London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1884
[All rights reserved.]
LONDON
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS,
BREAD STREET HILL.
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
I cannot put forth this attempt without a few words of apology for having undertaken it at all. The excuse is, chiefly, the attraction that the subject has had for me for at least twenty years, from the time when it was first taken up as matter of amusement. The difficulty of gaining information, and the inconsistencies of such as I did acquire, convinced me that the ground was almost untrodden; but the further I advanced on it, the more I perceived that it required a perfect acquaintance with language, philology, ethnology, hagiology, universal history, and provincial antiquities; and to me these were so many dark alleys, up which I only made brief excursions to knock my head against the wall of my own ignorance.
But the interest of the subject carried me on—often far beyond my depth, when the connection between names and words has lured me into the realms of philology, or where I have ventured upon deductions of my own. And I have ventured to lay the result of my collections before the public, in the hope that they may at least show the capabilities of the study of comparative nomenclature, and by classifying the subject, may lead to its being more fully studied, as an illustration of language, national character, religion, and taste.