Talk:Chad of Mercia

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"Another form of his name that survives in Modern English is St Cedd. His Anglo-Saxon name was Ceadda (pronounced "chadda")."

This sentence (which has been in since the page's early days - User:Chameleon seems to have added it) seems to say that St Chad and St Cedd were the same person. Every other source I have read (Encyclopaedica Britannica, New Catholic Dictionary, etc.) have stated that Saint Cedd was Saint Chad's brother. Any justification for this assertion to the contrary? TSP 19:39, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, that's interesting. I'd always thought they were the same person. The modern-day difference in their names is certainly misleading. Chad's name was really Ceadda. The sources you cite say that Cedd in Anglo-Saxon is not Ceadda as I thought, but Cedda. Well, it seems highly unlikely that parents would call their two sons by those names, which would have been pronounced virtually identically. It would be like having kids called Merry and Mary. Is it possible that the Church found there was a "Chad" and a "Cedd" who were from the same place, with the same parents, etc, and instead of concluding that they were one and the same, decided they must have been two brothers? Note that they have the same feast day and the same year of death. Well, I'm not an expert on Christian history. I'll leave it to you to do the rest of the research. Chamaeleon 21:01, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• grins* - yes, they do have terribly similar names. Apparently there were two other brothers with names beginning with C - Cynebil and Caelin. As you say, the hypothesis of them being the same is distinctly plausible; but I haven't seen it anywhere else, so I think we probably need to go with the general understanding that they were different; they do have reasonably complete and separate histories. They have a joint feast day, I think, because no-one knows either of their birthdays and they worked together. I have different dates of death for them - 664 for Cedd, 672 for Chad. TSP 22:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Brythonic names

The names of Chad and Cedd are Brythonic (Early Welsh or Late Old British) in origin, they derive from the Brythonic element cat- or cad- meaning "battle" (as in Cat Coit Caledon [the Battle of the Caledonian Forest] or Catuvellauni [The Battle-experts], or Cadwallon.

The name of Caelin would seem to be related to Ceawlin the West Saxon king, and both related to the name Colin which is also of Celtic origins (eg the early Welsh saint, Kollen).

Cynebil possibly incorporates the Brythonic root cuno- meaning "hound" and be identical to Cunobelin (Belinus' Hound), the root is also found in the name of Cuneglassus (Blue-hound) a 6th century British king mentioned by Gildas.

Any description of these ecclesiastics which does not mention this would seem to me to be lacking somewhat.

Urselius 10:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)