C. M. Matthews on the survival of pre-Conquest personal names from her book English Surnames, page 244-5:

"There are two main reasons why we are so unaware of the presence of these names.  One is that, being old and long disused, they have suffered more battering by time than names that came later and remained well known.  As they grew less familiar, so they became more liable to erosion and, like ancient stone carvings worn away by wind and rain and covered in  moss, they can remain in full view unrecognized for what they are.  When we meet  a Mr Alston we do not instantly think of Athelstan, nor Miss Kemble remind her friends of the Saxon Cynebeald.

The other reason is that few modern people are familiar with more than a score of Anglo-Saxon names, so that even when they have survived in excellent condition they are still unknown. Darwin, for instance,is hardly changed at all from Deorwine (dear friend), nor are Gladwin or Goldwyn (glad friend and golden friend) much altered.  They are pleasant Christian names straight from pre-Conquest England, but most people now would think of them only as surnames."

page 254:

"These old names may still be found quite plentiful in records of the time of King John and the early years of Henry III.  But about that time the last generation who bore them was dying out, and in a few decades they had all gone.  It must have seemed sad for the old men that the names of their forefathers were being forgotten, and they can have had no notion of the extraordinary degree of immortality these same names were gaining by being transferred to a secondary position.  We can imagine old Snelgar and Cuthbold mumbling together by the smoky fireside about the tiresome habits of the young people, and deploring, among other matters, the new-fangled names which were ousting the old favourites.  But as their grandsons, Tom, Dick and Harry, rode off as part of the escort of the local Lord, who was himself following a greater man - shall we say to Runnymede - the old men would hardly notice that these boys were hailed by their companions as Tom Snell and Dick Cobbold, and could have no conception of the new careers on which these names were being launched."

page 247:

"It must be remembered that hundreds of Scandinavian names were mixed with the English ones before the Normans came, their general style and origins being so similar that little distinction need be made between them."
"The two races were so closely welded together before the Conquest that when we speak of the English after that date the Scandinavian element is included.
Some of these Old Norse names were almost identical with English ones, and some were also used by the Normans who came of the same Viking race."

page 253:

The Farthegn families of both Lincolnshire and Somersetshire fit the following description:

"People whose surnames became permanent at such an early date were on the whole of the upper class, and therefore a family with one of these full-length pre-Conquest names as a surname has every reason to think of the ancestor from whom it derives as an Englishman of good standing born before 1200 and possibly within living memory of Hastings."

Proof of this can be shown how the personal name Farthegn meets P. H. Reaney's strict rules in determining if a name has become a hereditary surname in his book The Origin of English Surnames, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London: 

page 302-3:

"An obvious method of identifying a man was by reference to his father, and descriptions like Herald filius Radulfi (DB) are common in the three centuries after 1086.  As a surname, the father's name was added to the Christian name as a byname and where both forms are used of the same man we have the beginning of a hereditary surname." 

"Clear evidence of heredity" can be seen by these entries: 

William the son of Farthegn; William Farthegn 1163-1166 Lincolnshire.
Warner the son of Farthegn; Hugh Farthegn the son of Warner Farthegn 1206 Lincolnshire.
James the son of Farthegn c1150-c1165 Bristol; Thomas Farthegn the son of James Farthegn c1230 Bristol; Reinfrid the son of Farthegn 1166-68 Somersetshire; Roger the brother of James Farthegn c1176-c1183 Bristol; Robert Farthegn 1192 Bristol.

These are relatively early dates for a surname to have become hereditary.  But the personal name Farthegn had been in perpetual use, in one form or another, for hundreds of years before it achieved the status as a surname.  Such a name that had been held onto for so long and had been held in such high esteem could never really die out.  Instead it would prosper and spread throughout England, even into the only area that had successfully withstood Scandinavian domination, Somersetshire.  In Somersetshire it would take root and proliferate just as effectively as it had earlier in the old Danelaw.

Reaney tells us that the 1327 Subsidy Rolls of Somersetshire show over 200 Old English personal names that had been transformed into surnames.  By 1275, 203 Old English personal names had made the transformation in Worcestershire. By 1327, Suffolk saw 441 personal names change into surnames. All of these personal names had completely disappeared and were being used instead as inherited surnames.  The personal name Farthegn, however, had already taken this secondary position one hundred and fifty years earlier.

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