Was Bede English?

[Urselius]

To return to Bede, it seems that the concept of Englishness that he used was perhaps not ethnic but linguistic and, even more so, cultural. Bede states, quite flatly, that St. Chad was English, and a Northumbrian Englishman to be precise. However, there is plenty of evidence that Chad's family were not English ethnically. Chad's name, as rendered by Bede, was Ceadda; Ceadda he had a number of brothers, Cedd, Caelin and Cynibil. All of the brethren had Celtic names, not Anglo-Saxon. At the very least they were named by parents who were Celtic speakers even if they themselves spoke Old English (possibly they were bi-lingual) and were culturally "English."

Another of Bede's "Englishmen" was the monk Caedmon the father of Old English devotional poetry. Caedmon had a name incorporating the same Celtic root as is found in Ceadda - cad or cat - meaning "battle."