patterson, Paterson, Pattison, and Patteson, are all commemorative of Patrick, who, strange to say, was scarcely remembered at the font at all in Ireland at a time when he was very popular in England.