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This is a comprehensive and scholarly treatment of the history of English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh surnames, including their language classification, evolution, etymology, and so on. One notable feature of the work is the many lists of surnames, classified and drawn from authentic unpublished and published sources of the 11th-17th centuries, including the Domesday Book, Pipe and Assize Rolls, and other records of the Public Record Office. A 58-page "Index of Names and Elements" contains about 10,000 entries, thus enabling the researcher to approach the work as a dictionary of surnames.