(1) Nicknames from the animal and vegetable kingdom.
(2) Descriptive compounds affixed as nicknames.[[438]]
(3) Nicknames from oaths, street-cries, and mottoes.
I.—Physical and External Peculiarities.
(1) Nicknames from Peculiarities of Relationship, Age, Size, and Capacity.
(a) Relationship.—There is scarcely any position in which one man can stand to another which is not found recorded pure and simple in the surnames of to-day. The manner in which these arose was natural enough. We still talk of ‘John Smith, Senior,’ and ‘John Smith, Junior,’ when we require a distinction to be made between two of the same name. So it was then, only the practice was carried further. I find, for instance, in one simple record, the following insertions:—‘John Darcy le fiz,’ ‘John Darcy le frere,’ ‘John Darcy le unkle,’ ‘John Darcy le cosyn,’ ‘John Darcy le nevue,’ and ‘John Darcy, junior.’ How easy would it be for those in whose immediate community these different representatives of the one same name lived to style each by his term of relationship, and for this, once familiarised, to become his surname. ‘Uncle,’[[439]] once found as ‘Robert le Unkle,’ or ‘John le Uncle,’ is now quite obsolete, I think; but the pretty old Saxon ‘Eame’ abides hale and hearty in our numberless ‘Eames,’ ‘Ames,’ ‘Emes,’ and ‘Yeames.’ We find it used in the ‘Townley Mysteries.’ In one of them Rebecca tells Jacob he must flee for fear of Esau—
Jacob. Wheder-ward shuld I go, dame?
Rebecca. To Mesopotameam
To my brother and thyne eme,
That dwellys beside Jordan streme.