Everybody has heard of the famous Cromwellian Parliament, which would do nothing but talk, and which was called the "Barebones Parliament," after one of its members, who not only bore this peculiar surname, but was also blessed with the "Christian" name of _Praise-God_. Cromwell grew impatient at last, and Praise-God Barebones and the other talkers suddenly found Parliament dissolved. These names were not, as a rule, handed on from father to son, and soon died out, though in America even to-day we get Christian names somewhat similar, but at least shorter--names like _Willing_.
It is often easier to see how we got our Christian names than how we got our surnames. As we have seen, there was a time when early peoples had only first names. The Romans had surnames, or _cognomina_, but the barbarians who won Europe from them had not.
In England surnames were not used until nearly a hundred years after the Norman Conquest, and then only by kings and nobles. The common people in England had, however, nearly all got them by the fourteenth century; but in Scotland many people were still without surnames in the time of James I., and even those who had them could easily change one for another. Once a man got a surname it was handed on to all his children, as surnames are to-day.
It is interesting to see in how many different ways people got their surnames. Sometimes this is easy, but it is more difficult in other cases.
The first surnames in England were those which the Norman nobles who came over at the Conquest handed on from father to son. These people generally took the name of the place from which they had come in Normandy. In this way names like _Robert de Courcy_ ("Robert of Courcy") came in; and many of these names, which are considered very aristocratic, still remain. We have _de Corbet_, _de Beauchamp_, _de Colevilles_, and so on. Sometimes the _de_ has been dropped. Sometimes, again, people took their names in the same way from places in England. We find in old writings names like _Adam de Kent_, _Robert de Wiltshire_, etc. Here, again, the prefix has been dropped, and the place-name has been kept as a surname. _Kent_ is quite a well-known surname, as also are _Derby_, _Buxton_, and many other names of English places.