Celtic language decline in England

Last updated

The opening verses of the fourteenth-century Cornish play Origo Mundi. Origo Mundi kynsa gwersow.jpg
The opening verses of the fourteenth-century Cornish play Origo Mundi.

Prior to the 5th century AD, most people in Great Britain spoke the Brythonic languages, but these numbers declined sharply throughout the Anglo-Saxon period (between the fifth and eleventh centuries), when Brythonic languages were displaced by the West Germanic dialects that are now known collectively as Old English.

Contents

Debate continues over whether mass migration or a small scale military takeover occurred during this period, not least because the situation was strikingly different from, for example, post-Roman Gaul, Iberia or North Africa, where Germanic-speaking invaders gradually switched to local languages. [1] [2] [3] This linguistic decline is therefore crucial to understanding the cultural changes in post-Roman Britain, the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the rise of an English language.

The notable exceptions were the Cornish language persisting into the 18th century, and a form of Welsh remaining in common usage in the English counties along the Welsh border into the late 19th century. [4] [5]

Chronology

Map showing areas of English-language influence, based on British river names of Celtic etymology. British River Names after Kenneth Jackson 1953.png
Map showing areas of English-language influence, based on British river names of Celtic etymology.
Map showing the retreating linguistic boundary between Cornish and English, 1300-1750 Kornisch.png
Map showing the retreating linguistic boundary between Cornish and English, 1300-1750

Fairly extensive information about language in Roman Britain is available from Roman administrative documents attesting to place- and personal-names, along with archaeological finds such as coins, the Bloomberg and Vindolanda tablets, and Bath curse tablets. That shows that most inhabitants spoke British Celtic and/or British Latin. The influence and position of British Latin declined when the Roman economy and administrative structures collapsed in the early 5th century. [7] [8] [9]

There is little direct evidence for the linguistic situation in Britain for the next few centuries. However, by the 8th century, when extensive evidence for the language situation in England is next available, it is clear that the dominant language was what is today known as Old English. There is no serious doubt that Old English was brought to Britain primarily during the 5th and 6th centuries by settlers from what is now the Netherlands, north-western Germany, and southern Denmark who spoke various dialects of Germanic languages and who came to be known as Anglo-Saxons. The language that emerged from the dialects they brought to Britain is today known as Old English. There is evidence for Britons moving westward and across the channel to form Brittany, but those who remained in what became England switched to speaking Old English until Celtic languages were no longer extensively spoken there. [10] Celtic languages continued to be spoken in other parts of the British Isles, such as Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Cornwall. Only a few English words of Brittonic origin appear to have entered Old English. [11] [12]

Because the main evidence for events in Britain during the crucial period (400–700) is archaeological and seldom reveals linguistic information, and written evidence even after 700 remains patchy, the precise chronology of the spread of Old English is uncertain. However, Kenneth Jackson combined historical information from texts like Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731) with evidence for the linguistic origins of British river names to suggest the following chronology, which remains broadly accepted (see map):

Although Cumbric, in the north-west, seems to have died during the 11th century, [14] Cornish continued to thrive until the early modern period and retreated at only around 10 km per century. However, from about 1500, Cornish–English bilingualism became increasingly common, and Cornish retreated at closer to 30 km per century. Cornish fell out of use entirely during the 18th century though the last few decades have seen an attempted revival. [15] Welsh continued to be spoken in some western parts of Herefordshire and Shropshire into modern times.

During that period, England was also home to influential communities speaking Latin, Old Irish, Old Norse and Anglo-Norman. None of those seem to have been a major long-term competitor to English and Brittonic, however.

Debate on whether British Celtic was being displaced by Latin before the arrival of English

Tablets from Vindolanda bearing Latin text. Roman writing tablet 02.jpg
Tablets from Vindolanda bearing Latin text.

As of around 2010 there was an ongoing discussion about the character of British Celtic and the extent of Latin-speaking in Roman Britain. [16] [9] [17] Scholars agreed that British Latin was spoken as a native language in Roman Britain and that at least some of the dramatic changes that the Brittonic languages underwent around the 6th century were due to Latin-speakers switching language to Celtic, [18] possibly as Latin-speakers moved away from encroaching Germanic-speaking settlers. [19] It was thought likely that Latin was the language of most of the townspeople; the administration and the ruling class; the military and the church. Some scholars thought that British Celtic probably remained the language of the peasantry, which was the bulk of the population; the rural elite was probably bilingual. [20] But others suggested that Latin became the prevalent language of lowland Britain, in which case the story of Celtic language death in what is now England begins with its extensive displacement by Latin. [21] [22]

Thomas Toon has suggested that if the population of Roman Lowland Britain was bilingual in both Brittonic and Latin, such a multilingual society might adapt to the use of a third language, such as that spoken by the Germanic Anglo-Saxons, more readily than would a monoglot population. [23]

Debate on the reason for the Brittonic language's miniscule influence on English

Old English runic inscription on the west face of the Ruthwell Cross. The cross also bears Latin inscriptions. It was erected in the eighth century in Dumfriesshire, then probably mostly a Celtic-speaking region. Ruthwell Cross - west face.jpg
Old English runic inscription on the west face of the Ruthwell Cross. The cross also bears Latin inscriptions. It was erected in the eighth century in Dumfriesshire, then probably mostly a Celtic-speaking region.
The etymologically-Brittonic name of Ceawlin, rendered 'ceaulin', as it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C-text) Ceawlin name.gif
The etymologically-Brittonic name of Ceawlin, rendered 'ceaulin', as it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C-text)

Old English shows little obvious influence from Celtic: there are vanishingly few English words of Brittonic origin. [11] [12] [26] Latin loanwords into early Old English were more numerous; since they were part of a continuous process of borrowing from Latin into Germanic languages, it is hard to be sure how many belong to the early Old English period, but they number in the tens or hundreds. [27] [28] [29] [30]

The traditional explanation for the lack of Celtic influence on English, supported by uncritical readings of the accounts of Gildas and Bede, is that Old English became dominant primarily because Germanic-speaking invaders killed, chased away, and/or enslaved the previous inhabitants of the areas that they settled. A number of specialists maintained support for similar into the twenty-first century, [31] [32] and variations on this theme continued to feature in standard histories of English. [33] [34] [35] [36] Peter Schrijver said in 2014 that "to a large extent, it is linguistics that is responsible for thinking in terms of drastic scenarios" about demographic change in late Roman Britain. [37]

The development of contact linguistics in the later 20th century, which involved study of present-day language contact in well-understood social situations, gave scholars new ways to interpret the situation in early medieval Britain. Meanwhile, archaeological and genetic research suggest that a complete demographic change is unlikely to have taken place in 5th-century Britain. Textual sources hint that people who are portrayed as ethnically Anglo-Saxon actually had British connections: [38] the West Saxon royal line was supposedly founded by a man named Cerdic, whose name derives from the Brittonic Caraticos (cf. Welsh Ceredig ), [39] [40] [41] whose supposed descendants Ceawlin [42] and Caedwalla (d. 689) also had Brittonic names. [43] The British name Caedbaed is found in the pedigree of the kings of Lindsey. [44] The names of King Penda and some other kings of Mercia have more obvious Brittonic than Germanic etymologies, but they do not correspond to known Welsh personal names. [45] [46] The early Northumbrian churchmen Chad of Mercia (a prominent bishop) and his brothers Cedd (also a bishop), Cynibil and Caelin, along with the supposedly first composer of Christian English verse, Cædmon, also have Brittonic names. [47] [48]

Thus, a contrasting model of elite acculturation has been proposed in which a politically dominant but numerically insignificant number of Old English speakers drove large numbers of Britons to adopt Old English. In that theory, if Old English became the most prestigious language in a particular region, speakers of other languages there would have sought to become bilingual, and over a few generations, they stopped speaking the less prestigious languages (in this case, British Celtic and/or British Latin). The collapse of Britain's Roman economy seems to have left Britons living in a society technologically similar to that of their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, which made it unlikely that Anglo-Saxons would need to borrow words for unfamiliar concepts. [49] Sub-Roman Britain saw a greater collapse in Roman institutions and infrastructure, compared to the situation in Roman Gaul and Hispania, perhaps especially after 407 AD, when it is probable that most or all of the Roman field army stationed in Britain was withdrawn to support the continental ambitions of Constantine III. That would have led to a more dramatic reduction in the status and prestige of the Romanized culture in Britain and so the incoming Anglo-Saxons had little incentive to adopt British Celtic or Latin, and the local people were more likely to abandon their languages in favour of the now-higher-status language of the Anglo-Saxons. [50] [51] In those circumstances, it is plausible that Old English would borrow few words from the lower-status language(s). [52] [53]

Critics of that model point out that in most cases, minority elite classes have not been able to impose their languages on a settled population. [54] [32] [55] Furthermore, the archaeological and genetic evidence has cast doubt upon theories of expulsion and ethnic cleansing but also has tended not to support the idea that the extensive change seen in the post-Roman period was simply the result of acculturation by a ruling class. In fact, many of the initial migrants seem to have been families, rather than warriors, with significant numbers of women taking part and elites not emerging until the sixth century. [56] [57] [58] [59] In light of that, the emerging consensus among historians, archaeologists and linguists is that the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain was not a single event and thus cannot be explained by any one particular model. In the core areas of settlement in the south and east, for example, large-scale migration and population change seem to be the best explanations. [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] In the peripheral areas to the northwest, on the other hand, a model of elite dominance may be the most fitting. [59] [65] In that view, therefore, the decline of Brittonic and British Latin in England can be explained by a combination of migration, displacement and acculturation in different contexts and areas. [59] [66] [67]

One idiosyncratic explanation for the spread of English that gained extensive popular attention was Stephen Oppenheimer's 2006 suggestion that the lack of Celtic influence on English was caused by the ancestor of English being already widely spoken in Britain by the Belgae before the end of the Roman period. [68] However, Oppenheimer's ideas have not been found helpful in explaining the known facts since there is no solid evidence for a well established Germanic language in Britain before the fifth century (among the Belgae or otherwise) and the idea contradicts the extensive evidence for the use of Celtic and Latin. [69] [70] Likewise, Daphne Nash-Briggs speculated that the Iceni might have been at least partially Germanic-speaking. In her view, their tribal name and some of the personal names found on their coins have more obvious Germanic derivations than Celtic ones. [71] Richard Coates has disputed this assertion by arguing that while a satisfactory Celtic derivation for the tribal name has not been reached, it is "clearly not Germanic." [72]

Question of detecting substratal Celtic influence on English

Table 1: A number of possible shift features selected as representative by Richard Coates, Gary Miller and Raymond Hickey* regional, northern England; ** regional, southwestern England
FeaturesCoates
[73]
Miller
[74]
Hickey
[75]
Two functionally distinct
'to be' verbs
✔ *
Northern subject rule *
Development of reflexives
Rise of progressive
Loss of external possessor
Rise of the periphrastic "do"
Negative comparative particle *
Rise of pronoun -en **
Merger of /kw-/, /hw-/
and /χw-/ *
Rise of "it" clefts
Rise of sentential answers
and tagging
Preservation of θ and ð
Loss of front rounded vowels

Supporters of the acculturation model in particular must account for the fact that in the case of a fairly-swift language-shift, involving second-language acquisition by adults, the learners' imperfect acquisition of the grammar and the pronunciation of the new language will affect it in some way. As yet, there is no consensus that such effects are visible in the surviving evidence in the case of English. Thus, one synthesis concluded that 'the evidence for Celtic influence on Old English is somewhat sparse, which only means that it remains elusive, not that it did not exist'. [76]

Although there is little consensus about the findings, extensive efforts have been made during the 21st century to identify substrate influence of Brittonic on English. [77] [78] [79] [80]

Celtic influence on English has been suggested in several forms:

  1. Phonology. Between c. 450 and c. 700, Old English vowels underwent many changes, some of them unusual (such as the changes known as 'breaking'). It has been argued that some of these changes are a substrate effect caused by speakers of British Celtic adopting Old English during that period. [81]
  2. Morphology. Old English morphology underwent a steady simplification during the Old English period and beyond into the Middle English period. That would be characteristic of influence by an adult-learner population. Some simplifications that become visible only in Middle English may have entered low-status varieties of Old English earlier but appeared in higher-status written varieties only at the late date. [82] [83]
  3. Syntax. Over centuries, English has gradually acquired syntactic features in common with Celtic languages (such as the use of 'periphrastic "do" '). [84] Some scholars have argued that they reflect early Celtic influence, which, however, became visible in the textual record only later on. Substrate influence on syntax is considered especially likely during language shifts. [85]

However, various challenges have been put forth regarding these suggestions:

  1. The sound changes in Old English bear no clear resemblance to any that occurred in Brittonic, [86] and phenomena similar to 'breaking' have been found in Old Frisian and Old Norse. [87] Other scholars have proposed that the changes were the result of dialect contact and levelling among Germanic speakers in the period following their settlement. [88] [89]
  2. There is no evidence for a Celtic-influenced low status variety of English in the Anglo-Saxon period (in comparison, the lingua romana rustica is referenced in Gaulish sources). [90] [91]
  3. It has been argued that the geographical patterns of morphological simplification make little sense when they are viewed as a Brittonic influence but match perfectly with areas of Viking settlement, which made contact with Old Norse be the more likely reason for the change. [92] [93]
  4. Syntactical features in English that resemble those found in modern Celtic languages did not become common until the Early Modern English period. It has been argued that is far too late of an appearance for substrate features and thus they are most likely internal developments, or possibly later contact influences. [94]
  5. The English features and the Celtic ones they are theorized to have originated from often do not have clear parallels in usage. [95]

Coates has concluded that the strongest candidates for potential substrate features can be seen in regional dialects in the north and the west of England (roughly corresponding to Area III in Jackson's chronology), such as the Northern Subject Rule. [96]

Debate on why are there so few etymologically Celtic place-names in England

Map of place-names between the Firth of Forth and the River Tees: in green, names likely containing Brittonic elements; in red and orange, names likely containing the Old English elements -ham and -ingaham respectively. Brittonic names lie mostly to the north of the Lammermuir and Moorfoot Hills. Brittonic and Old English place names in the pre-1974 counties of Northumbria Durham Selkirkshire Roxburghshire Berwickshire Peeblesshire and the Lothians.png
Map of place-names between the Firth of Forth and the River Tees: in green, names likely containing Brittonic elements; in red and orange, names likely containing the Old English elements -ham and -ingaham respectively. Brittonic names lie mostly to the north of the Lammermuir and Moorfoot Hills.
Bilingual Welsh-English town boundary sign, on the modern Welsh-English border Hay-on-Wye sign.jpg
Bilingual Welsh-English town boundary sign, on the modern Welsh-English border

Place-names are traditionally seen as important evidence for the history of language in post-Roman Britain for three main reasons:

  1. It is widely assumed that even when first attested later, names were often coined in the settlement period.
  2. Although it is not clear who in society determined what places were called, place-names may reflect the usage of a broader section of the population than written texts.
  3. Place-names provide evidence for language in regions for which we lack written sources. [98]

Post-Roman place-names in England begin to be attested from around 670, pre-eminently in Anglo-Saxon charters; [99] they have been intensively surveyed by the English and the Scottish Place-Name Societies.

Except in Cornwall, the vast majority of place-names in England are easily etymologised as Old English (or Old Norse from later Viking influence), which demonstrates the dominance of English across post-Roman England. That is often seen as evidence for a cataclysmic cultural and demographic shift at the end of the Roman period in which not only the Brittonic and Latin languages but also Brittonic and Latin place-names and even Brittonic- and Latin-speakers were swept away. [31] [32] [100] [101]

In recent decades, research on Celtic toponymy, driven by the development of Celtic studies and particularly by Andrew Breeze and Richard Coates, has complicated that picture. More names in England and southern Scotland have Brittonic or occasionally Latin etymologies than was once thought. [102] Earlier scholars often did not notice that because they were unfamiliar with Celtic languages. For example, Leatherhead was once etymologised as Old English lēod-rida, meaning "place where people [can] ride [across the river]". [103] However, lēod has never been discovered in place-names before or since, and *ride 'place suitable for riding' was merely speculation. Coates showed that Brittonic lēd-rïd 'grey ford' was more plausible. [104] In particular, there are clusters of Cumbric place-names in northern Cumbria [14] and to the north of the Lammermuir Hills. [105] Even so, it is clear that Brittonic and Latin place-names in the eastern half of England are extremely rare; although they are noticeably more common in the western half, they are still a tiny minority: 2% in Cheshire, for example. [106]

Likewise, some entirely Old English names explicitly point to Roman structures, usually using Latin loan-words or to the presence of Brittonic-speakers. Names like Wickham clearly denoted the kind of Roman settlement known in Latin as a vicus , and others end in elements denoting Roman features, such as -caster, denoting castra ('forts'). [107] There is a substantial body of names along the lines of Walton / Walcot / Walsall / Walsden , many of which must include the Old English word wealh in the sense 'Celtic-speaker', [108] [109] and Comberton , many of which must include Old English Cumbre 'Britons'. [110] Those are likely to have been names for enclaves of Brittonic-speakers but again are not that numerous.

In the last decade, however, some scholars have stressed that Welsh and Cornish place-names from the Roman period seem no more likely to survive than Roman names in England: 'clearly name loss was a Romano-British phenomenon, not just one associated with Anglo-Saxon incomers'. [111] [112] Therefore, other explanations for the replacement of Roman period place-names which allow for a less cataclysmic shift to English naming include:

Thus, place-names are important for showing the swift spread of English across England and also provide important glimpses into details of the history of Brittonic and Latin in the region, [7] [16] but they do not demand a single or simple model for explaining the spread of English. [127]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brittonic languages</span> Celtic subfamily including Welsh, Cornish, Breton and Cumbric

The Brittoniclanguages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic language family; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.

Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced, for a time, by Anglo-Norman as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during this period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into a phase known now as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northumbria</span> Medieval kingdom of the Angles

Northumbria was an early medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom in what is now Northern England and south-east Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Saxons</span> Early medieval cultural group in England speaking Old English

The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group that inhabited much of what is now England in the Early Middle Ages, and spoke Old English. They traced their origins to Germanic settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. Although the details are not clear, their cultural identity developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the pre-existing Romano-British culture. Over time, most of the people of what is now southern, central, northern and eastern England came to identify as Anglo-Saxon and speak Old English. Danish and Norman invasions later changed the situation significantly, but their language and political structures are the direct predecessors of the medieval Kingdom of England, and the Middle English language. Although the modern English language owes somewhat less than 26% of its words to Old English, this includes the vast majority of words used in everyday speech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cerdic of Wessex</span> King of Wessex (519–534)

Cerdic is described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a leader of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, being the founder and first king of Wessex, reigning from around 519 to 534 AD. Subsequent kings of Wessex were each claimed by the Chronicle to descend in some manner from Cerdic. His origin, ethnicity, and even his very existence have been extensively disputed. However, though claimed as the founder of Wessex by later West Saxon kings, he would have been known to contemporaries as king of the Gewissae, a folk or tribal group. The first king of the Gewissae to call himself 'King of the West Saxons', was Cædwalla, in a charter of 686.

The toponymy of England derives from a variety of linguistic origins. Many English toponyms have been corrupted and broken down over the years, due to language changes which have caused the original meanings to be lost. In some cases, words used in these place-names are derived from languages that are extinct, and of which there are no known definitions. Place-names may also be compounds composed of elements derived from two or more languages from different periods. The majority of the toponyms predate the radical changes in the English language triggered by the Norman Conquest, and some Celtic names even predate the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in the first millennium AD.

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid-5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands. The Anglo-Saxons settled in the British Isles from the mid-5th century and came to dominate the bulk of southern Great Britain. Their language originated as a group of Ingvaeonic languages which were spoken by the settlers in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages, displacing the Celtic languages that had previously been dominant. Old English reflected the varied origins of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms established in different parts of Britain. The Late West Saxon dialect eventually became dominant. A significant subsequent influence on the shaping of Old English came from contact with the North Germanic languages spoken by the Scandinavian Vikings who conquered and colonized parts of Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries, which led to much lexical borrowing and grammatical simplification. The Anglian dialects had a greater influence on Middle English.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Historicity of King Arthur</span> Debate about whether King Arthur was a historical person

The historicity of King Arthur has been debated both by academics and popular writers. While there have been many claims that King Arthur was a real historical person, the current consensus among specialists on the period holds him to be a mythological or folkloric figure.

The Gewisse were a tribe or clan of Anglo-Saxon England, historically assumed to have been based in the upper Thames region around Dorchester on Thames. The Gewisse are one of the direct precursors of modern-day England, being the origin of its predecessor states according to Saxon legend.

<i>*Walhaz</i> Proto-Germanic word for Roman or Romanized peoples

*Walhaz is a reconstructed Proto-Germanic word meaning 'foreigner', or more specifically 'Roman', 'Romance-speaker' or '(romanized) Celt', and survives in the English words of 'Wales/Welsh' and 'Cornwall.' The term was used by the ancient Germanic peoples to describe inhabitants of the former Roman Empire, who were largely romanised and spoke Latin languages. The adjectival form is attested in Old Norse valskr, meaning 'French'; Old High German walhisk, meaning 'Romance'; New High German welsch, used in Switzerland and South Tyrol for Romance speakers; Dutch Waals 'Walloon'; Old English welisċ, wælisċ, wilisċ, meaning 'Brythonic'. The forms of these words imply that they are descended from a Proto-Germanic form *walhiska-.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sub-Roman Britain</span> Period in Late Antiquity in Great Britain

Sub-Roman Britain is the period of late antiquity in Great Britain between the end of Roman rule and the Anglo-Saxon settlement. The term was originally used to describe archaeological remains found in 5th- and 6th-century AD sites that hinted at the decay of locally made wares from a previous higher standard under the Roman Empire. It is now used to describe the period that commenced with the recall of Roman troops to Gaul by Constantine III in 407 and to have concluded with the Battle of Deorham in 577.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtic Britons</span> Ancient Celtic people of Great Britain

The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.

Peter Schrijver is a Dutch linguist. He is a professor of Celtic languages at Utrecht University and a researcher of ancient Indo-European linguistics. He worked previously at Leiden University and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The name of London is derived from a word first attested, in Latinised form, as Londinium. By the first century CE, this was a commercial centre in Roman Britain.

British Latin or British Vulgar Latin was the Vulgar Latin spoken in Great Britain in the Roman and sub-Roman periods. While Britain formed part of the Roman Empire, Latin became the principal language of the elite and in the urban areas of the more romanised south and east of the island. In the less romanised north and west it never substantially replaced the Brittonic language of the indigenous Britons. In recent years, scholars have debated the extent to which British Latin was distinguishable from its continental counterparts, which developed into the Romance languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain</span> Cultural and population changes in England c. 450 to 630 AD

The settlement of Great Britain by diverse Germanic peoples, who eventually developed a common cultural identity as Anglo-Saxons, changed the language and culture of most of what became England from Romano-British to Germanic. This process principally occurred from the mid-fifth to early seventh centuries, following the end of Roman rule in Britain around the year 410. The settlement was followed by the establishment of the Heptarchy, Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the south and east of Britain, later followed by the rest of modern England, and the south-east of modern Scotland. The exact nature of this change is a topic of on-going research. Questions remain about the scale, timing and nature of the settlements, and also about what happened to the previous residents of what is now England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Insular Celts</span> Speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany

The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

Brittonicisms in English are the linguistic effects in English attributed to the historical influence of Brittonic speakers as they switched language to English following the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain and the establishment of Anglo-Saxon political dominance in Britain.

<i>Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages</i> 2014 book by Peter Schrijver

Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages is a 2014 scholarly book by the Dutch linguist Peter Schrijver, published by Routledge.

References

    1. Bryan Ward-Perkins, ‘Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 513–33.
    2. Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean 400-800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 311-12.
    3. Hills, C. M. (2013). "Anglo-Saxon Migrations". The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration. Wiley-Blackwell. doi : 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm029.
    4. Transactions Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club, 1887, page 173
    5. Ellis, A.J. (1882). Powell, Thomas (ed.). "On the delimitation of the English and Welsh languages". Y Cymmrodor. 5: 191, 196. (reprinted as Ellis, Alexander J. (November 1884). "On the delimitation of the English and Welsh language". Transactions of the Philological Society. 19 (1): 5–40. doi:10.1111/j.1467-968X.1884.tb00078.x. hdl: 2027/hvd.hx57sj .); Ellis, A.J. (1889). "Introduction; The Celtic Border; 4". The existing phonology of English dialects compared with that of West Saxon speech. Early English Pronunciation. Vol. V. London: Trübner & Co. p. 14 [Text] 1446 [Series].
    6. After Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, 'British River Names', in Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Century A.D., Edinburgh University Publications, Language and Literature, 4 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953), p. 220.
    7. 1 2 Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Century A.D., Edinburgh University Publications, Language and Literature, 4 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953).
    8. A. L. F. Rivet and Colin Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (London: Batsford, 1979).
    9. 1 2 Paul Russell, 'Latin and British in Roman and Post-Roman Britain: methodology and morphology', Transactions of the Royal Philological Society, 109.2 (July 2011), 138–57.
    10. Cf. Hans Frede Nielsen, The Continental Backgrounds of English and its Insular Development until 1154 (Odense, 1998), pp. 77–79; Peter Trudgill, New-Dialect Formation: The Inevitability of Colonial Englishes (Edinburgh, 2004), p. 11.
    11. 1 2 Kastovsky, Dieter, ‘Semantics and Vocabulary’, in The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 1: The Beginnings to 1066, ed. by Richard M. Hogg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 290–408 (pp. 301–20).
    12. 1 2 Matthew Townend, 'Contacts and Conflicts: Latin, Norse, and French', in The Oxford History of English, ed. by Lynda Mugglestone, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 75–105 (pp. 78–80).
    13. Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson, Language and History in Early Britain: A Chronological Survey of the Brittonic Languages, First to Twelfth Century A.D., Edinburgh University Publications, Language and Literature, 4 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953), p. 220.
    14. 1 2 Diana Whaley, A Dictionary of Lake District Place-names, Regional series (English Place-Name Society), 1 (Nottingham: English Place-Name Society, 2006), esp. pp. xix-xxi.
    15. Ken George, 'Cornish', in The Celtic Languages, ed. by Martin J. Ball and James Fife (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 410–68 (pp. 411–15).
    16. 1 2 David N. Parsons, 'Sabrina in the thorns: place-names as evidence for British and Latin in Roman Britain', Transactions of the Royal Philological Society, 109.2 (July 2011), 113–37.
    17. Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages , Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 31–91.
    18. D. Gary Miller, External Influences on English: From Its Beginnings to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 25–28.
    19. Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages , Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 31–48.
    20. Sawyer, P.H. (1998). From Roman Britain to Norman England. p. 74. ISBN   978-0415178945.
    21. Peter Schrijver, ‘The Rise and Fall of British Latin: Evidence from English and Brittonic’, in The Celtic Roots of English, ed. by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen, Studies in Languages, 37 (Joensuu: University of Joensuu, Faculty of Humanities, 2002), pp. 87–110.
    22. Peter Schrijver, ‘What Britons spoke around 400 AD’, in N. J. Higham (ed.), Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), pp. 165–71.
    23. Toon, T.E. The Politics of Early Old English Sound Change, 1983.
    24. Fred Orton and Ian Wood with Clare Lees, Fragments of History: Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Monuments (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 121–139.
    25. Alaric Hall, ‘Interlinguistic Communication in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum’, in Interfaces between Language and Culture in Medieval England: A Festschrift for Matti Kilpiö, ed. by Alaric Hall, Olga Timofeeva, Ágnes Kiricsi and Bethany Fox, The Northern World, 48 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 37-80 (pp. 73–74).
    26. A. Wollmann, 'Lateinisch-Altenglische Lehnbeziehungen im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert', in Britain 400–600, ed. by A. Bammesberger and A. Wollmann, Anglistische Forschungen, 205 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1990), pp. 373–96.
    27. Pogatscher, Alois (1888). Zur Lautlehre der griechischen, lateinischen und romanischen Lehnworte im Altenglischen. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker (in German). Vol. 64. Strasbourg: Trübner.
    28. Alfred Wollmann, 'Lateinisch-Altenglische Lehnbeziehungen im 5. und 6. Jahrhundert', in Britain 400–600, ed. by Alfred Bammesberger and Alfred Wollmann, Anglistische Forschungen, 205 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1990), pp. 373–96.
    29. Alfred Wollman, 'Early Latin Loan-words in Old English', Anglo-Saxon England, 49 (1993), 1–26.
    30. Anna Helene Feulner, Die griechischen Lehnwörter im Altenglishen, Münchener Universitäts-Schriften, 21 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2000), ISBN   3-631-36720-1.
    31. 1 2 D. Hooke, 'The Anglo-Saxons in England in the seventh and eighth centuries: aspects of location in space', in The Anglo-Saxons from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: an Ethnographic Perspective, ed. by J. Hines (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 64–99 (p. 68).
    32. 1 2 3 O. J. Padel. 2007. “Place-names and the Saxon conquest of Devon and Cornwall.” In Britons in Anglo-Saxon England [Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 7], N. Higham (ed.), 215–230. Woodbridge: Boydell.
    33. Ferdinand von Mengden, “Old English,” in English Historical Linguistics, Vol.1 (ed. Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, 2012), p. 22
    34. Seth Lerer, Inventing English (Columbia University Press: 2007), p. 9
    35. Richard Hogg, Rhona Alcorn, An Introduction to Old English, 2012, pp. 3-4
    36. Haruko Momma, Michael Matto, A Companion to the History of the English Language, 2011, p. 154
    37. Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages , Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), quoting p. 16.
    38. Catherine Hills (2003) Origins of the English, Duckworth, pp. 55, 105
    39. Parsons, D. (1997) British *Caraticos, Old English Cerdic, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 33, pp, 1–8.
    40. Koch, J.T., (2006) Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, ISBN   1-85109-440-7, pp. 392–393.
    41. Myres, J.N.L. (1989) The English Settlements. Oxford University Press, p. 146.
    42. Bryan Ward-Perkins, ‘Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 513–33 (p. 513).
    43. Yorke, B. (1990), Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, London: Seaby, ISBN   1-85264-027-8 pp. 138–139
    44. Basset, S. (ed.) (1989) The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, Leicester University Press
    45. Koch, J.T., (2006) Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, ISBN   1-85109-440-7, p. 60
    46. Higham and Ryan (2013), pp. 143, 178
    47. Koch, J.T., (2006) Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, ISBN   1-85109-440-7, p. 360
    48. Higham and Ryan (2013), p. 143.
    49. Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London: Allen Lane, 2009), p. 157.
    50. Higham, Nicholas (2013). The Anglo-Saxon World. pp. 109–111. ISBN   978-0300125344.
    51. Bryan Ward-Perkins, ‘Why did the Anglo-Saxons not become more British?’, English Historical Review, 115 (2000), 513–33 (p. 529).
    52. D. Gary Miller, External Influences on English: From Its Beginnings to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 35–40).
    53. Kastovsky, Dieter, ‘Semantics and Vocabulary’, in The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume 1: The Beginnings to 1066, ed. by Richard M. Hogg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 290–408 (pp. 317–18).
    54. Coates, Richard. "Celtic whispers: revisiting the problems of the relation between Brittonic and Old English".
    55. Charles Barber, Joan C. Beal, and Philip A. Shaw, The English Language: A Historical Introduction (ed. 2009, p. 107)
    56. Burmeister, Stefan (2000). "Archaeology and Migration".
    57. Schiffels, S., Haak, W., Paajanen, P. et al. Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history. Nat Commun 7, 10408 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10408
    58. Martiniano, R., Caffell, A., Holst, M. et al. Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons. Nat Commun 7, 10326 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10326
    59. 1 2 3 Härke, Heinrich. "Anglo-Saxon Immigration and Ethnogenesis." Medieval Archaeology 55.1 (2011): 1–28.
    60. Dark, Ken R. (2003). "Large-scale population movements into and from Britain south of Hadrian's Wall in the fourth to sixth centuries AD" (PDF).
    61. Toby F. Martin, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell and Brewer Press (2015), pp. 174-178
    62. Catherine Hills, "The Anglo-Saxon Migration: An Archaeological Case Study of Disruption," in Migrations and Disruptions, ed. Brenda J. Baker and Takeyuki Tsuda, pp. 45-48
    63. Coates, Richard. "Celtic whispers: revisiting the problems of the relation between Brittonic and Old English".
    64. Donka Minkova, A Historical Phonology of English (2013, Edinburgh University Press), p. 3
    65. Kortlandt, Frederik (2018). "Relative Chronology" (PDF).
    66. Fox, Bethany (2007). "The P-Celtic Place Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland".
    67. Kortlandt, Frederik (2018), Relative Chronology
    68. Oppenheimer, Stephen (2006). The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story: Constable and Robinson, London. ISBN   978-1-84529-158-7.
    69. Alaric Hall, 'A gente Anglorum appellatur: The Evidence of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum for the Replacement of Roman Names by English Ones During the Early Anglo-Saxon Period', in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie, ed. by Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily, Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 14 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011), pp. 219–31 (pp. 220–21).
    70. Hills C.M. (2013). Anglo-Saxon Migrations. The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration. Wiley-Blackwell. DOI: 10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm029.
    71. Nash-Briggs, Daphne. "The Language of Inscriptions on Icenian Coinage".
    72. Coates, Richard (2017). "Celtic whispers: revisiting the problems of the relation between Brittonic and Old English".
    73. Coates, Richard, 2010. Review of Filppula et al. 2008. Language 86: 441–444.
    74. Miller, D. Gary. External Influences on English: From its Beginnings to the Renaissance. Oxford 2012: Oxford University Press
    75. Hickey, Raymond. Early English and the Celtic hypothesis. in Terttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of English. Oxford 2012: Oxford University Press: 497–507.
    76. Quoting D. Gary Miller, External Influences on English: From Its Beginnings to the Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 35–40 (p. 39).
    77. Filppula, Markku, and Juhani Klemola, eds. 2009. Re-evaluating the Celtic Hypothesis. Special issue of English Language and Linguistics 13.2.
    78. The Celtic Roots of English, ed. by Markku Filppula, Juhani Klemola and Heli Pitkänen, Studies in Languages, 37 (Joensuu: University of Joensuu, Faculty of Humanities, 2002).
    79. Hildegard L. C. Von Tristram (ed.), The Celtic Englishes, Anglistische Forschungen 247, 286, 324, 3 vols (Heidelberg: Winter, 1997–2003).
    80. Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages, Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 12–93.
    81. Schrijver, P. (2013) 'Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages', Routledge ISBN   1134254490, pp. 60-71
    82. Alaric Hall, 'A gente Anglorum appellatur: The Evidence of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum for the Replacement of Roman Names by English Ones During the Early Anglo-Saxon Period', in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie, ed. by Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily, Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 14 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011), pp. 219–31.
    83. Peter Schrijver, Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages, Routledge Studies in Linguistics, 13 (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 20–22.
    84. Poussa, Patricia. 1990. 'A Contact-Universals Origin for Periphrastic Do, with Special Consideration of OE-Celtic Contact'. In Papers from the Fifth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, ed. Sylvia Adamson, Vivien Law, Nigel Vincent, and Susan Wright, 407–34. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    85. Hickey, Raymond. 1995. 'Early Contact and Parallels between English and Celtic'. Vienna English Working Papers 4: 87–119.
    86. Coates, Richard. "Celtic whispers: revisiting the problems of the relation between Brittonic and Old English".
    87. Jeanette Marsh, “Pre-Old English,” in English Historical Linguistics, Vol.1 (ed. Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, 2012), p. 9
    88. Jeanette Marsh, “Pre-Old English,” in English Historical Linguistics, Vol.1 (ed. Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, 2012), p. 9
    89. Ferdinand von Mengden, “Old English,” in English Historical Linguistics, Vol.1 (ed. Alexander Bergs, Laurel J. Brinton, 2012), p. 22
    90. Robert McColl Millar, "At the Forefront of Linguistic Change: the Morphology of Late Northumbrian Texts and the History of the English Language, with Particular Reference to the Lindisfarne Gospels"
    91. John Insley, "Britons and Anglo-Saxons," in Kulturelle Integration und Personnenamen in Mittelalter, De Gruyter (2018)
    92. Robert McColl Millar, "English in the 'transition period': the sources of contact-induced change," in Contact: The Interaction of Closely-Related Linguistic Varieties and the History of English, Edinburgh University Press (2016)
    93. Herbert Schendl, Middle English: Language Contact (2012)
    94. John Insley, "Britons and Anglo-Saxons," in Kulturelle Integration und Personnenamen in Mittelalter, De Gruyter (2018)
    95. Richard Coates, Reviewed Work: English and Celtic in Contact (2010)
    96. Richard Coates, Reviewed Work: English and Celtic in Contact (2010)
    97. Map by Alaric Hall, first published here as part of Bethany Fox, 'The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland', The Heroic Age, 10 (2007).
    98. Alaric Hall, 'The Instability of Place-names in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Wales, and the Loss of Roman Toponymy', in Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Richard Jones and Sarah Semple (Donington: Tyas, 2012), pp. 101–29 (pp. 101–4).
    99. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 99.
    100. R. Coates. 2007. “Invisible Britons: The view from linguistics.” In Britons in Anglo-Saxon England [Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 7], N. Higham (ed.), 172–191. Woodbridge: Boydell.
    101. Alaric Hall, 'The Instability of Place-names in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Wales, and the Loss of Roman Toponymy', in Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Richard Jones and Sarah Semple (Donington: Tyas, 2012), pp. 101–29 (pp. 102–3).
    102. E.g. Richard Coates and Andrew Breeze, Celtic Voices, English Places: Studies of the Celtic impact on place-names in Britain (Stamford: Tyas, 2000).
    103. Gover, J.E.B., A. Mawer and F.M. Stenton, with A. Bonner. 1934. The place-names of Surrey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (SEPN vol. 11).
    104. Richard Coates, 'Methodological Reflexions on Leatherhead', Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 12 (1979–80), 70–74.
    105. Bethany Fox, 'The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland', The Heroic Age, 10 (2007).
    106. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 98–101.
    107. David N. Parsons, 'Sabrina in the thorns: place-names as evidence for British and Latin in Roman Britain', Transactions of the Royal Philological Society, 109.2 (July 2011), 113–37 (pp. 125–28).
    108. Miller, Katherine, 'The Semantic Field of Slavery in Old English: Wealh, Esne, Þræl' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 2014), esp. p. 90.
    109. Hamerow, H. 1993 Excavations at Mucking, Volume 2: The Anglo-Saxon Settlement (English Heritage Archaeological Report 21)
    110. Patrick Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England 600-800, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 24.
    111. Quoting Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 99.
    112. Alaric Hall, 'The Instability of Place-names in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Wales, and the Loss of Roman Toponymy', in Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Richard Jones and Sarah Semple (Donington: Tyas, 2012), pp. 101–29 (pp. 112–13).
    113. Higham and Ryan (2013), p. 100.
    114. Smith, C. 1980. “The survival of Romano-British toponymy.” Nomina 4: 27–40.
    115. Carole Hough. 2004. The (non?)-survival of Romano-British toponymy. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 105:25–32.
    116. Bethany Fox, 'The P-Celtic Place-Names of North-East England and South-East Scotland', The Heroic Age, 10 (2007), §23.
    117. Alaric Hall, ‘A gente Anglorum appellatur: The Evidence of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum for the Replacement of Roman Names by English Ones During the Early Anglo-Saxon Period', in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie, ed. by Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily, Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 14 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011), pp. 219–31.
    118. 1 2 3 4 James, Alan. "Brittonic Language in the Old North: A Guide to the Place-Name Evidence" (PDF).
    119. Ekwall, Eilert (1960) [1936]. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names (Fourth ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 143. ISBN   0-19-869103-3.
    120. 1 2 3 "Survey of English Place-Names". English Place-Name Society.
    121. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), p. 100.
    122. Carole Hough, 'Celts in Scandinavian Scotland and Anglo-Saxon England: Place-Names and Language Contact Reconsidered', in Language Contact and Development around the North Sea, ed. by Merja-Riitta Stenroos, Martti Mäkinen, Inge Særheim, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (Amerstdam: Benjamins, 2012), pp. 3–22; ISBN   9789027274663.
    123. Alaric Hall, ‘A gente Anglorum appellatur: The Evidence of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum for the Replacement of Roman Names by English Ones During the Early Anglo-Saxon Period', in Words in Dictionaries and History: Essays in Honour of R. W. McConchie, ed. by Olga Timofeeva and Tanja Säily, Terminology and Lexicography Research and Practice, 14 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2011), pp. 219–31 (p. 221).
    124. The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, Volume 30. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 1982. p. 41.
    125. Barrie Cox, ‘The Place-Names of the Earliest English Records’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 8 (1975–76), 12–66.
    126. Alaric Hall, 'The Instability of Place-names in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Wales, and the Loss of Roman Toponymy', in Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Richard Jones and Sarah Semple (Donington: Tyas, 2012), pp. 101–29 (pp. 108–9).
    127. 1 2 Alaric Hall, 'The Instability of Place-names in Anglo-Saxon England and Early Medieval Wales, and the Loss of Roman Toponymy', in Sense of Place in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Richard Jones and Sarah Semple (Donington: Tyas, 2012), pp. 101–29.
    128. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), pp. 100–101.