Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[cagwinn]

Hi Chris,

It's quite unlikely (and a lot of etymologists have not looked at this problem with a critical eye - the Cunorix = Cynric mem has become received wisdom) - the 5th century pronunciation of Britonic Cunorix (which was already well on its way to becoming Old Welsh Cinir) would not easily become Saxon Cynric through any normal linguistic process.

I must disagree there, it's by no means as clear-cut as you suggest (or beat your colleagues around the ears with). For as long as we date the inscription on the Wroxeter stone to the later 5th century, there is evidence to suggest that Cunorix was a form still in use during that period. Therefore I think it a possibility (not: "it is") that the name Cynric went back on a British name. Mind you, even so, that does not mean that the person also was a Briton, or spoke British. Attila is a good example.

The spelling Cunorix reflects an archaic Brittonic orthographic tradition (though the name itself was probably Irish), not a phonetic rendering of the name as it was then pronounced (which was surely *Kunari by this date). See Patric Sims-Williams, The Celtic Inscriptions of Britain, pp. 26-27 (which you can view on Google Books: [url:lpsecp7r]http://books.google.com/books?id=vn0g6ItICtUC&pg=PA26#v=onepage&q&f=false[/url]). Orthographic standards rarely keep pace with phonetic changes (the dichotomy between written and spoken Modern English is a perfect example of this!).

It is unlikely that any 5th century Saxon would have picked up a Celtic name like Cunorix via a written source - if there was any borrowing, it would more probably have been via an oral source. In the 5th century, the Brittonic form of the name was pronounced something like *Ken@ri:" (later in the century, *Kener, which would, a few centuries later, be rendered Cinir in Old Welsh) and, as I have just mentioned, its Irish cognate, *Kunari (later to become Old Irish Conri). Neither one is likely to have given us a Saxon Cynric.

By the way, Old High German Gothic had words related to the Saxon name Cynric - OHD kunirichi and Goth kunirihhi, meaning "kingdom"; their Old English cognate was cyneri:ce "kingdom" (later kinrik, literally "nobleman-dominion", cyne- being a variant of cyning "king", from Germanic *kuniz "[royal] kindred"). See D.H. Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic Word, pp. 130ff. Also viewable online: [url:lpsecp7r]http://books.google.com/books?id=RONb2alF0rEC&pg=PA130#v=onepage&q&f=false[/url]

In Gothic society, the head of a kuni (tribe) was a reiks "lord, king".

I have been looking into Cerdic some more - there was a possible Saxon name *Cearda, attested by the place names Cerdan hlaew and Caerdan-dun (perhaps Chardstock, too) and Cerdic could easily be a pet-name form if it (the suffix -ic formed hypocoristic names in A-S, compare Taetica, Baldic, et al.). Perhaps (seeing that we also find the spelling Ceartic) it is a dialectal form of Old English ceart (MoEng chart) "moor, woodland, overgrown/rough land/ground"?