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Oliver James Padel (born 31 October 1948 in St Pancras, London, England) is an English medievalist and toponymist specializing in Welsh and Cornish studies. He is currently Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic in the University of Cambridge, [1] and visiting professor of Celtic at the University of the West of England.
Padel was born in 1948, the son of John Hunter Padel and his wife Hilda (née Barlow), daughter of Sir Alan Barlow, 2nd Baronet and his wife Nora, (née Darwin), through whom he is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin. His older sister is the poet Ruth Padel.
He was educated at University College School, Hampstead, and Peterhouse, Cambridge, whence he graduated with a BA in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in 1970. [2] He was subsequently awarded an M.Litt. for his thesis [3] on the inscriptions of Pictland by the University of Edinburgh in 1972. In 1992, he took a Litt.D. for his work on Cornish place-names. [4]
He was a founding member of staff of the Institute of Cornish Studies (in the Charles Thomas era) from 1972 to 1988. In 1988–90 he had a temporary post in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNaC) at Cambridge University while Patrick Sims-Williams was on research leave, followed by posts in the Department of History and Welsh History at the University of Aberystwyth and at the Cornwall Record Office. [5] In 1994, he was appointed University Lecturer in Celtic Literature in ASNaC, replacing the former incumbent, Patrick Sims-Williams. [6]
Padel was president of the English Place-Name Society, [7] from 2004 to 2014, and is a past president of the Society for Name Studies in Britain and Ireland. [8] He is a member of council of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society, [9] and he edits the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall .[ citation needed ]
Cornish nationalist, John Angarrack criticised Padel for cultural suppression by disregarding Cornish etymology of place-names in an attempt to make a connection to Saxon naming conventions. [10]
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Dumnonia is the Latinised name for a Brythonic kingdom that existed in Sub-Roman Britain between the late 4th and late 8th centuries CE in the more westerly parts of present-day South West England. It was centred in the area of modern Devon, but also included modern Cornwall and part of Somerset, with its eastern boundary changing over time as the gradual westward expansion of the neighbouring Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex encroached on its territory. The spelling Damnonia is sometimes encountered, but that spelling is also used for the land of the Damnonii, later part of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, in present-day southern Scotland. The form Domnonia also occurs. The name of the kingdom shares a linguistic relationship with the Breton region of Domnonée.
Walter William Skeat, was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in the United Kingdom.
The history of Cornwall goes back to the Paleolithic, but in this period Cornwall only had sporadic visits by groups of humans. Continuous occupation started around 10,000 years ago after the end of the last ice age. When recorded history started in the first century BCE, the spoken language was Common Brittonic, and that would develop into Southwestern Brittonic and then the Cornish language. Cornwall was part of the territory of the tribe of the Dumnonii that included modern-day Devon and parts of Somerset. After a period of Roman rule, Cornwall reverted to rule by independent Romano-British leaders and continued to have a close relationship with Brittany and Wales as well as southern Ireland, which neighboured across the Celtic Sea. After the collapse of Dumnonia, the remaining territory of Cornwall came into conflict with neighbouring Wessex.
Simon Douglas Keynes, is a British author who is Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon emeritus in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Trinity College.
Rachel Bromwich born Rachel Sheldon Amos, was a British scholar. Her focus was on medieval Welsh literature, and she taught Celtic Languages and Literature in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge, from 1945 to 1976. Among her most important contributions to the study of Welsh literature is Trioedd Ynys Prydein, her edition of the Welsh Triads.
The Cornovii is a name for a tribe presumed to have been part of the Dumnonii, a Celtic tribe inhabiting the south-west peninsula of Great Britain, during some part of the Iron Age, Roman and post-Roman periods. The Cornovii are supposed to have lived at the western end of the peninsula, in the area now known as Cornwall, and if the tribal name were correct it would be the ultimate source of the name of that present-day county.
Paul Adrian Bibire is an author and former lecturer in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews (1971–85) and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge (1985–99). His area is Anglo Saxon and Old Norse and he has written many articles on these and related subjects. Bibire is also a keen enthusiast of the author J. R. R. Tolkien whom he credits as the motivation for his academic career.
Antony Charles Thomas, was a British historian and archaeologist who was Professor of Cornish Studies at Exeter University, and the first Director of the Institute of Cornish Studies, from 1971 until his retirement in 1991. He was recognised as a Bard of the Cornish Gorseth with the name Gwas Godhyan in 1953.
Sarah Rosamund Irvine Foot, is an English Anglican priest and early medieval historian. She has been Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford since 2007, and Dean of Christ Church, Oxford since 2023.
Richard Sharpe,, Hon. was a British historian and academic, who was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. His broad interests were the history of medieval England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history, including the practices of palaeography, diplomatic and the editorial process, as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England.
The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic is one of the constituent departments of the University of Cambridge, and focuses on the history, material culture, languages and literatures of the various peoples who inhabited Britain, Ireland and the extended Scandinavian world in the early Middle Ages. It is based on the second floor of the Faculty of English at 9 West Road. In Cambridge University jargon, its students are called ASNaCs.
Bruce Dickins, FBA, a graduate of Magdalene College, Cambridge, was Professor of English Language at the University of Leeds from 1931 to 1946, teaching medieval English and Old Norse. He sat on the executive committee of the Yorkshire Society for Celtic Studies from 1931 to at least 1943, serving as president in 1936-37, and editing several numbers of its journal, Yorkshire Celtic Studies.
Michael Lapidge, FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature, particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD; he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.
Florence Elizabeth Harmer FBA was an English historian, specializing in the Anglo-Saxon period. Translating from Old English and Latin, she edited a number of primary sources for early English history, and her Anglo-Saxon Writs (1952) remains a standard text.
The Battle of Hingston Down took place in 838, probably at Hingston Down in Cornwall between a combined force of Cornish and Vikings on the one side, and West Saxons led by Ecgberht, King of Wessex on the other. The result was a West Saxon victory. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which called the Cornish the West Welsh:
Julia Catherine Crick, is a British historian, medievalist, and academic. She is Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies at King's College London.
Andrew Breeze FRHistS FSA, has been professor of philology at the University of Navarra since 1987.
Agnes Jane Robertson M.A. PhD (1893-1959) was a historian of Anglo-Saxon England. She was a student of Hector Munro Chadwick in the Department of Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies at the University of Cambridge, matriculating in about 1918. She was a Pfeiffer Research Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge and a lecturer in the Department of Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies between 1932 and 1935. She was later a reader in English language at the University of Aberdeen, which gives the Agnes Jane Robertson Memorial Lecture in her honour.
Patrick Sims-Williams is Emeritus Professor of Celtic Studies at Aberystwyth University and founding editor of the journal Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies.
Maureen Margaret O’Reilly was a British academic who taught Anglo-Saxon archaeology and Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic languages at the University of Cambridge and was an assistant curator of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in the 1920s and 30s.
