Note 5 to the author's "Great Expectations in "The Tuggses at Ramsgate," or, The Importance of Being Cymon"
Significantly, it is not another family member who re-names "Simon" as "Cymon," but the young Romantic himself. Presumably, then, Cymon shares Dickens' childhood reading and regards as attractive identifying himself with brute who is humanised by love. Dickens, too, had selected for himself a pseudonym from his childhood reading, "Boz" being a facetious corruption of a nasal pronunciation of "Moses," the son of Dr. Primrose in Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield.
Last modified October 28 2000