With Lord we must put the northern Laird, and, in my opinion, Senior; for, if we notice how much commoner Young is than Old, and Fr. Lejeune than Levieux, we must conclude that junior, a very rare surname, ought to be of much more frequent occurrence than Senior, Synyer, a fairly common name. There can be little doubt that Senior is usually a latinization of the medieval le seigneur, whence also Saynor. Knight is not always knightly, for Anglo-Sax. cniht means servant; cf. Ger. Knecht. The word got on in the world, with the consequence that the name is very popular, while its medieval compeers, knave, varlet, villain, have, even when adorned with the adj. good, dropped out of the surname list, Bonvalet, Bonvarlet, Bonvillain are still common surnames in France. From Knight we have the compound Road-night, a mounted servitor. Thus Knight is more often a true occupative name, and the same applies to Dring or Dreng, a Scandinavian name of similar meaning.

Other names from the middle rungs of the social ladder are also to be taken literally, e.g. Franklin, a freeholder, Anglo-Fr. frankelein—

"How called you your franklin, Prior Aylmer?"

"Cedric," answered the Prior, "Cedric the Saxon"

(Ivanhoe, ch. i.)—

Burgess, Freeman, Freeborn. The latter is sometimes for Freebairn and exists already as the Anglo-Saxon personal name Freobeorn. Denison (Chapter II) is occasionally an accommodated form of denizen, Anglo-Fr. deinzein, a burgess enjoying the privileges belonging to those who lived "deinz (in) la cité." In 1483 a certain Edward Jhonson—

"Sued to be mayde Denison for fer of ye payment of ye subsedy."

(Letter to Sir William Stonor, June 9, 1483.)

Bond is from Anglo-Sax, bonda, which means simply agriculturist. The word is of Icelandic origin and related to Boor, another word which has deteriorated and is rare as a surname, though the cognate Bauer is common enough in Germany. Holder is translated by Tennant. For some other names applied to the humbler peasantry see Chapter XIII.

To return to the social summit, we have Kingson, often confused with the local Kingston, and its Anglo-French equivalent Fauntleroy. Faunt, aphetic for Anglo-Fr. enfaunt, is common in Mid. English. When the mother of Moses had made the ark of bulrushes, or, as Wyclif calls it, the "junket of resshen," she—