The subject-matter is divided into a number of rather short chapters, dealing with the various classes and subdivisions into which surnames fall; but the natural association which exists between names has often prevailed over rigid classification. The quotations by which obsolete words are illustrated are taken as far as possible from Chaucer, whose writings date from the very period when our surnames were gradually becoming hereditary. I have also quoted extensively from the Promptorium Parvulorum, our earliest English-Latin Dictionary (1440).
In ch. vii, on Anglo-Saxon names, I have obtained some help from a paper by the late Professor Skeat (Transactions of the Philological Society, 1907-10, pp. 57-85) and from the materials contained in Searle's valuable Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum (Cambridge, 1897). Among several works which I have consulted on French and German family names, the most useful have been Heintze's Deutsche Familiennamen, 3rd ed. (Halle a. S., 1908) and Kremers' Beitraege zur Erforschung der franzoesischen Familiennamen (Bonn, 1910). The comparative method which I have adopted, especially in explaining nicknames (ch. xxi), will be found, I think, to clear up a good many dark points. Of books on names published in this country, only Bardsley's Dictionary has been of any considerable assistance, though I have gleaned some scraps of information here and there from other compilations. My real sources have been the lists of medieval names found in Domesday Book, the Pipe Rolls, the Hundred Rolls, and in the numerous historical records published by the Government and by various antiquarian societies.
ERNEST WEEKLEY.
Nottingham, September 1913
The following dictionaries are quoted without further reference:
Promptorium Parvulorum (1440), ed. Mayhew (E.E.T.S.; 1908).
PALSGRAVE, L'Esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (1530), ed. Génin (Paris, 1852).
COOPER, Thesaurus Lingua Romanae et Britannicae (London; 1573).
COTGRAVE A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues
(London, 1611).