Child So Rig In

David: Your "Le Chiles" is french of the 1100's. The Origin is much older. According to "The English Chronicles" (available at almost all Libraries), "Childe" is the oldest title in the English and Germanic speaking world (take this with a grain of salt because the chronicles are pre-norman conquest and were continued even after the conquest and are understandably very nationalistic at times). The first written records in England date to the Irish monks of the 6th-7th centuries and record "CILDA" as the title of the various "Kings" of the English's shield bearers. This CILDA would have be pronounced as we would "sheelt-er"and is the Saxon phonetic of SCHILD or SCHILDER which still means shield in modern german and the 'er' is often heard as an 'ah' sound, hence the 'a' in the latin speaking, writing (non-german speaking) Irish monks' spelling of CILDA. The "C" being an approximation of the Saxon 's' or 'sh' sound. According to "The English Chronicles", the french (Normans) did not have a comparable title so they invented one, not to be outdown by the English. The chronicler makes fun of the French for misunderstanding the meaning of CHILDE (English spelling of the 1100's...remember Chaucers' "Childe Harrad's Knight"?)and so inventing "L'Enfant". Various versions of CILDA have evolved to CHILD, CHILES, CHILDE, CHILDS, CHILDERS, CHILDRESS, CHILDDRESS, as versions of the original probably as result of illiteracy of the person speaking it or of the bureaucratic mentality recording it. Even the nobility were mostly illiterate until well into the 15th and 16th centuries. Since CILDA, or Schild, were non-hereditary titles, there is astronomical odds of us all being closely related based solely on the derivation of our names. Bill.