Michael Quinion, a British etymologist writing on his website on linguistics, suggest a false but "widely believed" story on "where the phrase at sixes and sevens came from, and what it really means". It is sometimes said to derive from a dispute between two City of London trade guilds or livery companies–The Merchant Taylors Company and the Skinners Company. The two argued over sixth place in the order of precedence. In 1484, the Lord Mayor of London Sir Robert Billesden decided that the companies would swap between sixth and seventh place on an annual basis. This story is disproved as a source, according to Quinion, by the "brute force of the evidence" that the phrase was in use and that it occurred in Chaucer a century before the trade guild dispute was decided.