CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

NAMES.

There might be much amusement in tracing theorigin of family names. Long ago—say aboutsix or seven hundred years since—there were nofamily names at all. People had Christian namesand nothing more, and of course there was oftenconsiderable difficulty in distinguishing individuals.Such at present is the case in Turkey, where theold eastern practice of using but a single namecontinues to be followed. Surnames were notintroduced into England until after the Conquest.The fashion of using two names came to us fromFrance, but for a time was confined to families ofdistinction, and extended slowly over the country.One thing is said to have promoted its use. Youngladies of aspiring tastes declined to marry gentlemenwho had only a Christian name, such asJohn or Thomas, for they would necessarilyhave still to be called by their own name, Mary,Elizabeth, or whatever it was. Spinsters accordinglythought it to be a grand thing to form analliance with a person possessing the distinctionof a family name, by which they should ever afterbe called.

Curiously enough, so difficult is it to alter oldusages, that until very lately surnames werescarcely used among the humbler classes of peoplein some parts of Great Britain remote from centresof civilisation. In these places, a creditor wouldenter the name of his debtor in his books as Johnthe son of Thomas, just as you see genealogies inthe Old Testament. Only now, from improvedcommunication with the outer world, have practicesof this kind gone out of use. We can easilyunderstand how the names ending in son, asJohnson, Thomson, Manson (abbreviation of Magnusson),originated; and it is equally easy toconjecture how names from professions, such asSmith, Miller, or Cooper came into existence.It is equally obvious that many family namesare derived from the nature of the complexionof individuals, as Black, Brown, and White.

At first sight, there is a mystery as regards thedifferent ways in which certain names are spelled.Smith is sometimes written Smyth; and in someinstances Brown has an e at the end of it. We seethe name Reid spelled

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