Many of my readers will not know what a ruddock is. It was the old proper name for the robin-redbreast. Chaucer has the name in “The Assembly of Fowls.” But our forefathers nicknamed this homely bird robin. Every family then had a “Robin” in the household. Out of fondness for the bird that did not desert them when the winter snow enveloped the trees with a white mantle, but came hopping to the doorstep for a crumb, they styled it by the familiar term of robin. This nickname became so popular that it all but pushed out the more orthodox term of _ruddock_. But there are three Ruddicks and five Ruddocks in the London Directory! What does this show? Why, that as the man’s name of Robin was given to the bird, so the bird’s name of ruddock was given to the man. We find a Ralph Ruddoc registered so early as the Hundred Rolls. No doubt he got the nickname from some peculiar redness of the chin or throat, or because of some peculiarity in his habits or demeanour, which struck his neighbours with a fancied similarity to the bird. A sparrow was always called “Phip,” from Philip. On the other hand, I find no less than twenty Sparrows in the London Directory. Thus a pye became a Mag-pie, from Margaret, and we still chant in nursery song,— “See-saw, Margery Daw.” Having given them Margaret, they have presented us with many of our Daws, all our Pyes, and the one Pie of the London Directory. How odd that while, as I have shown, there are so many hundred Cooks in the metropolis, they can only turn out one Pie! There is a large assortment of Cockerells, Cockrells, and Cockrills in the Directory. Young cocks still go by this name in Cumberland. Driving in my dogcart to visit a sick woman on the hill-side the other day, I went by a barn-door on which I saw a placard advertising the sale of fine healthy “cockerels.” But I may not linger. We may see in this same metropolitan record Swans, Finches, Herons, Cootes, Ducks, Drakes, Woodcocks, Partridges, Goslings, and Gosses, by the dozen. Gosling is often but a corruption of Joscelyn, and so is not of the nickname class. Goss is but the old spelling of “goose.” In our older records we find it registered as Peter le Goos, Amicia le Gos, or John le Gos. All our Pinnicks and Pinnocks are from the old pinnock or pinnick, the hedge-sparrow:— “Thus in the pinnick’s nest the cuckoo lays, Then, easy as a Frenchman, takes her flight.”