Of our Philip’s ancestry we have as yet no knowledge. Nor, as above noted, have we any record concerning him before his arrival at Beverly. Doubtless, before long someone of his descendants may turn to the French records of his time, with the hope of finding there a record of his birth, and marriage, or something concerning him during the earlier years of his life. As a help for such research we present here what in the light of our records seems likely to have been the French spelling of his name.
       By the evidence above given we know that in any French record concerning Philip, his name would be written with the definitive “le” qualifying its distinctive part. And in the light of the fact, above noted, that in five of the six deeds to which Philip was party during the years of his Beverly residence, the distinctive part of his name was spelled with “g” as its initial letter, we may reasonably conclude that since this was the spelling he gave for deed recordings of his name, it must have been that of his customary usage, and accordingly that of his inherited name. That is, it seems reasonab!e to assume that, in any French record concerning this ancestor, the distinctive part of his name would have “g” and not “c”(l) for its initial letter. That it would scarcely have “y” as its final syllable is suggested by the fact that in no list of French surnames available to us did we find Cody or Gody(2) either with or without the “le”. But quite frequently, in the various lists consulted, we found the surname Godet(3), the French pronunciation of which, as the French-speaking tell us, has the sound of Gody. Possibly then the inherited surname of our first American ancestor. Philip of Beverly and of Hopkinton (1698-1743) may have had not “y” but “et”(4) as its final syllable; Accordingly in looking through French records of this ancestor’s time, with the hope of finding any mention of him, we should keep in mind that the inherited spelling of his surname may have been Le Godet(5) or possibly written Legodet.
       But whether or not the French spelling of Philip’s surname had “y” for its final syllable we know by the evidence of the Beverly records above quoted that Philip’s inherited pronunciation of his name led him to be commonly known at Beverly as Philip Legody(6).

1. That the “c” spelling of Philip’s name was in the light of our records arbitrarily introduced by the minister-recorder of the first two Beverly church records concerning him, we have above stated.
2. Though occasionally we found in American records the surname Gody or Godey, the bearer of which by textual evidence was of French ancestry; but we have found no evidence that it was so spelled in French records.
3. In Baird’s History of Huguenot Immigration to America there is mention of a Huguenot family having the surname Godet.
4. That it was not so written in any Beverly record may reasonably be explained by the fact above mentioned that to the English-speaking recorder of it the final syllable would have had the sound of “y”. And if at first it was spelled by Philip as “et”, he would have been told that
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his spelling did not agree with his pronunciation, and he would tben soon come to spell it with “y”.
5. There is also the possibility that Philip’s surname may have had the ending of “in” and “yn”, for both Godin and Godyn are found in French dictionaries, and the French pronunciation of either might to English ears suggest Gody.
For a consideration of how this French surname came to be Cody see Appendix C; and see Appendix D for reference to families other than ours which bear the surname Cody.
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