"Those syllables intense,
Nucleus of England's native eloquence"
(Byron, The Island, iii. 5)—
goes back to the fifteenth century, in which invective references to the godons are numerous. [Footnote: "Les Anglais en vérité ajoutent par-ci, par-là quelques autres mots en conversant; mais il est bien aisé de voir que goddam est le fond de la langue" (Beaumarchais, Mariage de Figaro, iii. 5).]
Such nicknames are still in common use in some parts of France—
"Les Berrichons se désignent souvent par le juron qui leur est familier. Ainsi ils diront: 'Diable me brûle est bien malade. Nom d'un rat est à la foire. La femme à Diable m’estrangouille est morte. Le garçon à Bon You (Dieu) se marie avec la fille à Dieu me confonde.'"
(Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue française, iv. 209).
Perhaps the most interesting group of nicknames is that of which we may take Shakespeare as the type. Incidentally we should be thankful that our greatest poet bore a name so much more picturesque than Corneille, crow, or Racine, root. It is agreed among all competent scholars that in compounds of this formation the verb was originally an imperative. This is shown by the form; cf. ne'er-do-well, Fr. vaurien, Ger. Taugenichts, good-for-naught. Thus Hasluck cannot belong to this class, but must be an imitative form of the personal name Aslac, which we find in Aslockton.
As Bardsley well says, it is impossible to retail all the nonsense that has been written about the name Shakespeare—"never a name in English nomenclature so simple or so certain in its origin; it is exactly what it looks— shake-spear." The equivalent Schüttespeer is found in German, and we have also in English Shakeshaft, Waghorn, Wagstaff, Breakspear, Winspear. "Winship the mariner" was a freeman of York in the fourteenth century. Cf. Benbow (bend-bow), Hurlbatt, and the less athletic Lovejoy, Makepeace. Gathergood and its opposite Scattergood are of similar origin, good having here the sense of goods. Dogood is sometimes for Toogood, and the latter may be, like Thoroughgood, an imitative form of Thurgod (Chapter VII); but both names may also be taken literally, for we find Ger. Thunichtgut, do no good, and Fr. Trodoux (trop doux).