FICTITIOUS CHARACTERS with characterizing names are to be found in all literatures known to me. A good Greek example is the l\1entor of the Odyssey, whose name means 'counselor' and whose function is that of giving counsel to young Telemachus. In this paper, however, I am restricting myself to names of this kind found in English literature. And because of the great number of such names I shall have to rest content with a mere sampling of the English material. I will give my examples in chronological order, beginning with our oldest English poem, Widsith, composed in the seventh century. Widsith took name from its chief character, a minstrel who in the exercise of his profession had traveled far and wide. The name means 'long journey' and serves to characterize the minstrel as a great traveler. Other characters in the poem have meaningful nan1es; thus, King Wald of the Woings (line 30), whose name means 'ruler.' But since it is possible, though most unlikely, that a king so named actually lived, I do not include the name Wald in my survey, which is restricted to the names of fictitious persons. For the same reason, I leave out some very striking names found in the English epic poem Beowulf. Thus, the would-be trouble-maker who engages in a fliting with the hero early in the poem has a name, Unferth, that means 'disturbing the peace, dissension, troublemaking' or the like. He may well be fictitious, but since there is some reason to think that he goes back to a historical character I am not putting him in. The Danish king Scyld, however, who figures in the introductory part of the poem, is undoubtedly fictitious and his name therefore comes within the scope of this paper. It means 'shield,' that is, 'protector,' and denotes an important function, if not indeed the chief function of a king, that of protecting his people against invasion, crime, and other troubles, including a failure of the crops, something that the right kind of