confuse dentals and palatals, thus a child
may be heard to say that he has "dot a told." This tendency is,
however, not confined to children. My own name, which is a very
uncommon one, is a stumbling-block to most people, and when I give it
in a shop the scribe has generally got as far as Wheat- before he can
be stopped.

We find both Estill and Askell for the medieval Asketil, and Thurtle
alternating with Thurkle, originally Thurketil (Chapter VII).
Bertenshave is found for Birkenshaw, birch wood, Bartley, sometimes
from Bartholomew, is more often for Berkeley, and both Lord Bacon and
Horace Walpole wrote Twitnam for Twickenham. Jeffcock, dim. of
Geoffrey, becomes Jeffcott, while Glascock is for the local Glascott.
Here the palatal takes the place of the dental, as in Brangwin for
Anglo-Sax. Brandwine. Middleman is a dialect form of Michaelmas
(Chapter IX). We have the same change in tiddlebat for stickleback, a
word which exemplifies another point in baby phonetics, viz. the loss
of initial s-, as in the classic instance tummy. To this loss of
s- we owe Pick for Spick (Chapter XXIII), Pink for Spink, a dialect
word for the chaffinch, and, I think, Tout for Stout. The name Stacey
is found as Tacey in old Notts registers. On the other hand, an
inorganic s- is sometimes prefixed, as in Sturgess for the older
Turgis. For the loss of s- we may compare Shakespeare's parmaceti (1
Henry IV. i. 3), and for its addition the adjective spruce, from
Pruce, i.e. Prussia.

We also find the infantile confusion between th and f e.g. in Selfe,
which appears to represent a personal name Seleth, probably from
Anglo-Sax, saelth, bliss. Perhaps also in Fripp for Thripp, a variant
of Thrupp, for Thorp. Bickerstaffe is the name of a place in
Lancashire, of which the older form appears in Bickersteth, and the
local name Throgmorton is spelt by Camden Frogmorton, just as Pepys
invariably writes Queenhive for Queenhythe.

Such are some of the commoner phenomena to be noticed in connection
with the spelling and sound of our names. The student must always
bear in mind that our surnames date from a period when nearly the
whole population was uneducated. Their modern forms depend on all
sorts of circumstances, such as local dialect, time of adoption,
successive fashions in pronunciation and the taste and fancy of the
speller. They form part of our language, that is, of a living and
ever-changing organism. Some of us are old enou