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 Names whose origin is doubtful :

Class A 75 names

Class B 13

Unidentified names (not recorded in Bartholomew's

Gazetteer) 16 ,,

I estimate the percentage of ing names which seem to be patronymic in origin to be about 30.

I have now concluded the survey which I proposed to make of the ing names. I have throughout tried to throw light on the etymologies of the names concerned by an appeal to old sources. Such an appeal has shown two things. First, that Kemble's assumptions of patronymic forms are very often incorrect, and that a very small proportion of the names he gives can be satisfactorily proved ever to have contained patronymics. Secondly, that his conjectures as to the forms of the personal names themselves are often wrong. In many cases the element is not a personal name ; and in those cases where it is, a wrong form is often given. It seems surprising that Kemble, whose work on O.E. charters was so pains- taking and minute, should not have realized the danger of dogmatizing on place-names from evidence which is merely obtained from modern forms.

HENRY ALEXANDER.

I

Oxford : Printed at the Clarendon Press by Horace Hart.