i82 THE HOME OF A NATURALIST. 



Perhaps a stronger reason than that of intermarriage 

 may be found to explain the almost universal use of 

 British " Christian " names. I fancy the reformed 

 religion has to answer for the extermination of Norse 

 proper names ; for churchmen seem to have considered 

 it right to substitute English (or Bible) names for those 

 which their heathen converts had before baptism. It 

 is questionable if such a course did not retard rather 

 than advance the true faith, by wounding human nature 

 on one of its tenderest as well as most innocent points. 

 I have no doubt the clergy found it a difficult matter 

 to induce a man to call his children Peter and Martha 

 when the honest fellow was desirous of perpetuating 

 some revered family names sent down to him from his 

 heathen sea-king ancestors. When opposition arose it 

 is probable that the holy men found a way to overcome 

 the difi&culty without wounding the parental feelings, 

 for Norse proper names seem to have gone through a 

 most ingenious process of alteration at the font. Breeta, 

 or Brenda, became Bertha ; Olaf changed into Oliver ; 

 Yaspard made an easy descent into Jasper ; Osla, 

 sweet sounding and doubtless the property of sweet 

 lasses, was transformed into bearish Ursula; Saneva 

 (heathen-born) was baptized by the name of sainted 

 Cecilia ; Hunder was christened Henry, and Laulie 

 (literally a plaything) was named Lilias ; Hoskauld, 

 Ingath, and a few such names being too stubborn to 

 twist into anything Christian or Hebrew, were perse- 

 cuted to the death, and are now almost extinct. 



This dialect abounds in sounds so foreign to English 



