A comparison of the fifteen similar names in Frisia occurring in the Fulda records, with other similar names of places or persons in England and Wirtemberg, gives an equally clear result.
In Frisia.
| Frisia.[551] | Wirtemberg.[552] | England. |
|---|---|---|
| Auinge | Au, Auenhofen | Avington (Berks and Hants) |
| Baltratingen | Baldhart, Baldingen | Beltings (Kent) |
| Belinge | Bellingon | Bellingdon, Bellings (Several counties) |
| Bottinge | Böttingen | Boddington (Gloucester, Northampton) |
| Creslinge | Creglingen, Chrezzingen | Cressing (Essex), Cressingham (Norfolk) |
| Gandingen | ———— | ———— |
| Gutinge | ———— | Guyting (Gloucester), Getingas (Surrey) |
| Hustinga | ———— | ———— |
| Huchingen | Huchiheim, Huc = Hugo | Hucking (Kent) |
| Husdingun | ———— | ———— |
| Rochinge | Roingus, Rohinc | Rockingham (Notts) |
| Suettenge | Suittes, Suitger | ———— |
| Wacheringe | Uuachar | Wakering (Essex) |
| Wasginge | Uuassingun | Washington (Sussex) |
| Weingi | Wehingen | ———— |
The inferences to be drawn from the similarity.
It is impossible to follow out in greater detail these remarkable resemblances between the personal names which appear with a patronymic suffix in the local names in England and Frisia, and certain well-defined districts west of the Rhine, and the local and personal names mentioned in the Wirtemberg charters. The foregoing instances must not be regarded as more than examples. And for the reasons already given it would also be unwise to build too much upon this evident similarity in the personal names, but still it should be remembered that the facts to be accounted for are—(1) The concentration of these places with names having a supposed patronymic termination in certain defined districts mostly within the old Roman provinces. (2) The practical identity throughout all these districts of so many of the personal names to which this suffix is attached.
The first fact points to these settlements in tribal households having taken place by peaceable or forcible emigration during Roman rule, or very soon after, at all events at about the same period. The second fact points to the practical homogeneity of the German tribes, whose emigrants founded the settlements which [p366] in England, Flanders, around Troyes and Langres, on the Moselle, in Wirtemberg, in Bavaria, and also in Frisia, bear the common suffix to their names.
The facts already mentioned of the survival to a great extent in the same districts, strikingly so in England, of the right of the youngest, and in Kent of the original form of the local custom of Gavelkind, point in the same direction.
Taking all these things together, we may at least regard the economic problem involved in them as one deserving closer attention than has yet been given to it.
The settlements in tribal households may have been manors.
In conclusion, turning back to the direct relation of these facts to the process of transition of the German tribal system into the later manorial system, it must be remembered that the holdings of tribal households might quite possibly be, from the first, embryo manors with serfs upon them. They might be settlements precisely like those described by Tacitus, the lordship of which had become the joint inheritance of the heirs of the founder. As a matter of fact, the actual settlements in question had at all events become manors before the dates of the earliest documents. We have seen, e.g., that the villas belonging to the monks of St. Bertin, with their almost invariable suffix 'ingahem,' were manors from the time of the first records in the seventh century, and they may never have been anything else. We have seen that in the year 645 the founder of the abbey gave to the monks his villa called Sitdiu, and its twelve dependent villas (Tatinga villa, afterwards Tatingahem, among them)[553] with the slaves and coloni upon them. They seem to [p367] have been, in fact, so many manorial farms just like those which, as we learned from Gregory of Tours, Chrodinus in the previous century founded and handed over to the Church.