PRECIOUS. A correspondent sends me the following anecdote. — " Walking through a town with a friend, I noticed the name of Precious. My friend said to me : ' You knew John Priesthouse — he was the father of this Precious': here the vulgar had corrupted the name, probably in ridicule of Priesthouse." It is remarkable how easily people in a humble condition of life will accept an alias, or adopt the corrupt pronunciation of their names by their illiterate neighbours ; and if these things occur in the nineteenth century, it is no wonder that we have, among the multitude of surnames handed down to us from the thirteeuth and fourteenth, many tliat baffle even etymological guess-work, and render a rationale impossible.

Lower, Mark A (1860) Patronymica Britannica: a dictionary of the family names of the United Kingdom. London: J.R. Smith. Public Domain.