What is the evidence of any significant AS settlement in the Severn
Valley (apart from the area around Shrewsbury)? The conquest was by
Wessex, not Mercia (who came along with iirc Penda a couple of
generations later). The speech of the area is more south-western
than midland in large part, and (on a completely different tack,
which does not have inherent implications for language) the DNA
sampling has so far indicated that the long standing parts of the
community are part of the pre-AS gene pool. There are various signs
of Welsh possibly still being spoken in parts of Worcestershire in
the 8th and 9th centuries (on the western fringes of Herefordshire
and Shropshire it continued until the last century).
This would seem to point to the name having been embedded in English
well before the battle of Dyrham. Given that there had been German
mercenaries in the Roman army in the third and fourth centuries, the
name is as likely to have been common currency long before the
English settlements. Just as the Rhine and the Rhone or the Seine
(and less pointedly the Scheldt) have been well known in these
islands for centuries.
Or am I missing the point?
Best wishes,
Gordon
<
gordonselway@...>
At 8:53 this morning Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
>On 2006-10-10 05:00, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, puts
>> Brit. *s- > /h/ in the mid-6th c. and the arrival of the
>> English in 577. He thinks it unlikely that they'd have
>> heard anything but /h/ pronunciations and suggests that it
>> was important enough that they'd probably heard of it rather
>> earlier.
>
>Yes, Ceawlin's conquest of the Severn Valley began in 577, but I see no
>reason why the Anglo-Saxons, especially those in what was to become
>Mercia, should not have been aware of a major river just outside the
>area controlled by them. Then, the change of s- > h- did not take place
>overnight in AD 550; there must have been a lengthy period of variation,
>with the conservative s-form (preserved also in British Latin) being
>probably regarded as more careful. The Severn isn't the only example of
>a Brittonic river-name retaining its *s in English.
>
>Piotr
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