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)

Contents 1 Brythonic names 2 Names and Identities 3 Article template 4 Kidderminster 5 References

[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)

[edit] Names and Identities

I've pointed out the obvious Celtic origins of the name Chad in some stuff I added to the article. It's fairly obvious that quite a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite were ethnically British Celts and that they maintained their culture to some extent. As Urselius points out, the West Saxon king lists seem to start with mainly Celtic names. It's very unclear what the roots of Mercian names like Penda and Peada are, and Penda seems to have had a son and/or sub-king called Merewalh, which could be translated "great Welshman". I think it's now well-established through both archeology and genetics that the Anglo-Saxons did constitute a large incoming population, but that they did not displace anything like the majority of the native population.

As for Cedd/Chad, there are two entirely separate life stories in Bede, with Chad succeeding his brother as abbot of Lastingham. Bede places Chad in Ireland with Egbert at a time when Cedd was being sent first and briefly to Mercia, before being posted to Essex. He also makes a point of enumerating four brothers in the same ecclesiastical dynasty. He comments on how rare this was, almost as if they had become a proverbial or stock example. Bearing in mind that Bede claimed spiritual succession to Chad, having been taught by Chad's pupil, Trumbert, I think we can assume he got the basic facts straight. Incidentally, there is no truth in the assertion above that the two brothers have either the same death dates or feast days. Not only were their years of death separated by 8 years, but Cedd's feast day is 26 October.

However, writers like Leland in the 16th century did mix the names up. Leland actually turns Chad's Well at Lichfield into a place associated with a figure he calls Cedd. Sjwells53 22:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Penda's father was called Pybba, it looks suspiciously like the Welsh word pybyr meaning stout or strong. I think the molecular geneticist Sykes has claimed that the maximum "Anglo-Danish" type y chromosome levels were found in East Anglia and amounted to about 25%. South of the Thames levels were much lower and in the North of England and Midlands were intermediate. He concluded that discriminating between Anglo-Saxon and later Danish incomers was impossible genetically.

Urselius 12:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article template

Surely it's possible to take off the "uncited" template now? AnonMoos 22:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kidderminster

I've left this as a suggestion, but place name studies generally reckon it's named after Cydela, not Chad. I'm fairly certain this is based on actual documentary evidence of the evolution of the name. Admittedly, it is on St Chad's patch, but I don't think it's anything to do with him.Sjwells53 21:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

Why is the references at the end or bottom of the article?--65.30.175.197 04:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure i understand the question. They seem to be where Wikipedia generally has references.Sjwells53 11:10, 4 December 2007 (UTC)