COCKNEY, a colloquial name applied to Londoners general ly, but more properly confined to those born within the sound of the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow church. The origin of the word has been the subject of many guesses, but the historical examina tion of the various uses of "cockney," by Sir James Murray (see Academy, May io, 189o, and the New English Dictionary, s.v.) shows that the earliest form of the word is cokenay or cokeney, i.e., the ey or egg, and token, genitive plural of "cock," "cocks' eggs" being the name given to the small and malformed eggs sometimes laid by young hens (cf. Langland, Piers Plowman, A., vii. 272). The word then applied to a child overlong nursed by its mother, hence to a simpleton, and Chaucer, Reeve's Tale, used it with daf, i.e., a fool. The application of the term by country folk to town-bred people, with their ignorance of country ways, is easy. Thus Robert Whittington or Whitinton (fl. 152o), speaks of the "cokneys" in such "great cytees as London, York, Perusy" (Perugia). It was not till the beginning of the I;th century that "cockney" appears to be confined to the inhabitants of London.
The so-called "cockney" accent was chiefly characterized in the first part of the 19th century by the substitution of a v for a w, or vice versa. The chief consonantal variation which now ex ists is perhaps the change of th to f or v, as in "fing" for thing, or "farver" for farther. This and the vowel-sound change from ou to ah, as in "abaht" for "about," are illustrated in the "coster" songs of the late Albert Chevalier. The most marked change of vowel sound is that of ei for ai, so that "daily" becomes "dyly." The omission of h is not peculiar to cockney.