Celtic whispers: revisiting the problems of the relation between Brittonic and Old English

Abstract

The chronology of the English intervention in Britain has recently become controversial among population historians, but the linguistic evidence for its timing and its nature has remained largely unchanged. In this paper I set out to review once again the small amount of toponymic evidence and the almost non-existent lexical evidence for Brittonic-English contact in the earliest English centuries. This linguistic evidence has led to diverse responses among historians and archaeologists, but since it is primary evidence it is legitimate to explore again the question of what historical scenarios of ethnic contact it is compatible with: extermination, expulsion, enslavement, assimilation, cultural overwhelming or ignoring; and mass English population movement versus élite expatriate settlement from beyond the North Sea.