[§ 122]. By considering the Angles as Saxons under another name (or vice versâ), and by treating the statement as to the existence of Jutes in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as wholly unhistorical, we get, as a general expression for the Anglo-Germanic immigration, that it consisted of the closely allied tribes of the North-Saxon area, an expression that implies a general uniformity of population. Is there reason to think that the uniformity was absolute?
[§ 123]. The following series of facts, when put together, will prepare us for a fresh train of reasoning concerning the different geographical and ethnological relations of the
immigrants into England, during their previous habitation in Germany.
1. The termination -as is, like the -s in the modern English, the sign of the plural number in Anglo-Saxon.
2. The termination -ing denotes, in the first instance, a certain number of individuals collected together, and united with each other as a clan, tribe, family, household.
3. In doing this, it generally indicates a relationship of a personal or political character. Thus two Baningas might be connected with each other, and (as such) indicated by the same term from any of the following causes—relationship, subordination to the same chief, origin from the same locality, &c.
4. Of these personal connections, the one which is considered to be the commonest is that of descent from a common ancestor, so that the termination -ing in this case, is a real patronymic.
5. Such an ancestor need not be real; indeed, he rarely if ever is so. Like the eponymus of the classical writers, he is the hypothetical, or mythological, progenitor of the clan, sept, or tribe, as the case may be; i.e., as Æolus, Dorus, and Ion to the Æolians, Dorians, and Ionians.
Now, by admitting these facts without limitation, and by applying them freely and boldly to the Germanic population of England, we arrive at the following inferences.
1. That where we meet two (or more) households, families, tribes, clans, or septs of the same name (that name ending in -ing), in different parts of England, we may connect them with each other, either directly or indirectly; directly when we look on the second as an offset from the first; indirectly, when we derive both from some third source.