From: guto rhys
Message: 14669
Date: 2002-08-28
I believe the names could suggest a few different scenarios eg.:
1)AS ruling families having married into the native dynasty to 'legitimize' a weak claim to the throne (cf Henry VII for example) and maintaining a family name.
2)A-Saxons giving a Brythonic name to offspring in order to appease/appeal to a native nobility (or subjects) which still remembered the native ruling dynasty. Gives the impression of continuity, cf. Edward I.
3)A native ruling dynasty gone 'Saxon', but retaining names of ancestors in an ethically mixed context.(This theory has been proposed to explain why kings of Strat Clut retained Brythonic names even if Brythonic was no longer spoken there).
The relevance to this chat-group being that names of kings etc. do not necessarily tell us much about the language of the populace.
'Cadwallon' would have been pronounced differently in the 6th century(as I'm sure you are aware) : probably *kadwa'la:n, with a rounded 'a'� (if that is the correct term?????? - and I don't know how to show the IPA in this script) later '-aw-', then '-o-'. This, to me, fits in with the vowel in AS.Oxford, in order to deal with this 'gap', added another volume a few years back on the Anglo-Saxon invasion.
Exaclty - I think the change of language (and culture) involved many processes including 'ethnic cleansing and slaughter' (eg. Isle of Wight, AS Chronicle 531(?)) and more peaceful and gradual processes as may be suggested by the preponderance of Brittonic river-names in the west.
Guto
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