Talk:Chad of Mercia/Archive 1

Brythonic names
The names of Chad and Cedd are Brythonic (Early Welsh or Late Old British) in origin, they derive from the Brythonic element cat- or cad- meaning "battle" (as in Cat Coit Caledon [the Battle of the Caledonian Forest] or Catuvellauni [The Battle-experts], or Cadwallon.

The name of Caelin would seem to be related to Ceawlin the West Saxon king, and both related to the name Colin which is also of Celtic origins (eg the early Welsh saint, Kollen).

Cynebil possibly incorporates the Brythonic root cuno- meaning "hound" and be identical to Cunobelin (Belinus' Hound), the root is also found in the name of Cuneglassus (Blue-hound) a 6th century British king mentioned by Gildas.

Any description of these ecclesiastics which does not mention this would seem to me to be lacking somewhat.

Urselius 10:50, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Article template
Surely it's possible to take off the "uncited" template now? AnonMoos 22:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Names and Identities
I've pointed out the obvious Celtic origins of the name Chad in some stuff I added to the article. It's fairly obvious that quite a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon ruling elite were ethnically British Celts and that they maintained their culture to some extent. As Urselius points out, the West Saxon king lists seem to start with mainly Celtic names. It's very unclear what the roots of Mercian names like Penda and Peada are, and Penda seems to have had a son and/or sub-king called Merewalh, which could be translated "great Welshman". I think it's now well-established through both archeology and genetics that the Anglo-Saxons did constitute a large incoming population, but that they did not displace anything like the majority of the native population.

As for Cedd/Chad, there are two entirely separate life stories in Bede, with Chad succeeding his brother as abbot of Lastingham. Bede places Chad in Ireland with Egbert at a time when Cedd was being sent first and briefly to Mercia, before being posted to Essex. He also makes a point of enumerating four brothers in the same ecclesiastical dynasty. He comments on how rare this was, almost as if they had become a proverbial or stock example. Bearing in mind that Bede claimed spiritual succession to Chad, having been taught by Chad's pupil, Trumbert, I think we can assume he got the basic facts straight. Incidentally, there is no truth in the assertion above that the two brothers have either the same death dates or feast days. Not only were their years of death separated by 8 years, but Cedd's feast day is 26 October.

However, writers like Leland in the 16th century did mix the names up. Leland actually turns Chad's Well at Lichfield into a place associated with a figure he calls Cedd. Sjwells53 22:23, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Penda's father was called Pybba, it looks suspiciously like the Welsh word pybyr meaning stout or strong. I think the molecular geneticist Sykes has claimed that the maximum "Anglo-Danish" type y chromosome levels were found in East Anglia and amounted to about 25%. South of the Thames levels were much lower and in the North of England and Midlands were intermediate. He concluded that discriminating between Anglo-Saxon and later Danish incomers was impossible genetically.

Urselius 12:44, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Kidderminster and other putative associations
I've left this as a suggestion, but place name studies generally reckon it's named after Cydela, not Chad. I'm fairly certain this is based on actual documentary evidence of the evolution of the name. Admittedly, it is on St Chad's patch, but I don't think it's anything to do with him.Sjwells53 21:29, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Cheadle Cheshire
can you source any references connecting Chad to the founding of Cheadle, Cheshire and its parish church90.215.89.126 (talk)

Brewer's Britain and Ireland reckons Cheadle is a tautonym, i.e. a name with two origins of essentially the same meaning. It gives these as Old Celtic ced and Old English ley, both signifying a wood. Certainly coed is a common place name element in modern Wales, and means a wood. A connection with Chad seems reasonable at first sight, but I presume the compilers have checked that this Celtic derivation is borne out by the earliest recorded forms. So Cheadle seems not to have much to do with Chad, but oddly enough does have an origin in common with Lichfield, Chad's most famous monastery, which was Latin Letocetum, the second element again being Old Celtic ced, and the whole meaning "grey wood".Sjwells53 (talk) 17:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Name
"Another form of his name that survives in Modern English is St Cedd. His Anglo-Saxon name was Ceadda (pronounced "chadda")."

This sentence (which has been in since the page's early days - User:Chameleon seems to have added it) seems to say that St Chad and St Cedd were the same person. Every other source I have read (Encyclopaedica Britannica, New Catholic Dictionary, etc.) have stated that Saint Cedd was Saint Chad's brother. Any justification for this assertion to the contrary? TSP 19:39, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Hmm, that's interesting. I'd always thought they were the same person.  The modern-day difference in their names is certainly misleading.  Chad's name was really Ceadda.  The sources you cite say that Cedd in Anglo-Saxon is not Ceadda as I thought, but Cedda.  Well, it seems highly unlikely that parents would call their two sons by those names, which would have been pronounced virtually identically.  It would be like having kids called Merry and Mary.  Is it possible that the Church found there was a "Chad" and a "Cedd" who were from the same place, with the same parents, etc, and instead of concluding that they were one and the same, decided they must have been two brothers?  Note that they have the same feast day and the same year of death.  Well, I'm not an expert on Christian history.  I'll leave it to you to do the rest of the research.  Chamaeleon 21:01, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * grins* - yes, they do have terribly similar names. Apparently there were two other brothers with names beginning with C - Cynebil and Caelin.  As you say, the hypothesis of them being the same is distinctly plausible; but I haven't seen it anywhere else, so I think we probably need to go with the general understanding that they were different; they do have reasonably complete and separate histories.  They have a joint feast day, I think, because no-one knows either of their birthdays and they worked together.  I have different dates of death for them - 664 for Cedd, 672 for Chad.   TSP 22:05, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Just to reassure anyone who is disposed to take the above discussion seriously: it is almost entirely erroneous in both suppositions and alleged facts. Cedd and Chad do not share the same feast day, as reference to their Wikipedia entries will show. Their names may look similar but the pronunciation is much less so. Bede, the earliest source makes a point of explaining that he has direct, personal testimony about their deeds, which were only about a generation earlier. Furthermore he makes clear that he himself stands in their spiritual lineage. Historical speculations which pay not the slightest attention to evidence in the sources are entirely worthless. So are wholly anachronistic suppositions about the way people of different cultures behave. For example, having four (not two) sons with related names is not at all unusual in the Anglo-Saxon period, and much later. In fact, noble families often used the same or related names generation after generation. Even in early modern times in England some families gave several children in the same generation not merely similar but identical names. This may offend our sense of personal identity and worth, but that's beside the point: we belong to a specific culture with its own values, which are not universal. Bede's account makes clear that the brothers were felt in some way to participate in a shared identity and charisma, not that they were the same person. Clearly the relationship between the individual and the social group was very different in the 7th century: big surprise. The only valid point in the discussion above is that Cedd and Ceadda are fairly similar names on paper, so you will actually find that some later and secondary sources have got them switched: so beware of using anything but primary or very good secondary sources.Sjwells53 (talk) 09:49, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Patron of astronomers?
I have removed the claim that Chad was patron of astronomers from the info-box. This is not mentioned in the article, is unsourced, and a cursory search (including the New Catholic Encyclopedia) does not suggest a source. If you have one, add to the section on Patronage, as well as the info-box.

Chad was at the Synod of Whitby, which discussed Easter, but he was on the losing side. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:23, 2 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't find any indication in Bede that Chad was at the "synod." His brother Cedd played a leading role, but Chad is not introduced into Bede's account until after Cedd's death, when he succeeds him as Abbot at Lastingham. I don't think there's any association between Chad and astronomy, not even a remote connection with calendrical calculation. The accepted patron saint seems to be Saint Dominic. Sjwells53 (talk) 22:14, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Catholic?
Chad is described as a "Catholic monk." What is the sense of "Catholic" here? Is this not anachronistic? Eleazar~enwiki (talk) 22:04, 16 February 2023 (UTC)


 * He was affiliated with Western Latin Christianity recognizing the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. Our Wikipedia article is Catholic (term).  It's not really "anachronistic", as far as I can see, though some with other affiliations would use the term with other meanings, then and now... AnonMoos (talk) 00:54, 17 February 2023 (UTC)