40 USE AND ORIGIN OF SURNAMES. 
practice also of inflicting temporary nicknames on 
parties misbehaving themselves, or quarrelsome 
and insulting, especially among school boys, is 
well known. One of the most common complaints 
in a school is ‘ He is calling me names.’ Such 
names however, are in general quickly forgotten, 
and are seldom delivered down to fame. 
It does not appear from the histories which I 
have had an opportunity of consulting, that sur- 
names in their present form were in use in the 
Saxon times, nor till a considerable time after the 
Norman conquest—and that more especially a- 
mong the commonalty : they were applied proba- 
bly to few, if any, who had no pretension to the 
rank of Gentleman. ‘The history, therefore, of 
the first introduction of surnames is uncertain. 
It resulted from no civil regulation or order ; 
but the use of them derived its origin from the 
influence of opinion and fashion, and from the 
progressive improvements and refinements of so- 
ciety: it had, properly speaking, no fixed period of 
commencement. All, therefore, we can do is, to 
make such inferences as appear probable from the 
mode in which our historians have designated the 
personages spoken of in the respective periods. 
But even such inferences cannot be wholly relied 
