Note 3 — Chapter I · FAMILY AND HOME.

The aphorism so often applied to little girls, that “it is better to be good than pretty,” may, with greater hope of success, be applied to family names; but I fear mine is neither imposing nor sonorous. I may say of it (as I remarked to the charming Teresa Doria when she ridiculed the Swiss for their mesquin names, all ending in “in”), “Everybody cannot have the luck to be able to sign themselves Doria nata Durazzo!” Nevertheless “Cobbe” is a very old name (Leuricus Cobbe held lands in Suffolk, vide Domesday), and it is curiously wide-spread as a word in most Aryan languages, signifying either the head (literal or metaphorical), or a head-shaped object. I am no philologist, and I dare say my examples offend against some “law,” and therefore cannot be admitted; but it is at least odd that we should find Latin, “Caput;” Italian, Capo; Spanish, Cabo; Saxon, Cop; German, Kopf. Then we have, as derivates from the physical head, Cape, Capstan, Cap, Cope, Copse or Coppice, Coping Stone, Copped, Cup, Cupola, Cub, Cubicle, Kobbold, Gobbo; and from the metaphorical Head or Chief, Captain, Capital, Capitation, Capitulate, &c. And again, we have a multitude of names for objects obviously signifying head-shaped, e.g., Cob-horse, Cob-nut, Cob-gull, Cob-herring, Cob-swan, Cob-coal, Cob-iron, Cob-wall; a Cock (of hay), according to Johnson, properly a “Cop” of hay; the Cobb (or Headland) at Lyme Regis, &c., &c.; the Kobbé fiord in Norway, &c.