Note 138 — Chapter II · LOCAL SURNAMES.
Reading edition
Camden says: ‘When Rollo had Normandy made over to him by Carolus Stultus, with his daughter Gisla, he would not submit to kiss Charles’s foot. And when his friends urged him by all means to kiss the king’s foot, in gratitude for so great a favour, he made answer in the English tongue, “Ne se, by God”—“Not so, by God”—upon which the king and his courtiers, deriding him, and corruptly repeating his answer, called him “Bigod,” from whence the Normans are to this day termed “Bigodi.”’