Get 25% off Blinkist premium and enjoy 2 memberships for the price of 1! Start your 7-day free trial by clicking here: blinkist.com/cambrianchronicles Thanks for watching, here’s to making more backups of my videos in the future to stop a chunk of it from corrupting again.
Would it be Possible that the later uses of “Britons” in the sources (esp the danish one) refers to Anglo-Saxons? After all they were living in Britain and the place could be used to define the people.
@@CambrianChronicles Nowadays most whites kids in London speak English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect which is very different from the anglo saxon dialect of English which is spoken in this t.v programme by this presenter. In the early 2000's, young white kids on council estates in London became JAMAICANISED. This is when they starting speaking with English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect. For example, Essex county is the only place in Britain where the cockney dialect/and or accent is still spoken.
Recent discoveries have shown that Cornish was still spoken amongst some folk into the early 1900's when the 'revival' of the language started. Indeed I can remember my great grandmother talking to her brother in a mixture of Cornish and English in the 1970's. Neither were revivalists, both born in the 1890's.
I've heard plenty of rumours, and I wouldn't be surprised at it's survival, but the sources I've used still point to an extinction at some point, as does UNESCO (which changed it's ruling on Manx after protests from Manx speakers who had just been claimed to not exist!), if you have links to the discoveries I'd love to see them, it'd make a cool video as well!
@@CambrianChronicles I can't furnish links as the historian currently working on this hasn't published anything. But a lot of people including an MP have come forward saying they have heard or known of people that predate the revival speaking Cornish. The dialect I spoke as a child contained as many nouns and even verbs in Cornish as English, and I'll still use some now (even though I'm in 'England'), because I can't think of the English word straight away. The late Cornish historian Craig Weatherhill once told me Cornish was spoken in the South Hams of Devon well into the 13th century, this peaked my interest into Dartmoor and West Devon where there is fairly good evidence the language survived until even later.
Genetic evidence shows that the majority of English people are only 25% Anglo-Saxon or less. Most were Britons who were assimilated in the same way most turks in turkey were formerly Greeks who were assimilated.
Not always. English dna in parts of Eastern England can Max 47% Anglo-Saxon and a additional 5% Swedish possibly Wulfingas Geat dna in Eastern England. Based on a September 2022 study. This is a sometimes not always premise. As for Turkish dna that gets more complicated. Ethnic Turks or Turkish citizens in general regardless of self identification?
yeah but if the english aren't anglo-saxon because they're a minority anglo-saxon in blood, the welsh and others aren't celtic because they're sub-5% celtic in blood, as celtic culture originated in the halstatt culture of central europe. fair?
There was a 2022 study that showed a much higher Anglo-Saxon percentage in the English population. One of the authors confidently asserted that as a result of their study, the mass migration of the Anglo Saxons can no longer be questioned
We can use Irish as as example of what can happen to a language, the English didn't arrive in huge numbers to Ireland, but now the vast majority of human interactions there are done in English. It took no population replacement to replace the language.
English itself could have been obliterated by the arrival of the Norman French onto British shores. For hundreds of years French and Latin were the de facto languages of our courts and high society. One can assume only by sheer weight of numbers did the established English survive, due to it being the common language of the majority poorer classes and serfs to Norman households. Eventual intermarrying over time meant English edged out Norman French and Latin but with their vocabularic infusion. In a similar way English prevails in Ireland but with a uniquely Irish twist.
No it just took Tyranny to replace the language. The English litterally banned the teaching of the Gaelic language. Gaelic speakers were prevented from getting an education. They were discriminated in all spheres of life.
It took massive scale legal repression, the closing down of ancient schools with the oldest continuous Latin education on earth and generally horrific colonial violence and persecution actually. But yeah I see your point.
@@eamonnclabby7067 Scots gaelic is a colonial language in Scotland. And the Isle of man. The Irish themselves were the colonists in these areas. The Scots should be speaking Pictish where they instead speak Gaelic.
Makes me wonder what the founders of Grimsby Ontario were smoking when they named their town. Surely they must have been gleeful to have an ocean between them and the original Grimsby, but I guess not
as someone who lives and grew up in Ely. There are fairly well known stories of the fen tigers. which are stories of the indigenous native peoples whom lived on islands in the fen. And is kind of accepted that the fen was one of the last strongholds of the Britons, due to its natural difficulty to navigate and it’s dangers, until it was drained. It’s why I think our local fen accent is unusual and so similar to one’s found in Cornwall or the West Country. It’s so cool someone shining a light on my local history that im so fascinated by. Thank you! I often discuss our local history and theories with my father and there is still so much to be discovered here.
I'm sure Hereward The Wake also held oiut in the fens against the French Normans. It must have been an amazing place to live. Plenty of eels for dinner!
Yes. I absolutely agree. I'm often struck by the similarity in the accent of the west and east. Both these regions were relatively cut off and isolated. Whether it be Hereward the Wake or Alfred in Altheney. But I'm also struck by a black country accent ( not B'ham) and somerset. There are faint echoes of similarity .
@@gar6446 It's just a southern English accent before the influence of the London accents. Proper Kent and Sussex accents are similar though dying a quick death because of the East London exodus and the received pronunciation of London middle class spreading their accents through the South East
there is an area in west yorkshire where several villages are called "-- in Elmet', and they are named after a supposed celtic kingdom which survived in west yorkshire when all around was settled by Anglo Saxons
The DNA map of the British Isles bears this out ,West Yorkshire ,Lancashire and Cumbria are the homeland of present day Brigantes, although the parish records of Deane church in Bolton, ( excellent and online) charts the arrival of the Angles in East Lancashire...fascinating stuff..
Elmet was the last Celtic kingdom in England, stretching from the Leeds area west into the Pennines, surviving in some form until around 600ad, and the village of Walsden on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border between Rochdale and Todmorden has been interpreted as the Saxon "Waelisch dene" or "Valley of the Celts". Given that the western edge of Elmet was steep sided hills with boggy valley bottoms it's not good farming land, so not very accessible or attractive to Saxon farmers, and it's conceivable that Walsden was a last Celtic stronghold.
@@veila0924 That's interesting, but are we talking about these areas surviving as purely Celtic kingdoms (that is; _ruled_ by Celts) or as kingdoms ruled by some other group ? Anyway, I have to admit that I accepted the word of Ted Hughes (who by coincidence my mum had known since being young) and his research about Elmet for his 1979 book "Remains of Elmet", so I'm happy to be corrected.
It was a really nice touch using older (contemporary?) Maps as a background in this video. Even if they aren't as accurate they're a nice tone setter and it was fun looking at the place names of where I'm from and trying to see which towns and villages existed back then!
Fascinating. How good to hear this, a more reasoned and far less melodramatic version of history. That the Celts and Anglo-Saxons blended over time makes more sense than that there was constant warfare, though some degree of conflict was inevitable. Fine job, Cambrian Chronicles. Keep up the good (and rigorous) work.
@lovablesnowman old English was a Germanic language with brythonic pronunciations. It was much softer and more sibilant than other Germanic and Nordic languages. spoken at the front of the mouth with much softer "th" sounds. When modern Germans hear old English, they can pick bits out as familiar but are completely baffled by other bits. It's a case of not really understanding how many brythonic languages there were in 5th century England.
As an English person with Celtic heritage, I've always found this extremely interesting. It's a shame how many people think the Anglo-Saxons completely wiped out all of the native Britons in a short space of time, which would've been impossible anyway. They lived alongside them or mixed with them, although admittedly there was a lot of murder and brutal oppression too. The more west you travel into England, the more Celtic roots you'll fine. I need to pick up Welsh again (I was learning it but got distracted by university) as part of my "journey" to bring it back to England lol. But in all seriousness, even looking at modern Welsh and place named in England is interesting. Welsh is a direct descendent of Common Brythonic and many place names in England come from that, which also explains how many places, even simple rivers, have names in Welsh too or at least originate from Brythonic. My hometown of Manchester is called Manceinion in Welsh and comes from a Brythonic word for the area.
@@carlwoods4564 Place names are a bad indicator. Many places in the Americas have native place names, and the natives were actually whiped out as a people too in many parts. Place bames can linger long after the people who named the things have gone. The actual Old English language meanwhile had basically no influence from the Britonic languages. And I was referring to England, not Wales. Wales is obviously the main part of the British Isles where the Britonic cultures remained alive. Hence why it is called Wales. And I said almost entirely in reference to England. Cornwall and Cumbria being some exceptions. You might not like it for whatever reason but the Anglo-Saxons were very effective at destroying the Celtic culture and language of the natives they assimilated. And we will never why and how exactly this happened
As far as genetics is confirmed, at max, 52% of English dna is Germanic, which 47% traced to the Anglo-Saxons and 5% to the Swedes, possibly Wulfingas Geats. And at common most for a population, 25% at the least Germanic in parts of England and 76% Germanic in the middle ages. That means somewhere between 25-75% of English dna is Celtic, by the logic of the study mix of Brythonic or indigenous Bell-beaker Celts and French looking dna easily interpretable as Hallstatt continental Celtic dna that brought the culture over to Britain as well as later Gaulish French immigrants. This is all a September 2022 study. Conclusively lacks a 100% population displacement.
@@gnosticpygmy4417 I've met English and Teutonist supremacist online who still promote the complete Wipeout theory. This isn't a dead horse. Its an ongoing myth promoted by some Germanic supremacist in England and mainland Europe. I can forgive a ignorant foreigner not from Europe assuming the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Britons in England, but online you can see this dead horse isn't beaten to death by a straw but is still being ridden carrying the Germanic supremacist nazi who claims the Anglo-Saxons killed all Britons 100% for Germanic purity. I'm not claiming every Germanic person is a Nazi when saying 100% of Britons were wiped out. I am saying, these instances can be seen online.
I'm familiar with that paper but the result is not quite what you're presenting here. From the section on supervised admixture in the supplementary materials: We estimate an average of 6% Norse Ancestry in present-day England, with peaks in Cumbria, Northeast England, and East Anglia and lower proportions in western and southwestern England (e.g. Cornwall, Sussex, Herefordshire, Forest of Dean)(supp. Fig. 6.3b, Supp. Table 6.7-8), which is close to previous estimates based on ancient DNA. Correspondingly, the overall fraction of CNE ancestry in England was reduced by inclusion of the fourth source population to 32.7% (WBI=36.4%, CWE=24.9%) Factoring in for Norse ancestry brings the average figure of 40% down slightly to 38.7% but the more relevant point is that the paper's Germanic ancestry proportions are not increased by factoring in for Norse ancestry. There is no place in England where people are majority Germanic.
@@BronzeAgeCelt I missed the Norse section. I was focused on the 5.2% Swedish though not the 6% Norwegian. Did they date this to the Viking age or the Anglo-Saxon period? Cause I thought this covers the early Anglo-Saxon period only if memory served, There's no reason to believe Scandinavians from prior to the Viking age weren't present.
@@BronzeAgeCelt I personally can't/cannot claim a strong Germanic heritage myself. I call myself Anglo-Saxon do to culture and English ethnicity but most my English ancestors being from western English counties were most certainly Britons not Germanic. I have some Saxon and Scandinavian blood but I myself am probably a briton largely genetically. Not including my additional non English ancestry in the British isles. But hey. My opinion doesn't matter I'm American not a UK citizen.
They’ve calculated from Domesday Book that the number of Norman households moving to England after 1066 was about 4000. Say five per household and you have about 20,000. Some were of course elderly parents, some monks. But the population of England then was about a million and 20k is just 2%. So to change a language you don’t need number, you need power.
@@CambrianChronicles What? How could you possibly calculate that from the Domesday Book? Seeing it was written shortly after the Norman Invasion? You know that it was a snapshot of Anglo-Saxon England for the benefit of the new Norman rulers and couldn't possibly list all Norman migration as it happened later. Others have figures of over one hundred thousand Norman colonialists.
@@casteretpollux There were no universities in 1066. The first, the University of Paris, was later. Why would the Normans have wanted to destroy Irish? Keep them ignorant and powerless would be a better tactic. The greatest loss of Irish happened after 1923. There is a meeting between JM Synge and an old Irishman in Connemara, mending a fishing net. Synge hails him in Irish and the old man replies in English. Synge learns that because the old man spoke English, he’d had a long and fulfilling career in Canada and the US, travelling the world. And where would I have been if I didn’t speak English , the old man asks? Right here! It was his cultural choice.
Great video! I've always found it implausible that the Britons would have just disappeared in such a short space of time after the Anglo-Saxons coming over.
History was written by the upper class. We really don't know anything about the other 99.9% of people, we only have the often untrustworthy words of the very few wealthy and literate to work from. Assuming that the Britons would've eventually found themselves mostly relegated to second class citizens, after the conquests I could see them living "off the books" for centuries in pockets and small villages. Only sometimes interacting with a person of high status, and rarely written about.
@Welcome to the Monkey Ape Zone yeah I can see that too. This video also got me wondering, if you were to dna most of the lower class and poorer members of Britain if they would show up as majority ancient British dna. Because people of poverty very rarely make it out of poverty, so is it an inherited thing from generations ago.
@@mrwelshmun Was wondering the same thing. Because on the other end it certainly seems to be true, especially for England: apparently the ruling class is still largely made up of the direct descendants of Old William the C and his cronies
The average English person is 64% celtic according to an oxford university study. Anglos really destroyed the English identifying with their celtic roots. It makes more sense to call them "anglo-celts"
There was a similar phenomenon on the Flemish coastal areas in Belgium, on the other side of the Channel. Dutch historian and linguist Lauran Toorians has demonstrated that a coastal Brythonic language existed there up until the 4th-5th century AD, when the region was already thoroughly Germanic for 3 centuries with the establishment of the Franks. It is likely linked to the seafaring Belgic tribes of an earlier time (Menapii and Morini, Atlantic Celts like the Britons) that lived there on the arrival of Caesar in the 1st century BC. In those days the Flemish coastline was notorious for their pirate dens, both native and from neighbouring Germanic tribes, notably the Saxons. In fact the names of coastal settlements Koksijde (-yde small harbour, Koks- of the Chauci), Lombardsijde (of the Longobardi) and Walravensijde (of the "foreign raven") point back to that era of local history.
@@CnockCnockyes, there is a 145 page monograph "Keltisch en Germaans in de Nederlanden: taal in Nederland en België gedurende de Late Ijzertijd en de Romeinse Periode" L. Toorians, Mémoires de la Société Belge d'Études Celtiques, nr. 13 (2000)
Absolutely fascinating, thanks for this video. I've often considered that it was the Normans who gave Wales such grief, not the Anglo Saxons. No wonder that so many English people love to learn Welsh and Cornish these days - it is, after all, part of their heritage. Wonderful stuff !
Have you ever heard of Offa's Dyke? Offa was King of Mercia in the 8th century when the kingdom was at the height of its power and dominated the land. He also raided Wales which added to Mercia's vast riches. He ended up building a very long wall of raised embankment on the West Mercian border to stop the Welsh from raiding into Mercia. You can actually visit Offa's dyke today and walk across the entire thing. However it's worth noting that they weren't always at war and sometimes fought together like the Battle of Hatfield chase when Edwin of Northumbria was killed and defeated by an allegiance of Mercian and Welsh armies.
Another excellent treatment of this topic! I imagine the language would also have lasted longest in more isolated communities (e.g. the fens) where there was less regular contact with the Anglo-Saxon elite and growing majority. As cities and towns became more English, nearby villages may have done so as well, but those villages less connected would not have as much. These areas might have been patchworks of surviving Celtic communities and more Anglicised ones. It reminds me of how French died out in most of Louisiana except, for a long time, amongst the Cajuns who had settled in the swamps. Also, as an Anglo-Quebecer, it reminds me of the many isolated Anglophone communities in Quebec interspersed amongst French ones. The situation here is different since these communities tend to be later than the French ones, but it makes a similar patchwork where you sometimes find an Anglo town settled by Scottish lumberjacks in the 1800s surrounded by primarily French towns. Incidentally, a lot of these small Anglo communities are becoming more French as they become more connected to bigger French towns (although Quebec's language policies also have an affect on this).
Thank you, and yes I agree, geographical separation certainly would've played a big role! The Cajun and Quebec examples are super interesting too, so thank you for that. It's interesting how you could compare them to the Britons here too, like the communities in the Fens, or in the Anglo-Saxon (and later Norman-settled Flemish or English) towns that developed near, or in Wales, surrounded by Welsh speaking communities.
In the 1970s in the UK the culture and accents changed every 30 miles or so once you got out of the south East of the country. When my grandfather was talking to his friends I couldn't understand what they were saying. We lived about 35 miles north and east of him so much of the slang I used was different. You sort of had an accepted universal English and a local version that usually sounded more archaic than the universal version. This must have been quite a stark difference back when there were actual different tribes of people though I get an impression local dialects denoted your belonging to an area more than a tribe.
@@CambrianChronicles dialectics are fascinating, the Welsh influence on Merseyside is often overlooked, the FAB 4 all had Irish roots for example although as already mentioned ,John Lennon was reputedly a descendant of Owain Glyndwr, back to the accents though, the Scousers accent only slightly varied from the Clwyd one ..where a lot of folk still commute fo Merseyside as they have done for generations..😊
My grandad has what is known as the fenland drawl, I thought he was American till I was about 10. Now people think I'm American. Accents and dialects a fascinating beast.
In England, most surnames and place-names are Anglo-Saxon. The laws, culture, currency (£), monarchy, all Anglo-Saxon heritage. I call myself Anglo-Celtic
The first “Saxon” kings of Wessex (Cerdic, Cynric, Ceawlin) had suspiciously Brythonic sounding names. I think the people integrated and carried names and blood into what became the English
The English are what they are literally a " Bastard " Nation to give it its true meaning, on Saturday you will have a new King, he will swear that his lineage goes back to Caedwallon and Arthyr why because they can then say that they have a line to the Brythonic Kings of the 5th and 6th Centuries. Plantagenets did the same. Tudors and Stuarts did not have to, their line was already there.
@@GerMFnU1848Sax it’s more complex than that. The movement of Germanic tribes to England has for a long time been viewed as a conquest. Evidence suggests it was more complicated. Saxon mercenaries were employed, but with the departure of the romans, there was a huge skills shortage. It seems Saxon families migrated mostly to farm land as the Romano British were set up to focus on specific tasks. So it may also have been British men marrying Saxon women
It’s true, Cerdic is believed to be of Celtic origin, meaning he was either fully or more likely half-Celtic himself, giving even more evidence of integration.
There's a Havelock Street in Cardiff, where I was born and a place called Havelock an hour's drive from where I now reside in Nova Scotia. Old Havelok must've been quite an influence.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this one, ( I haven't seen the video before posting this) but the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde which survived until the 1030s aka 11th century, ruled also the area of what is today Cumbria, of which today this region is inside of England. Therefore doesn't that mean that a substantial population of Britons or at least Brythonic-influenced people in Northern England itself, still spoke this celtic language which before that existed on a wider scale in England, well into the 11th century??
But the Lake District had already been under AS rule. When the Vikings smashed Northumbria in the 850s, Strathclyde took it back. The life of St Cuthbert has him visiting Carlisle in 685 at the invitation of the queen, where he saw a Roman fountain still working.
I once worked for a company in South Cambridgeshire. One day, I overheard two female colleagues saying (of some forgotten problem of that day) “it’s just like when the Saxons came up the rivers”. Maybe it’s a tiny fragment of Brythonic culture surviving to the present day?
That was absolutely brilliant. I've been theorising along these lines about Brythonic people for some time now. In my Essex village, we have one Brythonic word still as in 'Pan Lane'. 'Pan' means a basin/hollow/valley and indeed Pan Lane does lead down to a valley.
I'm from Devon, born and mostly raised, and identify myself as an English Briton of mixed Anglo-Cornish descent (with some Welsh thrown in and, going back far enough, a little Gaelic too) I can speak a few words of Welsh... no Cornish or "Dumnonian" though, sadly. The Celtic people of England definitely *were not* replaced wholesale; we just adopted the language and culture of the new lords... three times over the last couple thousand years! The Romans knew well enough how to absorb conquered peoples and did pretty comprehensive job of it about as far as their roads reached, the Saxons didn't manage it quite so well and the less said about Norman influence the better. Then again, those secondhand Vikings didn't really set out to replace the natives, they just wanted to live in the castles and take all the money, which they DID achieve pretty handily as well.
This shouldn't apply to me since I'm American but speaking for myself in the ancestral perspective most of my ancestors come from the regions called Luitcoyt, Rheged and Glouvia regions of western England. Modern Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Gloucester etc. You want genetically 50%+ Germanic people go to East Anglia, Kent, Essex region. We're basically Britons who's Anglo-Saxon dna comes in touches. Plus additional Welsh last name Pritchett I have.
@@noahtylerpritchett2682 I think it applies pretty well to you actually, given the linguistic and ethnic context of the USA. I don't suppose your earliest recorded ancestors were miners, stonecutters or masons at all? A LOT of "Anglo-Celts" (along with all sorts of Gaels) emigrated to the new world and southern pacific regions during the rise of the Empire.
@@MrMortull I can trace 3000 ancestors multiple many centuries back largely into a variety knights, nobles and aristocrats. Other genealogy of civilians exist. Of course.
Really interesting video! Sad in a way but history often is. I'm glad that we are delving into our collective history and that it's not been abandoned.
Manchester was originally called Mamucium, a Latin form of the original (lost) Brittonic Celtic name meaning mother and/or breast (related to a “breast-shaped hill” in the area and possibly a local river goddess). The suffix Chester comes from Latin meaning fort.
Ha! I'm just now realizing chester and castrum / castro are related. In northern Portugal, one can still find plenty of castra remnants where Celts settled and came to resist roman incursions later on. Fascinating!
Many place names here we claim to be Latin or Anglo-Saxon were actually Celtic originally. Even London, ironically, is probably from a Celtic name for the area. It's sad though because it shows how much the Celts were truly oppressed, which is true. The fact that we're taught Manchester comes from Latin shows this when in fact it came from a "Latin" word BORROWED from Common Brythonic.
I grew up in Crowland and was told the story of St Guthlac when I was much younger. Stumbling across on this video really brought things back for me. Never thought the Celtic connection was so strong
I’ve seen a Time Team documentary about a village in Yorkshire from the time of the Saxon migrations, which concluded there was no large-scale conquest in the area. It suggested a much more gradual, if still very large migration of Germanic populations to Britain. That lines up very well with the evidence presented here.
Thank you, Yorkshire is super interesting because it also contains the farms that I mentioned (where there's no evidence of any land change, again suggesting a gradual migration). There's also I site somewhere in the north that is theorised to have been occupied by some sort of local ruler, that also doesn't show any major signs of change when the Saxons arrived.
This may be West Heslerton, which had a ‘ladder’ formation, ever adding new bits on to one end. Dominic Powlsland (excuse spelling of his name) had been digging it up and writing about it for decades.
Some of Yorkshire was under the British kingdom of Elmet until around 610AD I think. There is still a few place names with links to Britons and two that have “elmet” in their name such as Barrick-in-Elmet and Sherbun-in-Elmet
the low prestige one is interesting, you can observe the same in China with Chinese where people claim to be fully Han, because the other are seen as inferior. It also influenced historiography for example the Hakka was seen for a long time as completely Han descended, but more modern research in both language and genetics showed that they intermingled with the local tribes and people, creating a mixed people.
@@nathan_408Let's look at the last four dynasties of Imperial China, from 960 to 1911, about 950 years: Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing. The two foreign dynasties, Yuan (Mongol) and Qing (Manchu) combined to rule for 350 years, while the native (Han) dynasties combined for 600 years. So not only not "always," not even most of the time.
I saved this vid in to my queue by reading only the title. At the end, when the red dragon of Cadwalleder appeared on screen, I was going to recommend a really good channel I'd just discovered here on YT, with an article on that very dragon but as I scrolled down to the comments section to leave my opinion I passed by this channel's name & realized....... this channel was _the_ channel I was going to recommend!
Very interesting and well done video as always! I think people often see Britain as like one part anglo-saxon and the other part celtic but looking at history and ancestory it's certainly more of a mix. Always fun watching your videos tho man and as someone who is English but is very interested in celtic culture and history this is especially interesting!
Thank you, I agree people tend to see it too binary, I suppose that's because that's what the Victorians wanted English history to be, but also that it provides an easy and simple story.
@@gerrardjones28 I think that the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic issue in England is more complex than thought. And likely more intertwined than we really know. Highlighted by this excellent video. There's even a school of thought that the Saxons and Jute tribes were basically Celtic in their original origin, they just branched off and went a different way when other Celtic tribes maintained Celtism. Unverified but seems plausible.
@@hobi1kenobi112 Susan Oosthuezen alongside linguists on the continent actually believe Old English broke away from continental Germanic far earlier than previously believed. No joke, many of her German colleagues stated that OE was as though people with accents were trying to pronounce Germanic words lol. Your theory has more legs than you know!
Great video. I was wondering where you were going with this but you came up with the explanation that I theorised. Gildas mentioned 5 kings and people wonder why those 5 kings in particular, I think it was never about them committing sins but more because they taxed the citizens of their Kingdoms to the ground. I reckon it’s because the Volcanic winter of 536 AD (which I hope you do a video of soon) affected the Island of Britain so much that these 5 kings just like the Anglo-Saxon leaders taxed these people more than say the other Kingdoms and thus why Gildas condemned them so much in his Ruin and Conquest of Britain.
Thank you! Gildas is super interesting, and indeed his particular choice for the five kings is quite interesting too, I'd love to cover him, and the 536 volcanic winter, sometime in the future.
It would also be interesting to cover the climatic variations. Romans enjoyed a relatively warm period. The time from 900AD to 1300AD was also warm. 400AD to 900AD was relatively cold compounded by the volcanic winter of 536.
Just to develop a little bit, I know you mention it sometimes, and I m glad. In this video for example, the migration of the clergy class to the west and then across the sea to Brittany could have been an interesting point too. It's hard to find ressources in french about it, I feel there was a lot more research done on the other side of the channel, and I m thankful you are sharing it with us. I think it is still a niche that is left to be filled on RUclips, and would be interesting for all your viewers.
Alan was a Breton, as apparently was my own 'Norman ' ancestor Ralph Grammaticus who took the name Featherstone after he married the Saxon/Danish lady of the Manor of Featherstone in Yorkshire. He was the boteiller or butler of the Norman Lord Ilbert de Lacy of Pontefract Castle.
It is interesting that some of the last Anglo-Saxon England's resistance to the Normans took place in the same Fenland under Hereward the Wake. Perhaps the impenetrability of the area made it conducive to hold-outs? It also implies that a separate English/British identity there may not have survived to 1066.
Wonderful video from one of my favourite channels. I’ve heard that the Cornish language survived in Devon as well as Cornwall for a while. If so how long did the Cornish language last in Devon before being erased from the area?
I'm not sure how long it lasted in Devon unfortunately, it was probably for a while after the area was conquered, like other parts of England, but I'm unsure of an exact estimate
I'd presume it would have been similar to the other areas mentioned here continuing at least partially until the 11th century; Loose evidence/Records seems to indicate that potentially Anglo-saxon rule had taken over devon around ~700ad, however this may have been reclaimed with mentions of the britons causing the destructions of a castle in taunton. Some sources seemed to presumed that a kind of peace/truce would have lasted until ~800ad. In that time it would prob make sense that whilst in briton rule it may still have had anglo-saxon migration occurring into the area. One thing of note is that Devon does retain quite a lot of Celtic placenames, though quite a few are anglicised. Also referring to this video regarding language class; once devon had transitioned from speaking predominately brythonic they would have actually considered their neighbours in the same way as outsiders or slightly lower class. Though this could all be incorrect :D This is just based on trying to read up various other historians on devonian history; quite often with conflicting ideas.
@@CambrianChronicles Apparently there was one little corner in South Hams during and beyond the reign of Edward the First. That they probably traded with people in Brittany is why their language lasted longer.
I went to college in Exeter and heard that there once was a British quarter there. Also that Bristol gets its name from Bristow, meaning the British enclosure and there were Brythonic speakers in the marshes of Athenley in King Alfred's time and they helped him hide until he was ready to face the Vikings in battle. So the woman whose cakes he burnt will have been a Briton!
Great video. Just as the Celts didnt disappear during the Roman occupation, they didn't during the Saxon occupation either, or even the Norman conquest. These invaders were always in the minority, and ordinary country folk just ignored them. It makes sense that the Celtic spreakers would be driven to the least hospitable places like swamps. We know the ancient Brittonic language split into Cumbric, Manx, Welsh, and Cornish around 550AD. If we imagine that these languages existed up to modern times, there is an argument that Celtic language never died, and is still with is.
There may have been a Brythonic Manx but the Irish took over the island during the early middle ages and modern Manx is derived from middle Irish as is Irish and Gaelic.
What happened in Anglo-Saxon England kind of reminds me of what is happening to the Celts in France right now. Many Bretons have adopted the French language and culture because that is the language of prestige in France right now.
Whereas in the UK in part to devolution over recent decades there's been a resurgence of native languages in Wales/Scotland. Still a lot of regional accents are dying out though.
@@PaulJohn01 the Scousers accent ,here on Merseyside, a hybrid of Irish,Norse and Welsh ,with a smattering of English is still going strong, although the music metropolis of Merseyside aka Ukraine on the river mersey is assimilating Ukrainian as we speak..😊
English in Merseyside has evolved in its own direction now, all those Scots, Welsh and Irish, to say nothing of our Norwegian friends who donated Lobscouse to us...very similar to Irish stew..😊
As for Brittany, the Celtic language has been receding since the 5th century in eastern Brittany. But, the question is, was it Breton or Late Gaulish? There are many words in Breton that are obviously borrowed from Gaulish or Romano Gaulish. In the last 70 years Breton has receded to the far west where there may be as few as 30,000 people (65 yrs +) who still speak it on a regular basis. The younger ones learn a phoney French version of it in schools which has nothing to do with traditional Breton.
Thats also why the English stumble over themselves to use French word like commence, instead of words like begin. It is still happening 900 years after the Norman conquest. Its the same phenomenon, just slower and more diluted.
Glad to see a new upload by you, thank you for the hugely interesting video! I've also read and loved Dr Marc Morris' book, I definitely recommend it to everyone who's interested in the Anglo-Saxons.
It's an absolutely fascinating topic, though it's a shame we have so little to go on. My family have always been Welsh, even going back to the Welsh Princes of the kingdoms of Gwynedd & Powys but it is really interesting to learn about Britons outside of Wales or Ireland.
Always interesting to hear about Celtic tribes (and this is coming from a stay behind Saxon from Northwest Germany) and I'm curious about continental Celtic tribes and how they related and had contacts to the insular ones as well.
The Brythonic language did not have the Welsh 'll' [ɬ] sound. The description of Brythonic as "sibilant" is much more likely to refer to the high frequency of [s] in Brythonic as well as other fricatives like [θ ð x]. The fact that [ɬ] is found only in Welsh (and not Cornish, Breton, or Cumbric (as far as we know)) means the earliest it could have developed was in the Old Welsh period (800AD-early 12th Century).
@@worship-under-edge7992 No. Old English had a voiceless L which was only an allophone of /l/ found after /h/ (which would have been realised as [x]). It was written not , e.g. hlāf [(x)l̥ɑːf] 'loaf'. It was never pronounced as [ɬ].
@@entwistlefromthewho That's interesting! It's not whatI was taught - er - rather a long time ago, but scholarship moves on, obviously. Does that apply to all the A-S 'digraphs' - hw, sc, etc - that they were actually consonant clusters, and not conventional spellings of non-latin sounds? (And what was I thinking of! lh indeed!)
The Anglo-Saxons migration to Britain resembles analogous to Arab migrations. Where massacres sometimes occur and conquests definitely occur but without the displacement of a local population. That's my analogy. Take Southern Mesopotamia and Jordan, Arab colonization amounts to a few slaughters but largely the Arab migrants assimilated rather than eliminated the local Chaldean and Canaanite/Edomite population. Likewise in England a few massacres would mean not much as it's still not a full-scale genocide. The colonization was strongly restricted to the coast while Anglo-Saxon conquerors massacred some settlements but largely assimilated the populace. Meaning there wasn't a pure 100% genetic replacement. Any massacre that would occur was on the basis of clan or tribe of Britons, and not a blanket Lebensraum type genocide of Britons by the Anglo-Saxons, Similar to how a few Chaldean clans and Canaanite clans in Jordan and Southern Iraq got their tribes killed off but the Arabs didn't blanket slaughter the ethnicity. Rather leaving the conquered tribes alone.
You can see this plainly in terms of phenotypes in the middle east especially. While Assyrians as an independent cultural group in Iraq might be a tiny minority, the local "Sunni Arabs" in the same area are nearly indistinguishable from them.
@@vespiary2066 I used to have a Shia ex from Baghdad. She resembles Assyrian or Babylonian ethnics or even Mizrahim Levantine Jews easily but she looks nothing Arabic from the peninsula. The closest could be Tamini or Shammari two very light skin hazel eyed Arab tribes from the peninsula.
@@gwynedd4023 massacres towards Britons was probably common. But not genocidally organized enough to ever change the demographic significantly. I can name more massacres and murders in the US towards non whites with a larger impact than the rampages In Britain.
As a Brythonic Celt from Peran ar Wodhel in Kernew, late a fourth generation Kernew-Ostralek, I admire this video’s content. I’m part of a small group of Kernewek speakers living currently in Japan. Believing one is Celtic is a matter of identity. The language (SWF) is growing again, as is the number of speakers. Lowena Dhis!
😂 A group of Cornish speakers living in Japan. How come? I think I get it Japanese parents think they've enrolled kids in. English classes and unbeknownst you're sipping in Cornish to their impressionable little heads.😊
Nice. what's this in English please?. Y’n dalleth yth esa an Ger, hag yth esa an Ger gans Duw, ha’n Ger o Duw. Yth esa ev y’n dalleth gans Duw. Pup-tra a veu gwrys ganso, ha hebdho ny veu gwrys travyth a veu gwrys. Ynno yth esa bewnans, ha’n bewnans o golow mab-den; ha’n golow a splann y’n tewlder, ha ny wrug an tewlder y fetha.
@@kernowalbion4142 I believe it’s from John 1, as follows: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Great video, really interesting about the East of England areas… One thing, and I am sure I remember reading this somewhere, is that there were still Welsh speakers in parts of Shropshire in Elizabethan times, which is even more recent than most of information here…is this correct?
Ah, this is interesting as my I come from Lincolnshre and I've traced my family back there over about 400 years. When I had a couple of DNA tests (Anc and 23) they both came back with a lot of scandi (including my y hapologroup) but another site has pegged my non-scandi part of my DNA as being closest to modern day Wales. I've been puzzled by this for a while but now it makes a little more sense. Thank you.
Great video CC, I love the way you're able to gather all of the information you presented earlier in the video together at the end, to bring all points to one solid conclusion.
Large parts of the East Riding around Hull spent most of the year as marsh and fen. With lots of Celtic influence still in the area, I'm sure you're correct. With both Scots/Irish and Brythonic/British lineage I find this intriguing. Rightly or wrongly, I've started calling this place Deira again. Cheers
Great video. I often wonder about place names in my region (south London/Surrey) that apparently recall the Britons - Walworth, Wallington, Walton-on-Thames - and in what sense they were originally meant. Were these surviving communities of Brythonic speakers or Anglo-Saxon speakers resettling previously inhabited sites and acknowledging the prior inhabitants? Lots of interesting stuff in the video to keep me wondering!
It's unlikely the Anglo-Saxons would have named things in honour of the Britons in their absence. Walworth means farm of the Briton(s) so is an example of an active farm that was owned by a Briton. This is an example then of a local landowner who was a Briton because they wouldn't have named the farm after the farm workers. It seems Wallington was originally another Walton type name. Maybe the locals began to pronounce it Wallington to sound more English as -ing was a suffix used by Anglo-Saxons to mean 'people of...'.
There’s an area of Swindon called “Walcot’ or the habitation of the Wealas. This implies that there was a small enclave of Celts in Wiltshire late enough to influence a place name.
Weird, last week I was roughing out an idea for a conlang, the idea for it was a late surviving Brythonic language on an island in the fens of eastern England, more or less exactly where the first tale takes place. Had no idea that it basically did happen.
Wow, I noticed that the events in which the last Celts of England were involved are so similar to what happened in Lombardy where the Cisalpine Gauls, after the fall of Rome, were invaded by migrant Langobards and then, as time went on, they started interbreeding and so they gave birth to modern Lombards.
In the translation i read Guthlac, being an aristocrat, when his families star fell low, was exiled amongst the Britons, thereby learning the language, secondly Bede is known as the venomous Bede because of his wilfull ignorance of Britons who lived around him and in history. Thirdly have you ever heard of yan tan tethera? A celtic counting system spoken from Lincolnshire to Scotland even today! Check it out!
Yes I've heard of yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pym! I'm from West Yorkshire. A branch of my family is called Featherstone from the town in South Yorkshire and it gets its name from Pethera stone meaning four stones as there used to be an ancient stone monument there made from four stones.
Really interesting video. Though you didnt mention Cumbria or the Cumbric language. I read the people of Cumbria in north west England, spoke Cumbric, a Brythonic language up to the 12th century. They were part of the independent kingdom of Strathclyde, known as the Hen Ogled. It may have been spoken as far south as Pendle in Yorkshire. It died out when the northern part of the kingdom was conquered by the Scots, and the southern part became part of England. Did the Brittonic language survive there for a while after this?
The Hen Ogledd (Old North) wasn't just Strathclyde, it was the whole northern England/southern Scotland region. In the west was Alt Clut (rock of the Clyde) named for the large rock that the capital sat on top of. This was later referred to by the Irish as the fort of the Britons, 'Dun Briton' which morphed into modern Dumbarton. In the west was Gododdin, possibly centred on Edinburgh. This was the old tribal territory of the Votadini mentioned by the Romans. Other realms were Rheged and Elmet. The Cumbria name also is found in Scotland with a couple of islands in the Clyde estuary called The Cumbraes because Cumbric speaking Britons once lived there. As for the language, the wiki page on Cumbric has this to say: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric#Date_of_extinction
@@damionkeeling3103 Good points, though the Gododdin were based in what is Lothian, south east Scotland. That is were Edinburgh is too. There are many place names around Edinburgh, as well as the rest of southern Scotland, that are of Brythonic origin, like Penicuik. The south east of Scotland was conquered by the Angles around 670. Though the independent kingdom of Strathclyde, in the south west of Scotland continued to exist till the mid 11th century, with its capital at Dumbarton.
There is a town in south Yorkshire called "wales" and the old name for Sheffield is "escafeld" which means "esca's field/flatlands". esca is a Brythonic name and what is now south Yorkshire was in the welsh kingdom of elmet so id guess there was a sizeable population of britons still living there long after the Angles arrived in the area
Yes, after my next video it'll be on the poll! The first part wasn't very popular when I first made it, but it's shot up now all of a sudden, so I'd love to continue it.
Really interesting thank you. As someone with roots and an old Cornish name, that pre dates the Norman invasion, until it seems to have became "Normanised" under William I. I now live between St Ives and Ramsey where the Bishop of Ely's palace was situated and would have never thought Brythonic was possibly spoken here at such a late date?
Love the video, always informative! I really enjoy learning more about Celts and also the Welsh, being Welsh I've developed a great interest over recent years!! How do you feel about the Brecon beacons having their name changed to the Welsh version (I'm in favour) 😊
Though this video is about England, not Wales, as to your last point if I may: Though I am happy for Welsh to be respected and preserved as a native language of Britain, I think it is atm being used as a nationalist weapon to cause division by some. There is a fair bit of spite out there.
Only Welsh speakers will adopt the Welsh name, and maybe they did anyway. The same with Snowdonia. English speakers will not change, mostly because we can't spell these names, and we certainly can't pronounce them. They remain Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as far as we are concerned. Let the nationalists try to weaponise these place names if they wish, it is doomed to fail.
My paternal family line has used the Moss surname (some generations switched back and forth to Morse) since the 13th/14th centuries and lived near Bolton in Lancashire, then eventually Lancaster, before going to the Americas in the 1640s. It seems they were called Moss (Anglo-Saxon derivation assumed) due to their living by the bogs of Chat Moss near Bolton and Manchester sometime after the Norman conquest. Though it seems Cumbric Britons, Lowland Scots, and families in Wales also used the name Moss as a variant of Morris (Romano-British form of the Latin name Maurice) or other etymologies outside of the Anglo-Saxon word for a bog, so its hard for me to know which was the actual origin of my family surname. Perhaps it had some multilingual double meaning, I've speculated at least. Such that Moss fit into the Topographical English naming system, and Moss also being a version of the Romano-British personal Maurice, that often became the surname Morris in Wales, keeping a foot in both doors culturally, especially in respect to Celtic language naming systems. Naming systems aside, the DNA of my father, grandfather, and myself shows the "Celtic" line of Y-lineage (R-L21 / R-DF13) haplogroup to be maintained to this day genetically in our family. I've also noted during genealogical research, that throughout the generations since, many of the women who married into the family were of Welsh/Briton, Scots, or Norman/Norman-Breton families, well into our migration to the Americas. This was even transmitted orally until my time, the old "were actually welsh" type comments still being made in my great grandparents generation. Though any google search would tell you our name and history and culture is English, I've seen far too much evidence that my family retained Brythonnic language and culture into the Norman English era, perhaps well beyond that in the Americas with fewer and fewer linguistic elements retained. Nonetheless, I am more and more fascinated to think and wonder what those centuries of life looked like in the bog lands of Britain, for those Britons who stayed in their ancestral lands long after they were written out of the story of modern England. What drove them and their survival in the changing cultural landscape? Was there an idea of Celtic identity or culture which contributed to that? If so, did it have any direct influence on why they left for the British colonies later on?
Moss is a very common place name in and around the North West, where it was used for basically for any boggy peaty land, often on high ground (in and around the moors of the Pennines). It's a common surname for people in the area because they were named after the places they lived.
Due to our locaton on the marches I know one or two my Ancestors were Angles. Titta was the name and I believe he founded Titley and Tittenley. But they intermarried with the local Welsh. In fact although am born in England I have at least 8 Welsh names on both Sides. Strangely after thinking my Dads side more English turns out his side show a very mixed heritage. Being from Shropshire and villages a walk from the border, not surprising maybe! I am going to study the border towns more and need to track down where in Wales we were from (closest villages are Titley and Melverly).
Just look at the place names in the North of England; Pen y Ghent, Penines, Helfellyn, and Derwent which is derived from Derwen which is Welsh for Oak.
Any place name with Coome ( Cwm, Valley) or even Morecambe perhaps (mor = sea and cambe = valley? ). Cumbria is littered with Welsh sounding place names as your examples Howard. Thinking about it though Cumbria - Cymru, similar? I'm not an academic but I find this whole subject very interesting.
@@eamonnclabby7067 ah yes Darwin, live near there near where my family originated from there (by a couple towns away) , they had brythonic celt origins.
Thanks for letting me onto this site. I am fascinated by this subject and though I am certainly no expert I find it all so Interesting. There is (in reference to your film) a street in Cardiff called HAVELOCK street- maybe even influenced by the fellow mentioned in your film? Things start falling into places such as, Cardiff and Carmarthen, Carnaerfon etc. where they grew from castles or forts as in 'CAR' and still you have places like Carlisle up there many many miles away in Northern England . Then again, we have the Welsh word for bridge as in ''Pont' as in Pontypool,Pontypridd and similar in Yorkshire IE: Pontefract, etc.There is also , 'Aber' as in 'mouth of' with Aberdeen in Scotland and Aberdare in Wales being prime examples. Bangor in Ireland and also North Wales -where there is also Conwy as seen in the Irish name Conway.. fascinating .Also the street that I grew up in was/is called Cambria road situated in ELY, Cardiff -another wee coincidence? Thanks again - diolch yn fawr ,..
On the edge of the London Borough of Bromley where I live is an area called Penge. This name turns out to be a corruption of Penceat which means "head of the wood" in Welsh. I wonder when Brythonic was last spoken in this area
Interesting items brought up in you video. Place name evidence in the area would seem to support the continued settlement, plenty of place names with the Wal prefix, Walsingham, Walsham etc and of course Kings Lynn, probably Llyn = Lake. Jim Storr has written an interesting book on this time period using a soldiers perspective and the numerous dykes peppering the Englosh landscape. So warfare may have had a central part in the evetual outcome. Like others I think the 6th century, volcanic/comet winter and Justinian plague had a central part in the takeover of Anglo-Saxon culture and the exodus of Britons to Brittany. Future videos on Mercia will be interesting, Malvern - Moelfryn and on the river Severn, just to the east, Rhydd (Ford) to this day.
Penda the last pagan King of Mercia was reputedly half Welsh...here on the Wirral peninsula we have half man half Biscuit...fellow Tranmere Rovers fans who have a sense of humour about our Hiberno Norse heritage 😅😅😅
As a Lynn boy thanks for that and makes so much senses with the Wash being similar to a sea lake. Is Lyng of Celtic origin I know it is an old word for Common? Used to live on Lyng Common Road, which can't say much about me Common Common Road !!!🤣
@@hobi1kenobi112 Grimsby FC ..Danish Vikings...Tranmere Rovers here on the wirral..Hiberno Norse Vikings, Wirral archeologists re examined the Viking longship underneath the Railway pub in Meols...😊😊
I think I remember reading a historian in a local paper claimed that the inhabitants of the village of Penn in South Buckinghamshire were speaking a language ‘like Welsh’ up until the early 19th century.
It would be interesting to find out how many English place names have a reference to Welsh inhabitants such as Walton, Wallasey ect,, there is even a village in South Yorkshire named Wales.
Very interesting video. I'm aware that Marie de France's "lais" as a sort of narrative poetry linked to French medieval literature are inspired (she mentions this repeatedly herself) from songs that she heard from the Britons. She had direct contact with these lost, non-written songs, suggesting that Britons, their culture or their language (she writes some titles of her lais in the Celtic language she had contact with) were still around at least till the 12th century. By the way! It's worth to mention the topic of the Celtic substratum in some sheep-counting system that some English farmers used till just some time ago. Something to think about.
It wouldn't apply to me entirely since Im American anyway with additional Welsh and Scottish ancestry, but to humor the argument of my general English ancestry, most of my ancestors come from Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford, and Gloucester, ancient Brythonic kingdoms adjacent to Wales like Pengwern, Glouvia and Luitcoyt would of inhabited here next to Wales and seasonal migrations likely would of occurred, with Welsh last names extremely common in English regions next to Wales, such as mine a Anglicized Welsh last name before moving to England, in the 2016 study Wales itself has 20% Anglo-Saxon dna as this evened out in Britain and western England is Anglicized Britons do to prevalence in Brythonic surnames and placenames, a minority in Eastern England but a staple in western England as late as the years of the Henn Ogledd. Infact the Normans had to settle Bretons in western England because Brythonic tongues were still spoken. The Scotsman Wallace last name meant Welshman which could be Wales or Norman Breton but could easily be Strathclyde Briton. The Cornish also still speak a Brythonic tongue. And Exeter had a Brythonic tongue in late middle ages. I also have kentish ancestry giving some Anglo-Saxon proper dna, While I took a dna test that breaks down clusters of ethnic nationality, if i or any Englishman in England's westernmost counties did a DNA test that calculates ancient genetic percentages of tribes instead of modern similar nationality clusters, many will be shocked to learn they're more Briton than Germanic let alone Anglo-Saxon. A few Englishman from Kent, Sussex or Yorkshire could reach 50% Germanic or more but it's rare. Not impossible to find but not impressively common. As we're Anglo-Saxon insofar to being a amalgamation of Angles, Saxons and Britons. And this isn't limited to indirect and direct maternal lines. Vestiges of the male line of the Celts exist in a good amount of Englishman. And before there's county confusion, Lancashire not Lincolnshire.
American here too, and some of my DNA shows as 34% English/Northwestern Europe. From my family tree, I have more recent ancestors from Kent and Jersey Island, which I think accounts for the NW Europe part. Maybe some Kent ancestors came from the Netherlands or Flanders?
Common Welsh surnames use the same patrimony system. Parry ( Ap Harry) Peirce ( Ap Rhys), Pugh( Ap Hugh) . It was later replaced with the S at the end of the name in the 17/18C . Hence the number of Jones(Johns son)Williams , Hughes, Griffiths etc. So you could have villages and towns with loads of people with the same surname but were not related. I was in a Welsh regiment and during roll call or to attract attention people were referred to by their Name e.g. Jones and tacked on the last 2 of their Army serial number. So the call out would be Jones42 , Evans16, Williams27.😲🤣. On a local level people simply referred to them by their profession “Jeff The Coal”, “Evan the Bread”. So the English attempt to simplify it for census and tax purposes simply ending up complicating it . So the locals simply reverted back to older times at a local level🤷🏻
Have you read the latest archaeo-genetics paper on this topic, from the Max Plank Institute, published in Nature last September (2022)? I will drop a link in a reply below. It is the first paper with a large enough ancient dna sample size to draw more solid conclusions. There are 460 medieval northwestern Europeans - including 278 individuals from England - in the data set. It suggests that modern English people are on average about 1/3 Brythonic, 1/3 Germanic (Angle, Saxon, etc.), and, interestingly, about 1/3 other European that seems to have trickled in over the last 1000 years or so. It ranges from about 40 or 45% Germanic in the East, to 20 or 25% in the West, iirc. It appears that what happened was, there was in fact a fairly large population replacement event in the East of England in the 5th and 6th Centuries, with the population in that area at that time being about 80% Germanic, 20% Brythonic (though of course, 20% is a long way from nothing). Then, with time, as the Anglo-Saxons moved West, they intermingled with Brythonic dna, and then, over time, there was a back flow of Brythonic dna from the West back to the East of England, giving us the modern situation, where people in the West of England are about 40% Brythonic and in the East about 30% Brythonic (those numbers might not be quite right, but it’s the gist of it). The wrench in the gears appears to be this 1/3 of our DNA that is neither Germanic nor Brythonic 😂
Thanks for the info; diolch yn fawr. I am a Welshman and I was commenting on the Cornish prefix of TRE -but it was heavily censored by RUclips for some unknown reason. So Interesting though as I was born in Tremorfa in Cardiff,another place starting with TRE and there is also Treherbert, Treforest, Treorchy,etc. in Wales. As an aside, I never realised just how close we were to the Cornish people until I saw the late, great, and very funny Jethro, live in concert at the St Davids Hall about 12 years ago. He was a wonderful man Jethro, and he gave us all a brief history of Cornwall or KERNOW. So proud he was. as he stood in front of his Kernow flag, which is similar to the Cross of St David. The Cornish anthem sounds like the Welsh anthem as well.. Lovely people -very humble and unpretentious, just like the Welsh . God bless you Jethro from a fellow Celt x Cymru am Byth and of course Kernow am byth .. diolch x
Have you ever considered doing a video about your background/who you are, why the dragon you use in your profile picture is green, and more information of the selection of the name “Cambrian Chronicles”!? That is a video I would LOVE to see! Also I am a massive fan. Your videos are never short of excellent! I wait with excited anticipation for everyone of them!
Thank you, that's very kind of you! I might do one day, a Q&A would be interesting but they generally seem to be not super popular, perhaps when my channel is a bit bigger! I can answer those two questions briefly though if you'd like: The "Cambrian Chronicles" is an old-fashioned translation of the 'Annales Cambriae', I encountered the name and thought it sounded cool, so I used it! There was also a second reason which ties into the next one. The dragon is green/blue (I call it blue, but plenty have called it green) simply because I like the colour, but also because I didn't want the channel to be "too Welsh" so to speak, as I thought that'd be gimmicking, or cheesy, and might alienate people interested in broader Brythonic history (like this video). Hence also why I didn't use "Wales" anywhere in my name.
@@CambrianChronicles wow thank you so much for taking the time to answer those questions! I love the concepts behind both - so so cool! Your channel is genuinely one of my favorites of all time! Your content and style is impeccable! You have a fan for life in me
This is very interesting and super cool to learn about, though I would take the passage about wergild with a healthy pinch of salt, as the term wylisc in some context can also mean a slave, since the welsh were such a big source of slaves for anglo-saxons that in some manuscripts the term welsh is used to mean slave regardless of their actual ethnicity (just like how the word slav became the word slave). I think it makes more sense given that the other two categories given are about social status (rather than any ethnic connotation), so you'd know the wergild for a noble, a freeman and a slave. It doesn't disprove everything else in the video, I just wanted to bring this possible meaning to light.
@eamonnclabby7067 both names etymologically speaking, are old norse, most likely from ingamundrs settlement in 902AD. Due to their location and local history
I grew up in the fens, in ramsey specifically and found this video very interesting. I wonder if alot of fenland myths somehow relate to brythonic raiders. Although that seems unlikely given their relatively equitable status with most anglo-saxons.
I think I commented this from my old account also, but I want to ad a parallell from our common Germanic history. In Sweden (and Scandinavia as a whole) we used the Futhark Rune alphabet during our common history. While it became "extinct" in high society already during the 1000's, the last preserved rune carvings are from the late 1800's in Dalarna, central Sweden. It's an inscription with insignificant actual meaning, but carved by a milk maid. This shows that the common people through all of history have been the ones to actually preserve and cherish the ancient knowledge - in this case on how to use runes to communicate. We didn't get public schools until 1848 in Sweden, so knowledge of the runes were relegated to the lower classes for almost a thousand years after they fell out of fashion with the rulers of our country. This is an amazing feat and I really want to emphasize how much I love this often forgotten but oh so valuable contribution from the people that actually counts.
The place name "Glendale" has a Keltic root (glen) and a Germanic root (dale), both meaning "valley". "Chetwood" likewise has 2 roots both meaning "wood". Keltic usages of "mom and dad" instead of "mama and papa", plus English is "softened" - less strong consonants - fowl instead of vogel, etc.
Would love to see a similar video on the Strathclyde Welsh that Scottish history usually ignores. We can be reasonably sure William Wallace's family still had northern Brythonic speakers within living memory (hence the surname. "The Welsh") though whether it survived till His time, I don't know if anyone has evidence. For parts of Scottish history, the heir was given the overlordship of the "Britons" the remains of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, to rule, (I suppose not unlike the English "Prince of Wales") and several coup attempts were made by various heirs using forces raised there. But aside from those titbits of information, I know very little of how long Brythonic (or a recognisable Northern Welsh identity) survived up here.
10:35 I've always known of the place as _Slepe_ (pronounced Sleep - have I been mispronouncing it?) since moving there in '68. Our telephone number was Slepe . I went to school at Ramsey - in the remnants of the old abbey, and the picture at 10:51 does not reflect the flat landscape there.
I'm probably saying it wrong most likely, the source that mentioned it was from 1911 and said it was "slaep", no doubt it's changed since then (or that they just got it wrong in the first place). And yes the landscape has changed quite a lot, the Fens were drained in the 17th century I believe
@@CambrianChronicles The fens were drained, but that did not change the land hegiht. Actually - that's not completely true. The Holme Fen Posts show considerable shrinkage of drained areas.
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Thanks for watching, here’s to making more backups of my videos in the future to stop a chunk of it from corrupting again.
Would it be Possible that the later uses of “Britons” in the sources (esp the danish one) refers to Anglo-Saxons? After all they were living in Britain and the place could be used to define the people.
Keep up the good work. Do you plan to do any videos about the Celts in Ireland by any chance?
@@quimbey14 Definitely!
FEWER grave goods, not less...
@@CambrianChronicles
Nowadays most whites kids in London speak English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect which is very different from the anglo saxon dialect of English which is spoken in this t.v programme by this presenter.
In the early 2000's, young white kids on council estates in London became JAMAICANISED.
This is when they starting speaking with English with a hybrid Jamaican dialect.
For example, Essex county is the only place in Britain where the cockney dialect/and or accent is still spoken.
Recent discoveries have shown that Cornish was still spoken amongst some folk into the early 1900's when the 'revival' of the language started. Indeed I can remember my great grandmother talking to her brother in a mixture of Cornish and English in the 1970's. Neither were revivalists, both born in the 1890's.
I've heard plenty of rumours, and I wouldn't be surprised at it's survival, but the sources I've used still point to an extinction at some point, as does UNESCO (which changed it's ruling on Manx after protests from Manx speakers who had just been claimed to not exist!), if you have links to the discoveries I'd love to see them, it'd make a cool video as well!
@@CambrianChronicles I can't furnish links as the historian currently working on this hasn't published anything. But a lot of people including an MP have come forward saying they have heard or known of people that predate the revival speaking Cornish.
The dialect I spoke as a child contained as many nouns and even verbs in Cornish as English, and I'll still use some now (even though I'm in 'England'), because I can't think of the English word straight away.
The late Cornish historian Craig Weatherhill once told me Cornish was spoken in the South Hams of Devon well into the 13th century, this peaked my interest into Dartmoor and West Devon where there is fairly good evidence the language survived until even later.
@@rialobran Are these dialect words/phrases being mined for modern Cornish or are they already known?
@@damionkeeling3103 I have no idea to be perfectly honest, I should imagine some may have been.
@Enuff947 Tre - is a farmstead or home although it can also be a village.
Rank - possibly the owners name
Genetic evidence shows that the majority of English people are only 25% Anglo-Saxon or less. Most were Britons who were assimilated in the same way most turks in turkey were formerly Greeks who were assimilated.
Not always.
English dna in parts of Eastern England can Max 47% Anglo-Saxon and a additional 5% Swedish possibly Wulfingas Geat dna in Eastern England.
Based on a September 2022 study.
This is a sometimes not always premise.
As for Turkish dna that gets more complicated.
Ethnic Turks or Turkish citizens in general regardless of self identification?
Let’s see where this thread goes
Women are normally kept by invaders
yeah but if the english aren't anglo-saxon because they're a minority anglo-saxon in blood, the welsh and others aren't celtic because they're sub-5% celtic in blood, as celtic culture originated in the halstatt culture of central europe. fair?
There was a 2022 study that showed a much higher Anglo-Saxon percentage in the English population. One of the authors confidently asserted that as a result of their study, the mass migration of the Anglo Saxons can no longer be questioned
We can use Irish as as example of what can happen to a language, the English didn't arrive in huge numbers to Ireland, but now the vast majority of human interactions there are done in English. It took no population replacement to replace the language.
English itself could have been obliterated by the arrival of the Norman French onto British shores. For hundreds of years French and Latin were the de facto languages of our courts and high society. One can assume only by sheer weight of numbers did the established English survive, due to it being the common language of the majority poorer classes and serfs to Norman households. Eventual intermarrying over time meant English edged out Norman French and Latin but with their vocabularic infusion. In a similar way English prevails in Ireland but with a uniquely Irish twist.
No it just took Tyranny to replace the language. The English litterally banned the teaching of the Gaelic language. Gaelic speakers were prevented from getting an education. They were discriminated in all spheres of life.
@@occidentadvocate.9759 judging by the proliferation of Feis, Highland gatherings and Eistedfods, the English failed....slainte...E😊
It took massive scale legal repression, the closing down of ancient schools with the oldest continuous Latin education on earth and generally horrific colonial violence and persecution actually. But yeah I see your point.
@@eamonnclabby7067 Scots gaelic is a colonial language in Scotland. And the Isle of man. The Irish themselves were the colonists in these areas. The Scots should be speaking Pictish where they instead speak Gaelic.
As someone from Grimsby you are correct that it is a terrible fate
@Connor-wv9pj Really that bad? Surely not, please explain.
Could of been worse, they could of landed at Scunthorpe, since at that time the Carrs and Fens of the area would not have been drained
As a meggy living in GY i concur. But at least we can cry into our beer down the Barge ;)
@@freakbrunny I am actually from Cleethorpes but thought it would just confuse people on here!
Makes me wonder what the founders of Grimsby Ontario were smoking when they named their town. Surely they must have been gleeful to have an ocean between them and the original Grimsby, but I guess not
as someone who lives and grew up in Ely. There are fairly well known stories of the fen tigers. which are stories of the indigenous native peoples whom lived on islands in the fen. And is kind of accepted that the fen was one of the last strongholds of the Britons, due to its natural difficulty to navigate and it’s dangers, until it was drained. It’s why I think our local fen accent is unusual and so similar to one’s found in Cornwall or the West Country. It’s so cool someone shining a light on my local history that im so fascinated by. Thank you! I often discuss our local history and theories with my father and there is still so much to be discovered here.
I'm sure Hereward The Wake also held oiut in the fens against the French Normans. It must have been an amazing place to live. Plenty of eels for dinner!
Wow I love that!
Yes. I absolutely agree.
I'm often struck by the similarity in the accent of the west and east. Both these regions were relatively cut off and isolated.
Whether it be Hereward the Wake or Alfred in Altheney.
But I'm also struck by a black country accent ( not B'ham) and somerset. There are faint echoes of similarity .
Kings Lynn, Welsh Llyn
@@gar6446 It's just a southern English accent before the influence of the London accents. Proper Kent and Sussex accents are similar though dying a quick death because of the East London exodus and the received pronunciation of London middle class spreading their accents through the South East
there is an area in west yorkshire where several villages are called "-- in Elmet', and they are named after a supposed celtic kingdom which survived in west yorkshire when all around was settled by Anglo Saxons
The DNA map of the British Isles bears this out ,West Yorkshire ,Lancashire and Cumbria are the homeland of present day Brigantes, although the parish records of Deane church in Bolton, ( excellent and online) charts the arrival of the Angles in East Lancashire...fascinating stuff..
Elmet was the last Celtic kingdom in England, stretching from the Leeds area west into the Pennines, surviving in some form until around 600ad, and the village of Walsden on the Lancashire/Yorkshire border between Rochdale and Todmorden has been interpreted as the Saxon "Waelisch dene" or "Valley of the Celts".
Given that the western edge of Elmet was steep sided hills with boggy valley bottoms it's not good farming land, so not very accessible or attractive to Saxon farmers, and it's conceivable that Walsden was a last Celtic stronghold.
I've heard of this from a Yorkshire dialect perspective.This is why West Riding dialects differ so greatly from East and North Riding dialects.
@@Kevin-mx1vi I'm pretty sure Cornwall was the last Briton kingdom in England, but Rheged also outlived Elmet.
@@veila0924 That's interesting, but are we talking about these areas surviving as purely Celtic kingdoms (that is; _ruled_ by Celts) or as kingdoms ruled by some other group ?
Anyway, I have to admit that I accepted the word of Ted Hughes (who by coincidence my mum had known since being young) and his research about Elmet for his 1979 book "Remains of Elmet", so I'm happy to be corrected.
It was a really nice touch using older (contemporary?) Maps as a background in this video. Even if they aren't as accurate they're a nice tone setter and it was fun looking at the place names of where I'm from and trying to see which towns and villages existed back then!
Thank you, I'm glad you like them! I love old maps so they're always fun to include.
Me too , don't know what map that is but my hometown is on it up in Norfolk.
@@PaulJohn01 Same county as me, what are the odds! Was looking along the north coast at Cromer and Cley.
@@joewalker4710 Hahaha i'm from Walsham but Cromer was my old stomping ground.
@@PaulJohn01 I love visiting old sites of shrines, like Walsingham, or Tryfynon/ Holywell..ot Saint Patrick's well here on the Wirral...😊
Fascinating. How good to hear this, a more reasoned and far less melodramatic version of history. That the Celts and Anglo-Saxons blended over time makes more sense than that there was constant warfare, though some degree of conflict was inevitable. Fine job, Cambrian Chronicles. Keep up the good (and rigorous) work.
That doesn't explain why there's virtually no Romano Celtic words of phrases in Old English though.
@lovablesnowman old English was a Germanic language with brythonic pronunciations. It was much softer and more sibilant than other Germanic and Nordic languages. spoken at the front of the mouth with much softer "th" sounds. When modern Germans hear old English, they can pick bits out as familiar but are completely baffled by other bits. It's a case of not really understanding how many brythonic languages there were in 5th century England.
As an English person with Celtic heritage, I've always found this extremely interesting. It's a shame how many people think the Anglo-Saxons completely wiped out all of the native Britons in a short space of time, which would've been impossible anyway. They lived alongside them or mixed with them, although admittedly there was a lot of murder and brutal oppression too. The more west you travel into England, the more Celtic roots you'll fine. I need to pick up Welsh again (I was learning it but got distracted by university) as part of my "journey" to bring it back to England lol. But in all seriousness, even looking at modern Welsh and place named in England is interesting. Welsh is a direct descendent of Common Brythonic and many place names in England come from that, which also explains how many places, even simple rivers, have names in Welsh too or at least originate from Brythonic. My hometown of Manchester is called Manceinion in Welsh and comes from a Brythonic word for the area.
A fellow Welsh-learning/Briton-appreciating Manc! Glad to know I'm not the only one
As a Liverpool fan, I can say with pretty high certainty that the Brythonic word means 'scum of the earth' 😉
They absolutely didn’t whipe out the Celtic people. But the Celtic Britonic culture and language was whiped out almost completely
@@sebe2255 no it wasnt. The Welsh and Cornish still speak Brythonic languages. Place names in England still have Brythonic names.
@@carlwoods4564 Place names are a bad indicator. Many places in the Americas have native place names, and the natives were actually whiped out as a people too in many parts. Place bames can linger long after the people who named the things have gone. The actual Old English language meanwhile had basically no influence from the Britonic languages.
And I was referring to England, not Wales. Wales is obviously the main part of the British Isles where the Britonic cultures remained alive. Hence why it is called Wales. And I said almost entirely in reference to England. Cornwall and Cumbria being some exceptions.
You might not like it for whatever reason but the Anglo-Saxons were very effective at destroying the Celtic culture and language of the natives they assimilated. And we will never why and how exactly this happened
As far as genetics is confirmed, at max, 52% of English dna is Germanic, which 47% traced to the Anglo-Saxons and 5% to the Swedes, possibly Wulfingas Geats.
And at common most for a population, 25% at the least Germanic in parts of England and 76% Germanic in the middle ages.
That means somewhere between 25-75% of English dna is Celtic, by the logic of the study mix of Brythonic or indigenous Bell-beaker Celts and French looking dna easily interpretable as Hallstatt continental Celtic dna that brought the culture over to Britain as well as later Gaulish French immigrants.
This is all a September 2022 study.
Conclusively lacks a 100% population displacement.
@@gnosticpygmy4417 I've met English and Teutonist supremacist online who still promote the complete Wipeout theory. This isn't a dead horse. Its an ongoing myth promoted by some Germanic supremacist in England and mainland Europe.
I can forgive a ignorant foreigner not from Europe assuming the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the Britons in England, but online you can see this dead horse isn't beaten to death by a straw but is still being ridden carrying the Germanic supremacist nazi who claims the Anglo-Saxons killed all Britons 100% for Germanic purity.
I'm not claiming every Germanic person is a Nazi when saying 100% of Britons were wiped out.
I am saying, these instances can be seen online.
I'm familiar with that paper but the result is not quite what you're presenting here.
From the section on supervised admixture in the supplementary materials: We estimate an average of 6% Norse Ancestry in present-day England, with peaks in Cumbria, Northeast England, and East Anglia and lower proportions in western and southwestern England (e.g. Cornwall, Sussex, Herefordshire, Forest of Dean)(supp. Fig. 6.3b, Supp. Table 6.7-8), which is close to previous estimates based on ancient DNA.
Correspondingly, the overall fraction of CNE ancestry in England was reduced by inclusion of the fourth source population to 32.7% (WBI=36.4%, CWE=24.9%)
Factoring in for Norse ancestry brings the average figure of 40% down slightly to 38.7% but the more relevant point is that the paper's Germanic ancestry proportions are not increased by factoring in for Norse ancestry. There is no place in England where people are majority Germanic.
@@BronzeAgeCelt I missed the Norse section. I was focused on the 5.2% Swedish though not the 6% Norwegian.
Did they date this to the Viking age or the Anglo-Saxon period? Cause I thought this covers the early Anglo-Saxon period only if memory served,
There's no reason to believe Scandinavians from prior to the Viking age weren't present.
@@BronzeAgeCelt I've read the article once and I mostly got my information from Thomas Rousall from survive the Jive
@@BronzeAgeCelt I personally can't/cannot claim a strong Germanic heritage myself.
I call myself Anglo-Saxon do to culture and English ethnicity but most my English ancestors being from western English counties were most certainly Britons not Germanic.
I have some Saxon and Scandinavian blood but I myself am probably a briton largely genetically. Not including my additional non English ancestry in the British isles.
But hey. My opinion doesn't matter I'm American not a UK citizen.
They’ve calculated from Domesday Book that the number of Norman households moving to England after 1066 was about 4000. Say five per household and you have about 20,000. Some were of course elderly parents, some monks. But the population of England then was about a million and 20k is just 2%. So to change a language you don’t need number, you need power.
Precisely! Thank you for those numbers
@@CambrianChronicles What? How could you possibly calculate that from the Domesday Book? Seeing it was written shortly after the Norman Invasion? You know that it was a snapshot of Anglo-Saxon England for the benefit of the new Norman rulers and couldn't possibly list all Norman migration as it happened later. Others have figures of over one hundred thousand Norman colonialists.
Yes. This means control of schools and universities/ writing. That's how Irish was replaced.
Land in England was over 80% owned by 1066 families into the 1970s.
@@casteretpollux There were no universities in 1066. The first, the University of Paris, was later. Why would the Normans have wanted to destroy Irish? Keep them ignorant and powerless would be a better tactic. The greatest loss of Irish happened after 1923. There is a meeting between JM Synge and an old Irishman in Connemara, mending a fishing net. Synge hails him in Irish and the old man replies in English. Synge learns that because the old man spoke English, he’d had a long and fulfilling career in Canada and the US, travelling the world. And where would I have been if I didn’t speak English , the old man asks? Right here! It was his cultural choice.
Great video! I've always found it implausible that the Britons would have just disappeared in such a short space of time after the Anglo-Saxons coming over.
History was written by the upper class. We really don't know anything about the other 99.9% of people, we only have the often untrustworthy words of the very few wealthy and literate to work from. Assuming that the Britons would've eventually found themselves mostly relegated to second class citizens, after the conquests I could see them living "off the books" for centuries in pockets and small villages. Only sometimes interacting with a person of high status, and rarely written about.
@Welcome to the Monkey Ape Zone yeah I can see that too. This video also got me wondering, if you were to dna most of the lower class and poorer members of Britain if they would show up as majority ancient British dna. Because people of poverty very rarely make it out of poverty, so is it an inherited thing from generations ago.
@@mrwelshmun Was wondering the same thing. Because on the other end it certainly seems to be true, especially for England: apparently the ruling class is still largely made up of the direct descendants of Old William the C and his cronies
The average English person is 64% celtic according to an oxford university study. Anglos really destroyed the English identifying with their celtic roots. It makes more sense to call them "anglo-celts"
Yes the woman were spared and then speared
There was a similar phenomenon on the Flemish coastal areas in Belgium, on the other side of the Channel. Dutch historian and linguist Lauran Toorians has demonstrated that a coastal Brythonic language existed there up until the 4th-5th century AD, when the region was already thoroughly Germanic for 3 centuries with the establishment of the Franks. It is likely linked to the seafaring Belgic tribes of an earlier time (Menapii and Morini, Atlantic Celts like the Britons) that lived there on the arrival of Caesar in the 1st century BC. In those days the Flemish coastline was notorious for their pirate dens, both native and from neighbouring Germanic tribes, notably the Saxons. In fact the names of coastal settlements Koksijde (-yde small harbour, Koks- of the Chauci), Lombardsijde (of the Longobardi) and Walravensijde (of the "foreign raven") point back to that era of local history.
Hi, I am exactly from that region. Do you have any links to studies or books regarding this?
@@CnockCnockyes, there is a 145 page monograph "Keltisch en Germaans in de Nederlanden: taal in Nederland en België gedurende de Late Ijzertijd en de Romeinse Periode" L. Toorians, Mémoires de la Société Belge d'Études Celtiques, nr. 13 (2000)
Very interesting, will check that out. Thanks!@@bromisovalum8417
is this why some belgian towns have celtic sounding names like ghent, possibly originating from gwent?
Absolutely fascinating, thanks for this video. I've often considered that it was the Normans who gave Wales such grief, not the Anglo Saxons. No wonder that so many English people love to learn Welsh and Cornish these days - it is, after all, part of their heritage. Wonderful stuff !
Have you ever heard of Offa's Dyke? Offa was King of Mercia in the 8th century when the kingdom was at the height of its power and dominated the land. He also raided Wales which added to Mercia's vast riches. He ended up building a very long wall of raised embankment on the West Mercian border to stop the Welsh from raiding into Mercia. You can actually visit Offa's dyke today and walk across the entire thing.
However it's worth noting that they weren't always at war and sometimes fought together like the Battle of Hatfield chase when Edwin of Northumbria was killed and defeated by an allegiance of Mercian and Welsh armies.
Another excellent treatment of this topic! I imagine the language would also have lasted longest in more isolated communities (e.g. the fens) where there was less regular contact with the Anglo-Saxon elite and growing majority. As cities and towns became more English, nearby villages may have done so as well, but those villages less connected would not have as much. These areas might have been patchworks of surviving Celtic communities and more Anglicised ones.
It reminds me of how French died out in most of Louisiana except, for a long time, amongst the Cajuns who had settled in the swamps. Also, as an Anglo-Quebecer, it reminds me of the many isolated Anglophone communities in Quebec interspersed amongst French ones. The situation here is different since these communities tend to be later than the French ones, but it makes a similar patchwork where you sometimes find an Anglo town settled by Scottish lumberjacks in the 1800s surrounded by primarily French towns. Incidentally, a lot of these small Anglo communities are becoming more French as they become more connected to bigger French towns (although Quebec's language policies also have an affect on this).
Thank you, and yes I agree, geographical separation certainly would've played a big role! The Cajun and Quebec examples are super interesting too, so thank you for that. It's interesting how you could compare them to the Britons here too, like the communities in the Fens, or in the Anglo-Saxon (and later Norman-settled Flemish or English) towns that developed near, or in Wales, surrounded by Welsh speaking communities.
In the 1970s in the UK the culture and accents changed every 30 miles or so once you got out of the south East of the country. When my grandfather was talking to his friends I couldn't understand what they were saying. We lived about 35 miles north and east of him so much of the slang I used was different. You sort of had an accepted universal English and a local version that usually sounded more archaic than the universal version. This must have been quite a stark difference back when there were actual different tribes of people though I get an impression local dialects denoted your belonging to an area more than a tribe.
@@CambrianChronicles dialectics are fascinating, the Welsh influence on Merseyside is often overlooked, the FAB 4 all had Irish roots for example although as already mentioned ,John Lennon was reputedly a descendant of Owain Glyndwr, back to the accents though, the Scousers accent only slightly varied from the Clwyd one ..where a lot of folk still commute fo Merseyside as they have done for generations..😊
My grandad has what is known as the fenland drawl, I thought he was American till I was about 10. Now people think I'm American. Accents and dialects a fascinating beast.
In England, most surnames and place-names are Anglo-Saxon. The laws, culture, currency (£), monarchy, all Anglo-Saxon heritage. I call myself Anglo-Celtic
The first “Saxon” kings of Wessex (Cerdic, Cynric, Ceawlin) had suspiciously Brythonic sounding names. I think the people integrated and carried names and blood into what became the English
The English are what they are literally a " Bastard " Nation to give it its true meaning, on Saturday you will have a new King, he will swear that his lineage goes back to Caedwallon and Arthyr why because they can then say that they have a line to the Brythonic Kings of the 5th and 6th Centuries. Plantagenets did the same. Tudors and Stuarts did not have to, their line was already there.
Cerdic - Ceredig(Garadog)
Ceawlin - Cynfelyn
We English are Anglo-Celtic. Our germanic forefathers married British women. English dna = Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Norse/Iberian/Roman
@@GerMFnU1848Sax it’s more complex than that. The movement of Germanic tribes to England has for a long time been viewed as a conquest. Evidence suggests it was more complicated. Saxon mercenaries were employed, but with the departure of the romans, there was a huge skills shortage. It seems Saxon families migrated mostly to farm land as the Romano British were set up to focus on specific tasks. So it may also have been British men marrying Saxon women
It’s true, Cerdic is believed to be of Celtic origin, meaning he was either fully or more likely half-Celtic himself, giving even more evidence of integration.
There's a Havelock Street in Cardiff, where I was born and a place called Havelock an hour's drive from where I now reside in Nova Scotia. Old Havelok must've been quite an influence.
I’m from Hull and I was learning more about my Scottish side and Celtic culture so it’s really cool learning that Hull was/is Celtic too
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this one, ( I haven't seen the video before posting this) but the Brythonic kingdom of Strathclyde which survived until the 1030s aka 11th century, ruled also the area of what is today Cumbria, of which today this region is inside of England. Therefore doesn't that mean that a substantial population of Britons or at least Brythonic-influenced people in Northern England itself, still spoke this celtic language which before that existed on a wider scale in England, well into the 11th century??
The DNA map of the British Isles would bear this out, Robert the Bruce was as much Gaelic and Brythonic as he was Anglo Norman....E...
But the Lake District had already been under AS rule. When the Vikings smashed Northumbria in the 850s, Strathclyde took it back. The life of St Cuthbert has him visiting Carlisle in 685 at the invitation of the queen, where he saw a Roman fountain still working.
@@eamonnclabby7067 Robert was born in Essex, just outside Chelmsford in the village of Writtle.
@@Joanna-il2ur indeed, but it appears he went native, or Brythonic, or Scots..? fascinating all the same...these Essex boys get everywhere..😅😅
Alistair Moffat, a Scottish writer, writes interesting books on Celtic history and Brythonic language
I once worked for a company in South Cambridgeshire. One day, I overheard two female colleagues saying (of some forgotten problem of that day) “it’s just like when the Saxons came up the rivers”. Maybe it’s a tiny fragment of Brythonic culture surviving to the present day?
That's an interesting titbit. Thanks for sharing
Absolutely 0% chance. They were probably referencing some shared joke about their knowledge of history rather than a folk memory.
@@Htrac Please stop being such a loser, thanks.
Must be in the famous flying pig
@@Htrac let us enjoy this bit of info in peace lol
It can be so valuable to simply take primary sources at their word! It opens so many more possibilities to understanding history.
That was absolutely brilliant. I've been theorising along these lines about Brythonic people for some time now. In my Essex village, we have one Brythonic word still as in 'Pan Lane'. 'Pan' means a basin/hollow/valley and indeed Pan Lane does lead down to
a valley.
Indeed - Pant y celyn, Pant Glas, Blaen Pant, for example
I love this channel mate. You’re doing a fantastic job! Thank you for all your hard work in producing this great content for us all ❤
Thank you, I really appreciate that!
Totally agree with you on this...😊
I'm from Devon, born and mostly raised, and identify myself as an English Briton of mixed Anglo-Cornish descent (with some Welsh thrown in and, going back far enough, a little Gaelic too) I can speak a few words of Welsh... no Cornish or "Dumnonian" though, sadly.
The Celtic people of England definitely *were not* replaced wholesale; we just adopted the language and culture of the new lords... three times over the last couple thousand years! The Romans knew well enough how to absorb conquered peoples and did pretty comprehensive job of it about as far as their roads reached, the Saxons didn't manage it quite so well and the less said about Norman influence the better. Then again, those secondhand Vikings didn't really set out to replace the natives, they just wanted to live in the castles and take all the money, which they DID achieve pretty handily as well.
This shouldn't apply to me since I'm American but speaking for myself in the ancestral perspective most of my ancestors come from the regions called Luitcoyt, Rheged and Glouvia regions of western England. Modern Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Gloucester etc.
You want genetically 50%+ Germanic people go to East Anglia, Kent, Essex region.
We're basically Britons who's Anglo-Saxon dna comes in touches.
Plus additional Welsh last name Pritchett I have.
@@noahtylerpritchett2682 I think it applies pretty well to you actually, given the linguistic and ethnic context of the USA. I don't suppose your earliest recorded ancestors were miners, stonecutters or masons at all? A LOT of "Anglo-Celts" (along with all sorts of Gaels) emigrated to the new world and southern pacific regions during the rise of the Empire.
@@MrMortull I can trace 3000 ancestors multiple many centuries back largely into a variety knights, nobles and aristocrats.
Other genealogy of civilians exist. Of course.
Same here. From Texas though. My ancestors are from Cornwall and England. I am Anglo-Celtic
It's worth noting that Cumbrian was likely spoken by hill farming communities in that area until the 19th C.
Now it wasn't
Now now
You mean Cumbric - that is the name of that possible Brythonic language, while Cumbrian refers to the North Anglic dialect spoken there today.
You’re just wrong there
@@alexmason5521cope
Yet another very interesting video. Thanks for all the work you put in - diolch yn fawr iawn!
Really interesting video!
Sad in a way but history often is. I'm glad that we are delving into our collective history and that it's not been abandoned.
Manchester was originally called Mamucium, a Latin form of the original (lost) Brittonic Celtic name meaning mother and/or breast (related to a “breast-shaped hill” in the area and possibly a local river goddess). The suffix Chester comes from Latin meaning fort.
Ha! I'm just now realizing chester and castrum / castro are related. In northern Portugal, one can still find plenty of castra remnants where Celts settled and came to resist roman incursions later on. Fascinating!
@@renatopinto3186 Yes, I believe the Welsh have connections in Galicia.
Never got onto that about Manchester. Love it!
Manceinion in Welsh.
Many place names here we claim to be Latin or Anglo-Saxon were actually Celtic originally. Even London, ironically, is probably from a Celtic name for the area. It's sad though because it shows how much the Celts were truly oppressed, which is true. The fact that we're taught Manchester comes from Latin shows this when in fact it came from a "Latin" word BORROWED from Common Brythonic.
I grew up in Crowland and was told the story of St Guthlac when I was much younger. Stumbling across on this video really brought things back for me. Never thought the Celtic connection was so strong
Loved this one! As someone who grew up in Cambs/the Fens and went to school at the Ramsey Abbey mentioned, was really fascinating.
I’ve seen a Time Team documentary about a village in Yorkshire from the time of the Saxon migrations, which concluded there was no large-scale conquest in the area. It suggested a much more gradual, if still very large migration of Germanic populations to Britain. That lines up very well with the evidence presented here.
Thank you, Yorkshire is super interesting because it also contains the farms that I mentioned (where there's no evidence of any land change, again suggesting a gradual migration). There's also I site somewhere in the north that is theorised to have been occupied by some sort of local ruler, that also doesn't show any major signs of change when the Saxons arrived.
@@CambrianChronicles just returned from deepest Yorkshire, you are right , a much more nuanced story than people realise...😊
This may be West Heslerton, which had a ‘ladder’ formation, ever adding new bits on to one end. Dominic Powlsland (excuse spelling of his name) had been digging it up and writing about it for decades.
@@Joanna-il2ur spot on...😊❤❤
Some of Yorkshire was under the British kingdom of Elmet until around 610AD I think. There is still a few place names with links to Britons and two that have “elmet” in their name such as Barrick-in-Elmet and Sherbun-in-Elmet
Wake up babe, new Cambrian Chronicles video just dropped
the low prestige one is interesting, you can observe the same in China with Chinese where people claim to be fully Han, because the other are seen as inferior. It also influenced historiography for example the Hakka was seen for a long time as completely Han descended, but more modern research in both language and genetics showed that they intermingled with the local tribes and people, creating a mixed people.
Excellent point and backs up my suspicions about Britain!
Hans were actually always governed by others, Mongols, Manchus ...
@@nathan_408Let's look at the last four dynasties of Imperial China, from 960 to 1911, about 950 years: Song, Yuan, Ming, Qing. The two foreign dynasties, Yuan (Mongol) and Qing (Manchu) combined to rule for 350 years, while the native (Han) dynasties combined for 600 years. So not only not "always," not even most of the time.
@@drs-xj3pb Northern China has always been under foreign rule: Xianbei, Khitans, Jurchens, Mongols, Manchus.
I saved this vid in to my queue by reading only the title. At the end, when the red dragon of Cadwalleder appeared on screen, I was going to recommend a really good channel I'd just discovered here on YT, with an article on that very dragon but as I scrolled down to the comments section to leave my opinion I passed by this channel's name & realized.......
this channel was _the_ channel I was going to recommend!
Very interesting and well done video as always! I think people often see Britain as like one part anglo-saxon and the other part celtic but looking at history and ancestory it's certainly more of a mix. Always fun watching your videos tho man and as someone who is English but is very interested in celtic culture and history this is especially interesting!
Thank you, I agree people tend to see it too binary, I suppose that's because that's what the Victorians wanted English history to be, but also that it provides an easy and simple story.
@@CambrianChronicles Well thanks for showing a more accurate view very interesting indeed!
@@gerrardjones28 I think that the Anglo-Saxon-Celtic issue in England is more complex than thought. And likely more intertwined than we really know. Highlighted by this excellent video.
There's even a school of thought that the Saxons and Jute tribes were basically Celtic in their original origin, they just branched off and went a different way when other Celtic tribes maintained Celtism. Unverified but seems plausible.
@@hobi1kenobi112 Susan Oosthuezen alongside linguists on the continent actually believe Old English broke away from continental Germanic far earlier than previously believed.
No joke, many of her German colleagues stated that OE was as though people with accents were trying to pronounce Germanic words lol.
Your theory has more legs than you know!
@@jackwhitehead5233 seconded....
Great video. I was wondering where you were going with this but you came up with the explanation that I theorised. Gildas mentioned 5 kings and people wonder why those 5 kings in particular, I think it was never about them committing sins but more because they taxed the citizens of their Kingdoms to the ground. I reckon it’s because the Volcanic winter of 536 AD (which I hope you do a video of soon) affected the Island of Britain so much that these 5 kings just like the Anglo-Saxon leaders taxed these people more than say the other Kingdoms and thus why Gildas condemned them so much in his Ruin and Conquest of Britain.
Thank you! Gildas is super interesting, and indeed his particular choice for the five kings is quite interesting too, I'd love to cover him, and the 536 volcanic winter, sometime in the future.
@@CambrianChronicles that would indeed be very interesting...😊...E
It would also be interesting to cover the climatic variations. Romans enjoyed a relatively warm period. The time from 900AD to 1300AD was also warm. 400AD to 900AD was relatively cold compounded by the volcanic winter of 536.
Amazing video, thank you!
I would be thrilled if some day you could cover the history of Brittany and it's relation to this whole thing
Oui! Ce serait fort intéressant ! Mais très long!
Just to develop a little bit, I know you mention it sometimes, and I m glad.
In this video for example, the migration of the clergy class to the west and then across the sea to Brittany could have been an interesting point too.
It's hard to find ressources in french about it, I feel there was a lot more research done on the other side of the channel, and I m thankful you are sharing it with us. I think it is still a niche that is left to be filled on RUclips, and would be interesting for all your viewers.
@@mathieuleperson836 then there was Alan of Richmond, in the Pennines, installed by William the Conqueror 😊😊
Alan was a Breton, as apparently was my own 'Norman ' ancestor Ralph Grammaticus who took the name Featherstone after he married the Saxon/Danish lady of the Manor of Featherstone in Yorkshire. He was the boteiller or butler of the Norman Lord Ilbert de Lacy of Pontefract Castle.
It is interesting that some of the last Anglo-Saxon England's resistance to the Normans took place in the same Fenland under Hereward the Wake. Perhaps the impenetrability of the area made it conducive to hold-outs? It also implies that a separate English/British identity there may not have survived to 1066.
Wonderful video from one of my favourite channels. I’ve heard that the Cornish language survived in Devon as well as Cornwall for a while. If so how long did the Cornish language last in Devon before being erased from the area?
I'm not sure how long it lasted in Devon unfortunately, it was probably for a while after the area was conquered, like other parts of England, but I'm unsure of an exact estimate
I'd presume it would have been similar to the other areas mentioned here continuing at least partially until the 11th century; Loose evidence/Records seems to indicate that potentially Anglo-saxon rule had taken over devon around ~700ad, however this may have been reclaimed with mentions of the britons causing the destructions of a castle in taunton. Some sources seemed to presumed that a kind of peace/truce would have lasted until ~800ad. In that time it would prob make sense that whilst in briton rule it may still have had anglo-saxon migration occurring into the area. One thing of note is that Devon does retain quite a lot of Celtic placenames, though quite a few are anglicised. Also referring to this video regarding language class; once devon had transitioned from speaking predominately brythonic they would have actually considered their neighbours in the same way as outsiders or slightly lower class. Though this could all be incorrect :D This is just based on trying to read up various other historians on devonian history; quite often with conflicting ideas.
@@CambrianChronicles Apparently there was one little corner in South Hams during and beyond the reign of Edward the First. That they probably traded with people in Brittany is why their language lasted longer.
I went to college in Exeter and heard that there once was a British quarter there. Also that Bristol gets its name from Bristow, meaning the British enclosure and there were Brythonic speakers in the marshes of Athenley in King Alfred's time and they helped him hide until he was ready to face the Vikings in battle. So the woman whose cakes he burnt will have been a Briton!
Genuinely excellent video, a mature, academic approach with a well reasoned and evidenced conclusion
Great video. Just as the Celts didnt disappear during the Roman occupation, they didn't during the Saxon occupation either, or even the Norman conquest. These invaders were always in the minority, and ordinary country folk just ignored them. It makes sense that the Celtic spreakers would be driven to the least hospitable places like swamps. We know the ancient Brittonic language split into Cumbric, Manx, Welsh, and Cornish around 550AD. If we imagine that these languages existed up to modern times, there is an argument that Celtic language never died, and is still with is.
There may have been a Brythonic Manx but the Irish took over the island during the early middle ages and modern Manx is derived from middle Irish as is Irish and Gaelic.
We don't have to imagine it. Welsh is alive and kicking.
They didnt just ignore them if they were driven into the swamps....
@@casteretpollux Indeed. I am a learner Welsh speaker ❤️😁
💯 We didn’t die genetically either 😁🙋🏼♀️☘️
What happened in Anglo-Saxon England kind of reminds me of what is happening to the Celts in France right now. Many Bretons have adopted the French language and culture because that is the language of prestige in France right now.
Whereas in the UK in part to devolution over recent decades there's been a resurgence of native languages in Wales/Scotland. Still a lot of regional accents are dying out though.
@@PaulJohn01 the Scousers accent ,here on Merseyside, a hybrid of Irish,Norse and Welsh ,with a smattering of English is still going strong, although the music metropolis of Merseyside aka Ukraine on the river mersey is assimilating Ukrainian as we speak..😊
English in Merseyside has evolved in its own direction now, all those Scots, Welsh and Irish, to say nothing of our Norwegian friends who donated Lobscouse to us...very similar to Irish stew..😊
As for Brittany, the Celtic language has been receding since the 5th century in eastern Brittany. But, the question is, was it Breton or Late Gaulish? There are many words in Breton that are obviously borrowed from Gaulish or Romano Gaulish.
In the last 70 years Breton has receded to the far west where there may be as few as 30,000 people (65 yrs +) who still speak it on a regular basis. The younger ones learn a phoney French version of it in schools which has nothing to do with traditional Breton.
Thats also why the English stumble over themselves to use French word like commence, instead of words like begin. It is still happening 900 years after the Norman conquest. Its the same phenomenon, just slower and more diluted.
Glad to see a new upload by you, thank you for the hugely interesting video!
I've also read and loved Dr Marc Morris' book, I definitely recommend it to everyone who's interested in the Anglo-Saxons.
As someone who frequently travels around the Therfield- Royston area , this has been very enlightening.
It's an absolutely fascinating topic, though it's a shame we have so little to go on. My family have always been Welsh, even going back to the Welsh Princes of the kingdoms of Gwynedd & Powys but it is really interesting to learn about Britons outside of Wales or Ireland.
John Lennon might be a distant relative, given his reputed links to Owain Glyndwr...😊😊
@@eamonnclabby7067 Really? I'd never heard that but it's a cool potential very distant relative to have. Thanks for sharing!
Irish people were Gaelic not Britons. The two groups are quite distinct from each other, even if they also had much in common.
Can you make a video on Merlin, his origin, if he was based on Myrrdin Walt and if Myrrdin/Merlin was a historical person or not?
Merlin, like 95% of the Arthur legend, is just a story. He was a mad man who ran into a forest.
@@lifeschool he pops up in a few tales of haunted wirral by ,Tom Sleman,
@@eamonnclabby7067 - :) I mean from contemporary sources from 400-800AD.
Always interesting to hear about Celtic tribes (and this is coming from a stay behind Saxon from Northwest Germany) and I'm curious about continental Celtic tribes and how they related and had contacts to the insular ones as well.
The Brythonic language did not have the Welsh 'll' [ɬ] sound. The description of Brythonic as "sibilant" is much more likely to refer to the high frequency of [s] in Brythonic as well as other fricatives like [θ ð x]. The fact that [ɬ] is found only in Welsh (and not Cornish, Breton, or Cumbric (as far as we know)) means the earliest it could have developed was in the Old Welsh period (800AD-early 12th Century).
This is very true!
True. And furthermore, Old English DID have it - spelt 'lh'
@@worship-under-edge7992 No. Old English had a voiceless L which was only an allophone of /l/ found after /h/ (which would have been realised as [x]). It was written not , e.g. hlāf [(x)l̥ɑːf] 'loaf'. It was never pronounced as [ɬ].
@@entwistlefromthewho That's interesting! It's not whatI was taught - er - rather a long time ago, but scholarship moves on, obviously. Does that apply to all the A-S 'digraphs' - hw, sc, etc - that they were actually consonant clusters, and not conventional spellings of non-latin sounds? (And what was I thinking of! lh indeed!)
Icelandic had the sound in the greeting seall.
Linguistics, history, sociology, genealogy - thank you so much for this fantastic story, man ❤️
The Anglo-Saxons migration to Britain resembles analogous to Arab migrations. Where massacres sometimes occur and conquests definitely occur but without the displacement of a local population. That's my analogy.
Take Southern Mesopotamia and Jordan, Arab colonization amounts to a few slaughters but largely the Arab migrants assimilated rather than eliminated the local Chaldean and Canaanite/Edomite population.
Likewise in England a few massacres would mean not much as it's still not a full-scale genocide. The colonization was strongly restricted to the coast while Anglo-Saxon conquerors massacred some settlements but largely assimilated the populace.
Meaning there wasn't a pure 100% genetic replacement.
Any massacre that would occur was on the basis of clan or tribe of Britons, and not a blanket Lebensraum type genocide of Britons by the Anglo-Saxons,
Similar to how a few Chaldean clans and Canaanite clans in Jordan and Southern Iraq got their tribes killed off but the Arabs didn't blanket slaughter the ethnicity. Rather leaving the conquered tribes alone.
You can see this plainly in terms of phenotypes in the middle east especially. While Assyrians as an independent cultural group in Iraq might be a tiny minority, the local "Sunni Arabs" in the same area are nearly indistinguishable from them.
@@vespiary2066 I used to have a Shia ex from Baghdad. She resembles Assyrian or Babylonian ethnics or even Mizrahim Levantine Jews easily but she looks nothing Arabic from the peninsula. The closest could be Tamini or Shammari two very light skin hazel eyed Arab tribes from the peninsula.
a massacre of britons is recorded in my town
@@gwynedd4023 massacres towards Britons was probably common. But not genocidally organized enough to ever change the demographic significantly.
I can name more massacres and murders in the US towards non whites with a larger impact than the rampages In Britain.
@@noahtylerpritchett2682 oh
As a Brythonic Celt from Peran ar Wodhel in Kernew, late a fourth generation Kernew-Ostralek, I admire this video’s content. I’m part of a small group of Kernewek speakers living currently in Japan. Believing one is Celtic is a matter of identity. The language (SWF) is growing again, as is the number of speakers. Lowena Dhis!
😂 A group of Cornish speakers living in Japan. How come? I think I get it Japanese parents think they've enrolled kids in. English classes and unbeknownst you're sipping in Cornish to their impressionable little heads.😊
Trebilco Meur Ras! 😂😂😂
@@WinningWithoutWar Dydh da, Robert. Byth na lavar a’n dra!
Nice. what's this in English please?.
Y’n dalleth yth esa an Ger, hag yth esa an Ger gans
Duw, ha’n Ger o Duw. Yth esa ev y’n dalleth gans
Duw. Pup-tra a veu gwrys ganso, ha hebdho ny veu gwrys
travyth a veu gwrys. Ynno yth esa bewnans, ha’n bewnans o
golow mab-den; ha’n golow a splann y’n tewlder, ha ny wrug
an tewlder y fetha.
@@kernowalbion4142 I believe it’s from John 1, as follows:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
Great video, really interesting about the East of England areas…
One thing, and I am sure I remember reading this somewhere, is that there were still Welsh speakers in parts of Shropshire in Elizabethan times, which is even more recent than most of information here…is this correct?
Ah, this is interesting as my I come from Lincolnshre and I've traced my family back there over about 400 years. When I had a couple of DNA tests (Anc and 23) they both came back with a lot of scandi (including my y hapologroup) but another site has pegged my non-scandi part of my DNA as being closest to modern day Wales.
I've been puzzled by this for a while but now it makes a little more sense. Thank you.
Great video CC, I love the way you're able to gather all of the information you presented earlier in the video together at the end, to bring all points to one solid conclusion.
Love the choice of paintings - really make me want to go and climb the mountains of the fens!
The Britons never left. They just learned a new language. We’re still here.
Large parts of the East Riding around Hull spent most of the year as marsh and fen. With lots of Celtic influence still in the area, I'm sure you're correct.
With both Scots/Irish and Brythonic/British lineage I find this intriguing.
Rightly or wrongly, I've started calling this place Deira again. Cheers
Great video. I often wonder about place names in my region (south London/Surrey) that apparently recall the Britons - Walworth, Wallington, Walton-on-Thames - and in what sense they were originally meant. Were these surviving communities of Brythonic speakers or Anglo-Saxon speakers resettling previously inhabited sites and acknowledging the prior inhabitants? Lots of interesting stuff in the video to keep me wondering!
It's unlikely the Anglo-Saxons would have named things in honour of the Britons in their absence. Walworth means farm of the Briton(s) so is an example of an active farm that was owned by a Briton. This is an example then of a local landowner who was a Briton because they wouldn't have named the farm after the farm workers. It seems Wallington was originally another Walton type name. Maybe the locals began to pronounce it Wallington to sound more English as -ing was a suffix used by Anglo-Saxons to mean 'people of...'.
No wonder I support MillWall
Just found you today and now binge watching all of your videos, extremely well researched
Thank you! I'm really glad you're enjoying them
There’s an area of Swindon called “Walcot’ or the habitation of the Wealas. This implies that there was a small enclave of Celts in Wiltshire late enough to influence a place name.
Great video! The traditional narrative didn't make sense and has large holes in it, so this explanation is far more plausible.
Thank you! I appreciate that
Awesome video. Discovering your channel has been the best thing that happened to me. I love history.
Weird, last week I was roughing out an idea for a conlang, the idea for it was a late surviving Brythonic language on an island in the fens of eastern England, more or less exactly where the first tale takes place. Had no idea that it basically did happen.
Wow, I noticed that the events in which the last Celts of England were involved are so similar to what happened in Lombardy where the Cisalpine Gauls, after the fall of Rome, were invaded by migrant Langobards and then, as time went on, they started interbreeding and so they gave birth to modern Lombards.
In the translation i read Guthlac, being an aristocrat, when his families star fell low, was exiled amongst the Britons, thereby learning the language, secondly Bede is known as the venomous Bede because of his wilfull ignorance of Britons who lived around him and in history. Thirdly have you ever heard of yan tan tethera? A celtic counting system spoken from Lincolnshire to Scotland even today! Check it out!
Isn't it the Venerable Bede then?
@@mitchamcommonfair9543 no, though he is venerated as the father of history in some circles others regard him as the father of lies.
Yes I've heard of yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pym! I'm from West Yorkshire. A branch of my family is called Featherstone from the town in South Yorkshire and it gets its name from Pethera stone meaning four stones as there used to be an ancient stone monument there made from four stones.
Really interesting video. Though you didnt mention Cumbria or the Cumbric language. I read the people of Cumbria in north west England, spoke Cumbric, a Brythonic language up to the 12th century. They were part of the independent kingdom of Strathclyde, known as the Hen Ogled. It may have been spoken as far south as Pendle in Yorkshire. It died out when the northern part of the kingdom was conquered by the Scots, and the southern part became part of England. Did the Brittonic language survive there for a while after this?
Certainly did here on the Wirral...Pensby is a hybrid Brythonic/ Hiberno Norse name...😊
The Hen Ogledd (Old North) wasn't just Strathclyde, it was the whole northern England/southern Scotland region. In the west was Alt Clut (rock of the Clyde) named for the large rock that the capital sat on top of. This was later referred to by the Irish as the fort of the Britons, 'Dun Briton' which morphed into modern Dumbarton. In the west was Gododdin, possibly centred on Edinburgh. This was the old tribal territory of the Votadini mentioned by the Romans.
Other realms were Rheged and Elmet.
The Cumbria name also is found in Scotland with a couple of islands in the Clyde estuary called The Cumbraes because Cumbric speaking Britons once lived there. As for the language, the wiki page on Cumbric has this to say: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbric#Date_of_extinction
@@damionkeeling3103 And the Brigante who held the largest territory. At the moment reading about Queen Cartimandua the leader of the Brigantes.
What's even more surprising is that William Wallace was of Brythonic ancestry as the Irish called him Guillaume the Briton.
@@damionkeeling3103 Good points, though the Gododdin were based in what is Lothian, south east Scotland. That is were Edinburgh is too. There are many place names around Edinburgh, as well as the rest of southern Scotland, that are of Brythonic origin, like Penicuik. The south east of Scotland was conquered by the Angles around 670. Though the independent kingdom of Strathclyde, in the south west of Scotland continued to exist till the mid 11th century, with its capital at Dumbarton.
There is a town in south Yorkshire called "wales" and the old name for Sheffield is "escafeld" which means "esca's field/flatlands". esca is a Brythonic name and what is now south Yorkshire was in the welsh kingdom of elmet so id guess there was a sizeable population of britons still living there long after the Angles arrived in the area
Interesting. Just outside Grimsby is a village called Waltham and a little over 10 miles away a village called Walesby
Killingbeck...the clue is in the ( Scandinavian) name...where Penda, went for a fatal swim..
is there any sign of the part 2 of the Celtic tribes video coming soon?
Yes, after my next video it'll be on the poll! The first part wasn't very popular when I first made it, but it's shot up now all of a sudden, so I'd love to continue it.
Really interesting thank you. As someone with roots and an old Cornish name, that pre dates the Norman invasion, until it seems to have became "Normanised" under William I. I now live between St Ives and Ramsey where the Bishop of Ely's palace was situated and would have never thought Brythonic was possibly spoken here at such a late date?
Love the video, always informative! I really enjoy learning more about Celts and also the Welsh, being Welsh I've developed a great interest over recent years!! How do you feel about the Brecon beacons having their name changed to the Welsh version (I'm in favour) 😊
Though this video is about England, not Wales, as to your last point if I may:
Though I am happy for Welsh to be respected and preserved as a native language of Britain, I think it is atm being used as a nationalist weapon to cause division by some. There is a fair bit of spite out there.
@@hobi1kenobi112 I meant an interest in celtic and britonic people as a whole, I could have explained that better.
I was ambivalent about it initially, although following the usual outrage from the Daily Mail types I became fully supportive of it.
@@CambrianChronicles my birthplace Derry ( oak grove) ,gets the Derry/ Londonderry title these days...what's in a name eh...?...
Only Welsh speakers will adopt the Welsh name, and maybe they did anyway. The same with Snowdonia. English speakers will not change, mostly because we can't spell these names, and we certainly can't pronounce them.
They remain Snowdonia and the Brecon Beacons as far as we are concerned. Let the nationalists try to weaponise these place names if they wish, it is doomed to fail.
My paternal family line has used the Moss surname (some generations switched back and forth to Morse) since the 13th/14th centuries and lived near Bolton in Lancashire, then eventually Lancaster, before going to the Americas in the 1640s. It seems they were called Moss (Anglo-Saxon derivation assumed) due to their living by the bogs of Chat Moss near Bolton and Manchester sometime after the Norman conquest. Though it seems Cumbric Britons, Lowland Scots, and families in Wales also used the name Moss as a variant of Morris (Romano-British form of the Latin name Maurice) or other etymologies outside of the Anglo-Saxon word for a bog, so its hard for me to know which was the actual origin of my family surname. Perhaps it had some multilingual double meaning, I've speculated at least. Such that Moss fit into the Topographical English naming system, and Moss also being a version of the Romano-British personal Maurice, that often became the surname Morris in Wales, keeping a foot in both doors culturally, especially in respect to Celtic language naming systems. Naming systems aside, the DNA of my father, grandfather, and myself shows the "Celtic" line of Y-lineage (R-L21 / R-DF13) haplogroup to be maintained to this day genetically in our family. I've also noted during genealogical research, that throughout the generations since, many of the women who married into the family were of Welsh/Briton, Scots, or Norman/Norman-Breton families, well into our migration to the Americas. This was even transmitted orally until my time, the old "were actually welsh" type comments still being made in my great grandparents generation. Though any google search would tell you our name and history and culture is English, I've seen far too much evidence that my family retained Brythonnic language and culture into the Norman English era, perhaps well beyond that in the Americas with fewer and fewer linguistic elements retained. Nonetheless, I am more and more fascinated to think and wonder what those centuries of life looked like in the bog lands of Britain, for those Britons who stayed in their ancestral lands long after they were written out of the story of modern England. What drove them and their survival in the changing cultural landscape? Was there an idea of Celtic identity or culture which contributed to that? If so, did it have any direct influence on why they left for the British colonies later on?
Moss is a very common place name in and around the North West, where it was used for basically for any boggy peaty land, often on high ground (in and around the moors of the Pennines). It's a common surname for people in the area because they were named after the places they lived.
Due to our locaton on the marches I know one or two my Ancestors were Angles. Titta was the name and I believe he founded Titley and Tittenley.
But they intermarried with the local Welsh. In fact although am born in England I have at least 8 Welsh names on both Sides.
Strangely after thinking my Dads side more English turns out his side show a very mixed heritage.
Being from Shropshire and villages a walk from the border, not surprising maybe!
I am going to study the border towns more and need to track down where in Wales we were from (closest villages are Titley and Melverly).
Just look at the place names in the North of England; Pen y Ghent, Penines, Helfellyn, and Derwent which is derived from Derwen which is Welsh for Oak.
Darwin in Lancashire, Derry in Scotland and Ireland...😊
Any place name with Coome ( Cwm, Valley) or even Morecambe perhaps (mor = sea and cambe = valley? ). Cumbria is littered with Welsh sounding place names as your examples Howard. Thinking about it though Cumbria - Cymru, similar? I'm not an academic but I find this whole subject very interesting.
@@eamonnclabby7067 ah yes Darwin, live near there near where my family originated from there (by a couple towns away) , they had brythonic celt origins.
Thanks for letting me onto this site. I am fascinated by this subject and though I am certainly no expert I find it all so Interesting. There is (in reference to your film) a street in Cardiff called HAVELOCK street- maybe even influenced by the fellow mentioned in your film?
Things start falling into places such as, Cardiff and Carmarthen, Carnaerfon etc. where they grew from castles or forts as in 'CAR' and still you have places like Carlisle up there many many miles away in Northern England . Then again, we have the Welsh word for bridge as in ''Pont' as in Pontypool,Pontypridd and similar in Yorkshire IE: Pontefract, etc.There is also , 'Aber' as in 'mouth of' with Aberdeen in Scotland and Aberdare in Wales being prime examples. Bangor in Ireland and also North Wales -where there is also Conwy as seen in the Irish name Conway.. fascinating .Also the street that I grew up in was/is called Cambria road situated in ELY, Cardiff -another wee coincidence? Thanks again - diolch yn fawr ,..
On the edge of the London Borough of Bromley where I live is an area called Penge. This name turns out to be a corruption of Penceat which means "head of the wood" in Welsh. I wonder when Brythonic was last spoken in this area
Interesting items brought up in you video. Place name evidence in the area would seem to support the continued settlement, plenty of place names with the Wal prefix, Walsingham, Walsham etc and of course Kings Lynn, probably Llyn = Lake.
Jim Storr has written an interesting book on this time period using a soldiers perspective and the numerous dykes peppering the Englosh landscape. So warfare may have had a central part in the evetual outcome.
Like others I think the 6th century, volcanic/comet winter and Justinian plague had a central part in the takeover of Anglo-Saxon culture and the exodus of Britons to Brittany.
Future videos on Mercia will be interesting, Malvern - Moelfryn and on the river Severn, just to the east, Rhydd (Ford) to this day.
Hahaha I'm actually from Walsham was nice to see it on the map.
Penda the last pagan King of Mercia was reputedly half Welsh...here on the Wirral peninsula we have half man half Biscuit...fellow Tranmere Rovers fans who have a sense of humour about our Hiberno Norse heritage 😅😅😅
As a Lynn boy thanks for that and makes so much senses with the Wash being similar to a sea lake. Is Lyng of Celtic origin I know it is an old word for Common? Used to live on Lyng Common Road, which can't say much about me Common Common Road !!!🤣
5:29 as someone from grimsby, you are honestly not even wrong
Big up the Grimsby massive! ❤🎉
@@hobi1kenobi112 Grimsby FC ..Danish Vikings...Tranmere Rovers here on the wirral..Hiberno Norse Vikings, Wirral archeologists re examined the Viking longship underneath the Railway pub in Meols...😊😊
I think I remember reading a historian in a local paper claimed that the inhabitants of the village of Penn in South Buckinghamshire were speaking a language ‘like Welsh’ up until the early 19th century.
Very interesting. It's no coincidence that the very name Penn is a Welsh prefix meaning head
Pendragon.🏴.Pendraig?🤔
Love your videos. You’ve taught me a good deal about dark age Britain. A big thanks from overseas in New England.
I was born in Ely, I hear about the graves but never knew about the mixed peoples! Thank you, great video.
It would be interesting to find out how many English place names have a reference to Welsh inhabitants such as Walton, Wallasey ect,, there is even a village in South Yorkshire named Wales.
Bryn near Wigan...Walsall in the Midlands..Welsh Valley...😊
Very interesting video. I'm aware that Marie de France's "lais" as a sort of narrative poetry linked to French medieval literature are inspired (she mentions this repeatedly herself) from songs that she heard from the Britons. She had direct contact with these lost, non-written songs, suggesting that Britons, their culture or their language (she writes some titles of her lais in the Celtic language she had contact with) were still around at least till the 12th century.
By the way! It's worth to mention the topic of the Celtic substratum in some sheep-counting system that some English farmers used till just some time ago. Something to think about.
Interesting!
Yan, tan, tethera? Oh yeah.
It wouldn't apply to me entirely since Im American anyway with additional Welsh and Scottish ancestry, but to humor the argument of my general English ancestry, most of my ancestors come from Lancashire, Cheshire, Shropshire, Hereford, and Gloucester, ancient Brythonic kingdoms adjacent to Wales like Pengwern, Glouvia and Luitcoyt would of inhabited here next to Wales and seasonal migrations likely would of occurred, with Welsh last names extremely common in English regions next to Wales, such as mine a Anglicized Welsh last name before moving to England, in the 2016 study Wales itself has 20% Anglo-Saxon dna as this evened out in Britain and western England is Anglicized Britons do to prevalence in Brythonic surnames and placenames, a minority in Eastern England but a staple in western England as late as the years of the Henn Ogledd.
Infact the Normans had to settle Bretons in western England because Brythonic tongues were still spoken. The Scotsman Wallace last name meant Welshman which could be Wales or Norman Breton but could easily be Strathclyde Briton.
The Cornish also still speak a Brythonic tongue.
And Exeter had a Brythonic tongue in late middle ages.
I also have kentish ancestry giving some Anglo-Saxon proper dna,
While I took a dna test that breaks down clusters of ethnic nationality, if i or any Englishman in England's westernmost counties did a DNA test that calculates ancient genetic percentages of tribes instead of modern similar nationality clusters, many will be shocked to learn they're more Briton than Germanic let alone Anglo-Saxon.
A few Englishman from Kent, Sussex or Yorkshire could reach 50% Germanic or more but it's rare. Not impossible to find but not impressively common. As we're Anglo-Saxon insofar to being a amalgamation of Angles, Saxons and Britons. And this isn't limited to indirect and direct maternal lines.
Vestiges of the male line of the Celts exist in a good amount of Englishman.
And before there's county confusion,
Lancashire not Lincolnshire.
American here too, and some of my DNA shows as 34% English/Northwestern Europe. From my family tree, I have more recent ancestors from Kent and Jersey Island, which I think accounts for the NW Europe part. Maybe some Kent ancestors came from the Netherlands or Flanders?
Your surname is almost definitely a mutation of Pritchard a Welsh surname. 🏴🤝 🇺🇸
@@maccacovi I know
@@noahtylerpritchett2682 it come from Ap meaning son of Richard and was shortened to Pritchard
Common Welsh surnames use the same patrimony system. Parry ( Ap Harry) Peirce ( Ap Rhys), Pugh( Ap Hugh) . It was later replaced with the S at the end of the name in the 17/18C . Hence the number of Jones(Johns son)Williams , Hughes, Griffiths etc. So you could have villages and towns with loads of people with the same surname but were not related. I was in a Welsh regiment and during roll call or to attract attention people were referred to by their Name e.g. Jones and tacked on the last 2 of their Army serial number. So the call out would be Jones42 , Evans16, Williams27.😲🤣. On a local level people simply referred to them by their profession “Jeff The Coal”, “Evan the Bread”. So the English attempt to simplify it for census and tax purposes simply ending up complicating it . So the locals simply reverted back to older times at a local level🤷🏻
@16:30 that explanation is very similar to what latin sources report on Galicia suevan structure.
Amazing video. I absolutely love this channel!!!
Have you read the latest archaeo-genetics paper on this topic, from the Max Plank Institute, published in Nature last September (2022)? I will drop a link in a reply below. It is the first paper with a large enough ancient dna sample size to draw more solid conclusions. There are 460 medieval northwestern Europeans - including 278 individuals from England - in the data set. It suggests that modern English people are on average about 1/3 Brythonic, 1/3 Germanic (Angle, Saxon, etc.), and, interestingly, about 1/3 other European that seems to have trickled in over the last 1000 years or so. It ranges from about 40 or 45% Germanic in the East, to 20 or 25% in the West, iirc. It appears that what happened was, there was in fact a fairly large population replacement event in the East of England in the 5th and 6th Centuries, with the population in that area at that time being about 80% Germanic, 20% Brythonic (though of course, 20% is a long way from nothing). Then, with time, as the Anglo-Saxons moved West, they intermingled with Brythonic dna, and then, over time, there was a back flow of Brythonic dna from the West back to the East of England, giving us the modern situation, where people in the West of England are about 40% Brythonic and in the East about 30% Brythonic (those numbers might not be quite right, but it’s the gist of it). The wrench in the gears appears to be this 1/3 of our DNA that is neither Germanic nor Brythonic 😂
Yes, that's the Gretzinger et al paper I reference in the video!
@@CambrianChronicles Oh, I missed you reference that. Apols
@@CambrianChronicles Seems RUclips deleted my link, but yes, it is indeed the Gretzinger paper
Your videos are so informative, diolch yn fawr ❤️
Croeso!
Slainte...could not resist a wee bit of Gaelic...😊😊
Thanks for the info; diolch yn fawr.
I am a Welshman and I was commenting on the Cornish prefix of TRE -but it was heavily censored by RUclips for some unknown reason. So Interesting though as I was born in Tremorfa in Cardiff,another place starting with TRE and there is also Treherbert, Treforest, Treorchy,etc. in Wales. As an aside, I never realised just how close we were to the Cornish people until I saw the late, great, and very funny Jethro, live in concert at the St Davids Hall about 12 years ago.
He was a wonderful man Jethro, and he gave us all a brief history of Cornwall or KERNOW. So proud he was. as he stood in front of his Kernow flag, which is similar to the Cross of St David.
The Cornish anthem sounds like the Welsh anthem as well..
Lovely people -very humble and unpretentious, just like the Welsh .
God bless you Jethro from a fellow Celt x
Cymru am Byth and of course Kernow am byth .. diolch x
Have you ever considered doing a video about your background/who you are, why the dragon you use in your profile picture is green, and more information of the selection of the name “Cambrian Chronicles”!?
That is a video I would LOVE to see!
Also I am a massive fan. Your videos are never short of excellent! I wait with excited anticipation for everyone of them!
Thank you, that's very kind of you! I might do one day, a Q&A would be interesting but they generally seem to be not super popular, perhaps when my channel is a bit bigger!
I can answer those two questions briefly though if you'd like:
The "Cambrian Chronicles" is an old-fashioned translation of the 'Annales Cambriae', I encountered the name and thought it sounded cool, so I used it! There was also a second reason which ties into the next one.
The dragon is green/blue (I call it blue, but plenty have called it green) simply because I like the colour, but also because I didn't want the channel to be "too Welsh" so to speak, as I thought that'd be gimmicking, or cheesy, and might alienate people interested in broader Brythonic history (like this video). Hence also why I didn't use "Wales" anywhere in my name.
@@CambrianChronicles wow thank you so much for taking the time to answer those questions! I love the concepts behind both - so so cool!
Your channel is genuinely one of my favorites of all time! Your content and style is impeccable!
You have a fan for life in me
@@matthew_wellsdube Thank you, that’s very kind of you!
@@CambrianChronicles A debt of gratitude, sir...😊😊😊
This is very interesting and super cool to learn about, though I would take the passage about wergild with a healthy pinch of salt, as the term wylisc in some context can also mean a slave, since the welsh were such a big source of slaves for anglo-saxons that in some manuscripts the term welsh is used to mean slave regardless of their actual ethnicity (just like how the word slav became the word slave). I think it makes more sense given that the other two categories given are about social status (rather than any ethnic connotation), so you'd know the wergild for a noble, a freeman and a slave. It doesn't disprove everything else in the video, I just wanted to bring this possible meaning to light.
The Wirral peninsula is quite interesting, it has many celtic place-names and wallesey literally means welsh island
Irby...place of the Irish, Frankby...place of the Frank's.. generations before the Norman Conquest
@eamonnclabby7067 both names etymologically speaking, are old norse, most likely from ingamundrs settlement in 902AD. Due to their location and local history
I grew up in the fens, in ramsey specifically and found this video very interesting. I wonder if alot of fenland myths somehow relate to brythonic raiders. Although that seems unlikely given their relatively equitable status with most anglo-saxons.
Ramsey isn't Fens.
H
I think I commented this from my old account also, but I want to ad a parallell from our common Germanic history. In Sweden (and Scandinavia as a whole) we used the Futhark Rune alphabet during our common history.
While it became "extinct" in high society already during the 1000's, the last preserved rune carvings are from the late 1800's in Dalarna, central Sweden. It's an inscription with insignificant actual meaning, but carved by a milk maid. This shows that the common people through all of history have been the ones to actually preserve and cherish the ancient knowledge - in this case on how to use runes to communicate.
We didn't get public schools until 1848 in Sweden, so knowledge of the runes were relegated to the lower classes for almost a thousand years after they fell out of fashion with the rulers of our country. This is an amazing feat and I really want to emphasize how much I love this often forgotten but oh so valuable contribution from the people that actually counts.
The place name "Glendale" has a Keltic root (glen) and a Germanic root (dale), both meaning "valley". "Chetwood" likewise has 2 roots both meaning "wood". Keltic usages of "mom and dad" instead of "mama and papa", plus English is "softened" - less strong consonants - fowl instead of vogel, etc.
Whenever this guy drops multiple videos at once... is it called a cambrian explosion?
Very well presented. Thank you.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it
Would love to see a similar video on the Strathclyde Welsh that Scottish history usually ignores. We can be reasonably sure William Wallace's family still had northern Brythonic speakers within living memory (hence the surname. "The Welsh") though whether it survived till His time, I don't know if anyone has evidence.
For parts of Scottish history, the heir was given the overlordship of the "Britons" the remains of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, to rule, (I suppose not unlike the English "Prince of Wales") and several coup attempts were made by various heirs using forces raised there.
But aside from those titbits of information, I know very little of how long Brythonic (or a recognisable Northern Welsh identity) survived up here.
Sco😅 History Tours on YT might be helpful...😊😊
Apols..Scotland History Tours...😅
10:35 I've always known of the place as _Slepe_ (pronounced Sleep - have I been mispronouncing it?) since moving there in '68. Our telephone number was Slepe . I went to school at Ramsey - in the remnants of the old abbey, and the picture at 10:51 does not reflect the flat landscape there.
I'm probably saying it wrong most likely, the source that mentioned it was from 1911 and said it was "slaep", no doubt it's changed since then (or that they just got it wrong in the first place).
And yes the landscape has changed quite a lot, the Fens were drained in the 17th century I believe
@@CambrianChronicles The fens were drained, but that did not change the land hegiht. Actually - that's not completely true. The Holme Fen Posts show considerable shrinkage of drained areas.
@@frogandspanner oh I see what you mean, I guess the artist was just taking some liberties with his drawings haha
A thumbs up from me for being informative and entertaining. Bravo .