our indebtedness to the classical languages for our abstract or
specialised scientific terms, the absolutely indisputable nature of the
English substratum remains clearly evident. The tongue which we use
to-day is enriched by valuable loan words from many separate sources;
but it is still as it has always been, English and nothing else. It is
the self-same speech with the tongue of the Sleswick pirates and the
West Saxon over-lords.




CHAPTER XIX.

ANGLO-SAXON NOMENCLATURE.


Perhaps nothing tends more to repel the modern English student from the
early history of his country than the very unfamiliar appearance of the
personal names which he meets before the Norman Conquest. There can be
no doubt that such a shrinking from the first stages of our national
annals does really exist; and it seems to be largely due to this very
superficial and somewhat unphilosophical cause. Before the Norman
invasion, the modern Englishman finds himself apparently among complete
foreigners, in the Æthelwulfs, the Eadgyths, the Oswius, and the
Seaxburhs of the Chronicle; while he hails the Norman invaders, the
Johns, Henrys, Williams, and Roberts, of the period immediately
succeeding the conquest, as familiar English friends. The contrast can
scarcely be better given than in the story told about Æthelred's Norman
wife. Her name was Ymma, or Emma; but the English of that time murmured
against such an outlandish sound, and so the Lady received a new English