Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 3.djvu/617

 597 APPENDIX C^^^ SOME OBSERVATIONS ON MEDIvEVAL NAMES In this work an attempt has been made to give to medieval people something approaching to the names by which they were actually called, though owing to the tact that old documents are almost always in Latin it is sometimes very difficult to ascertain positively what these were, and it is far easier to say with certainty that no Englishman was ever called Dodo de Montalt than to declare with precision his Christian and surname to have been Doun Mohaut and not Down Maud. As to the names which were given at baptism, no evidence is obtainable beyond the fact that the Church service was in Latin, which does not necessarily imply that the names were latinized, and, indeed, it is difficult to imagine English rustics expressing a desire to have their children given such names as, say, Theophania. If we examine Dugdale, who wrote about 1675, ^"'^ ^^o has done as Dugdale. much as anyone to tamiliarize certain names which he gives to the early nobility, we shall see that he proceeds on no system. Sometimes he chooses the simple English name (William), sometimes a latinization or supposed Latin equivalent (Egidia), sometimes an anglicization of the latinization (Reginald).('') The aim of the Editor of this work, on the other hand, is to use English names where possible, and when these cannot certainly be ascertained to give the names by which the person is described in the Latin or the French, but never to employ the made up artificial Anglo- Latin forms which were invented, or at any rate came into general use, in or about the sixteenth century. Some may say that it is no better to call these (') The Editor has to acknowledse <;reat assistance in the preparation of this Appendix from W. Paley Baildon, W^ H. B. Bird, H. J. Ellis, Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte, J. H. Round, A. E. Stamp, W. H. Stevenson, J. Maitland Thomson, Josiah VVedgwood, M.P., and others. ('') W. H. Stevenson's views as to this name are that it is the Prankish form in which the name was taken into French (fifth or sixth century); that it was Latinized as Reginaldus, which was kept as the Latin form, whereas in French it de- veloped into Reinaud. " The / in Reynold is as absurd as the g in Reginald, for both had ceased to be pronounced in French before the end of the eleventh century, though the spelling aid was kept long after it came to be pronounced aud {hy the ordinary French vocalization of the / in such a position). The English form should have been Renawd, Renod (cf. Renald, where the / of the Latin form has been introduced into it)."