STAFFORDSHIRE AND DORSET 5 gave names to places. It was not until the thirteenth century that family names began to be permanent; previously they had varied according to the Christian name of the father. The surnames of the mass of the people were frequently changed. Many dropped the father’s surname for the name of the occupa- tion they had chosen and became Taylors, Bakers, Smiths, etc. There can be no doubt that in later centuries when surnames were permanently appropriated by a family and neither changed by occupation nor at each new generation, they were still subjected to great variations at the hands of our illiterate fore- fathers. The causes of these variations are principally to be found in the circumstance that the orthography of a name was considered to be of slight importance and was often decided bythe clerk of a county parish, who exercised his own judgement as to how the name should be spelt even when the correct name was known by the possessor, as is shown by its return to its correct form after wandering through many extraordinary variations. Galpenberg, a Commune and Village of Belgium in the Province of East Flanders, department of Ophasselt. Popula- tion, 22o.—Univee.