The  church was named after characteristically Romanesque arches of the Norman construction, which are rounded at the top, henced 'bowed', [from Old English boga "archery bow; anything bent or arched, an arch, a rainbow"]. It was also known as St Mary de Arcubus [from Latin arcubus "with bows"]. Most of the Norman church, and other, subsequent churches on this site, burned down, the latest such disaster occuring during World War II.  The current building, which still has the Norman arched crypt, was constructed in 1956.  The earliest written evidence tying the sound of Bow Bells to the word cockney is also the earliest unambiguous attestation of the word cockney being used for Londoners, and it is in Samuel Rowland’s 1600 satirical work The letting of humours blood in the head-vaine, which includes the statement “"I scorne ... To let a Bowe-bell Cockney put me downe." The characteristically London dialect changed over time, as all speech does, but many of its still-existing features, such as ‘h-dropping’ and sometimes pronouncing /v/ like [w], are very ancient. Cockney rhyming slang is found where, in London speech, a word is replaced by a phrase that rhymes with it (such as apples and pears for stairs) and then, often, contracted (e.g. butcher’s hook  stands for look, but is used as  butcher’s, as in “I took a butchers at it”). It was first associated with London speech and recognised in print in the 19thc. Changes and variations in Cockney speech will always have been affected by the large numbers of people coming to London from outlying regions.  In the 19th century commentators were referring to new developing features of Cockney English as caused by ‘pollution’ from the dialects of Essex and Kent; but Dickens’s representation of the Cockney speech of Sam Weller and his father (in Sketches by Boz/Pickwick Papers, 1836) allowed the dialect to be recognized as an independent speech variety and, furthermore,  associated it with a cheerful and practical attitude to life, giving “character” to the dialect itself.  This appears to have been the first significant representation in literature of Modern Cockney, and the first time in which a low-prestige way of speaking was made popular among readers of all backgrounds. In the present day the word is used for any working-class London accent that deviates from R.P.