I love your humour. Shame about your name choices they’re wonderful.
This is fascinating! I’m teaching my son about this whole period of history and trying to shape it into a Substack that other parents can use. Wish I could involve you but suspect you’re too busy.
Despite all of this western civilisation still somehow pulled together a rich heritage through the various aspects of Christian colonisation. I just cannot see what we will ever gain from all these Muslims. And I actually dread what future young people will call their kids. Mohammed and Aisha probably.
My nans name was Ethel. Had no idea of the reason til today.
I suspect a lot is familiarisation with Anglo-Saxon names. The saintly cults of Edward and Edmund were already mentioned. It seems to me the relatively common names Alfred and Harold do not sound strange in the way say Edred or Edwy or even Athelstan do simply because they were associated with famous kings that at least traditionally were taught in history lessons. Perhaps they have a ring of being slightly old fashioned but then that is a kind of fashion unto itself at times.
As for me, my parents gave all three of us biblical names, it seems these were the only ones they considered. All Hebrew names - although it has to be said my name - Samuel - has some distinguished literary associations from Coleridge, Johnson, Pepys, Butler and Beckett. My sister too named in this fashion. I think as some kind of rebellion I gave my daughter a Greek name, Alexandra.
I wondered why my half Danish grandfather (b. 1892) was christened Alfred. Guess Victorian fashion explains that oddity. Two of his children received Anglo Saxon names as well- Edward (hardly unusual) and Alice Winifred. Choice of names can be tricky. Had I been a boy, my forceful grandmother wanted me named Clovis. That might have caused difficulties at school.
There was a hilarious Facebook click-bait piece not long ago on "Names Not To Give Your Children (unless you want them to hate you)." About sixty such names were highlighted, from Abner to Zenobia, and with snarky commentary: "Gertrude-- the first syllable rhymes with 'dirt', and the second syllable is just 'rude'"
There was quite a fad in the early years of the 1900s for names with the "er" sound in them - Gertrude, Verna, Bertha, Myrtle, Pearl, etc.. I find it entertaining that those were the trendy names of the day. I had great-aunts born in the early part of the 20th century named Bertha, Myrtle and Versa.
Interestingly Anglo Saxon names seem to have had a remarkable and enduring popularity amongst Straits Chinese, Peranakan and Hong Kong people. More so than in England, I'd wager.
I was at school in Malaya with an Alfred, two Cuthberts, an Edwin and three Edwards, - all Hokkien and/or Cantonese speakers at home.
In London I have met an Alwin and an Edgar amongst the London Hong Kong diaspora.
Naturally they had Chinese names as well but why choose such obscure English historical figures for Christian names?
I had assumed latent British Imperial prestige but of course I thought it was impolite to ask.
I worked in China for a couple years and discovered that all my student used English pseudonyms. I had the temerity to ask my students about this. They told me that on entering middle or high school, those studying English would be offered a list of English names to use in class. They tended to chose those whose sound or meaning they liked, or those which had some resonance with their Chinese names.
When I suggested that this was all a bit Anglo-imperialist (many years ago and I was still a recovering leftie) they laughed at me. They told me it was their tradition, they rather liked it and I should deal with it. Most admirable.
I wonder how and why Bernie Taupin came up with "Alvin Tostig" as the name of Levon's father (and therefore I guess Tostig is the surname of Levon himself) in the song of that name.
My sons are William, Thomas, Allen (Patrick), James, Daniel, and Jonathan (Francis), because I wanted a Frank, and you can't just name a boy Francis these days, although Francisco is fine among Hispanics.
My daughters are Josephine, Eleanor, Sabina, and Kathleen.
Something remarkable about living in Russia was how very few names were in circulation through the many time zones. It is striking to meet the Chukchi in the far east, with more in common with Inuit, routinely called Vladimir or Svetlana. After the revolution, many Russian names disappeared from the World entirely, only occasionally to pop up in the church or in monasteries. But there was also a fad for ideological or socialist realist names: boys were called Vilen - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - or even Traktor. My mother-in-law was called Lyutsia - shortened from Revolyutsia.
Orlando figures listed some of the names of children 'Octobered’ rather than baptised: Marx, Engelina, Rosa, Vladlen, Marlen, Oktiabrina, Revoliutsiia, Parizhkommuna, Molot and Serpina, Diktatura and even Terrora
Without that though I wonder about Islam. We’re so good at being conquered without being under Latin or Roman Christian power I imagine we’d have all been Muslim long ago. Great shame that they got here in the end.
We absolutely are I’m afraid. Just natural. They’re having 4 kids at least to us having 2 at most. We’re inviting 150k Muslim men in a year on boats. That’s larger than most historic invasions
110k last year and the vast majority are men. And even the women and kids as we know will not subscribe to Christianity. I think that’s significant enough a number at 60k. It’s a fiasco and it’s the end absolute end of Britain
I don’t think it outlandish to envisage an Islamic Britain, perhaps a more liberal version of Iran. My hope is for a wind and hydrogen bonanza, and we all carry on as we are. If not, I think most likely - not now, but in a decade or so - is a return to 1950s values, with almost no tolerance of non-British ways. But, also possible is what you foresee: a cohesive and fairly sizeable elite with financial support from outside, offering stability and a tough stance on crime and disorder.
For God’s sake. 6% of the UK population has a Muslim background -i.e. 94% of UK population do NOT have a Muslim background. Quite a few Muslim background people intermarry and their kids are not brought up Muslim. Absolute nonsense that the UK will go Islamic. About as likely as ‘the black man having the whiphand over the white man’ as Enoch said in the sixties.
I quite like Elite Theory, which says you don’t need anything like a majority to rule - see the Romans, the AS, the Normans, and the Merchants with Henry VIII and after, including in a way the New Model Army. A determined, disciplined sub-group can triumph, like the Bolsheviks in Russia and the NSDAP in Germany.
I’m a white man living in a city with a black minority. Black men don’t have a whip hand over me. Neither do the Muslims who live here. My friend’s daughter was at the terrible Manchester Arena attack but I wouldn’t therefore condemn all Muslims for this, anymore than I’d blame all Irish people for IRA terrorist atrocities.
ending this conversation now. Alison, please don't use that kind of language again. Didn't actually mean to delete David's comment and don't know how to undelete
“The world of the early Middle Ages was one of a diversity of rich local cultures and societies. The story of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries is of how that diversity was, in many ways, superseded by a uniformity. The cultural and political forms that spread in this period were marked, like the alphabet, by a lack of local association and resonance: the western town and the new religious orders were blueprints, and that means they were neither coloured nor constricted by powerful local ties.”
I briefly toyed with naming our son Dunstan, but was jovially threatened with divorce, and retreated. I'm glad to hear I am not the only one who does things like this.
I'm guessing you must have read the poetry of William Barnes, who developed an entire language - Anglish - based on what he thought English might have sounded like had the Normans not conquered? There must be a Substack post in that! I wrote a little piece about him years ago:
I'd be interested in your view on my favourite Conquest conspiracy theory, which is that it was a religious as much as a political colonisation. William carried the Pope's banner at Hastings, which reportedly spooked some of the English, and was given some saints relics to hang around his neck for luck (which worked.) As well as replacing all the English landlords, he also replaced all the Bishops, with cronies loyal to Rome. Then began the demolition of all the wooden Anglo-Saxon churches and their replace with the new 'Romanesque' style. Then the homogenising of the liturgy and the importation of new European-style monastic orders. The Conquest was also, according to this theory, which I am quite convinced by, Roman as well as Norman.
Dunstan, who found the king in bed with a 'strumpet' on the day of the coronaton.
Planning to do a post on Anglish soon!
I think it's not even a conspiracy theory surely - it was all part of the great reform movement of the 11th century which saw the Church taking greater control over European affairs (plus the fact that the Normans dominated southern Italy)
Yes, I agree about the 11th century change. Here in Ireland the same thing happened after the Normans arrived of course. Fun fact: St Patrick appears on none of the early medieval high crosses that remain here. St Anthony and St Paul of Thebes were the favoured saints. Patrick becomes the mascot of the twelfth century Roman centralisers.
Time to return both England and Ireland to pre-Norman/Roman Orthodoxy, if you ask me. Somebody needs to start a movement.
The process of centralisation went back much further than the 11th century though. The newly converted Anglo-Saxons were Rome's battering ram against what they saw as the perversions of the early Irish church in Ireland and Scotland. See Bede's account of the Synod of Whitby.
The Papacy went through a period of serious degeneracy after the Carolinian era with popes too busy grifting for lands and accumulating mistresses and catamites to worry about enforcing church discipline. The Conquest was roughly contemporary with the Hildebrandtine reforms.
A renewed confidence of Latin Christendom towards re-civilizing (i.e. Christianizing) the barbarians. It makes me wonder if Anglo-Saxon words and names would have declined even without the Norman Conquest.
Tom Holland has recently done a podcast on how this process was foreshadowed by Emperor Otto of Germany marrying a Byzantine princess Theophanu:
Interestingly enough English retained the two "th" sounds which the other Germanic languages,(except Icelandic, another insular tongue) lost. And alone of Indoeuropean languages English still has the original "w" sound in words like "will", "wind" and "work".
Re: When I was growing up ‘Ethel’ was still a stereotypical elderly woman’s name
In the US Ethel is mainly associated with Ethel Mertz, Lucy Ricardo's partner in capers and pecadillos.
As for Chad it's now become a somewhat derisive name for a certain sort of high status young man who has all the luck with the young ladies. I did know a Chad in college. He was a notorious party animal-- and yet managed to excel in class, even getting a perfect score a tough advanced math midterm the morning after he was shown on the TV news in the midst of the uproarious University of Michigan basketball championship riot.
I've never heard it used that way. I've heard the Incel-derived complaint that "Chad" is monopolizing all the women. But this Chad is very good looking and well-provided for, generally with a good job, though inherited money works too. He may or may not be notably athletic beyond what is needful to keep himself looking good.
My robustly Danelaw inhabiting, farming stock grandfather and uncle were / are called Harold and Eric respectively (although others in the family follow the usual apostle / monarch route).
"Oswald, tarnished both by Britain’s most notorious fascist and the man who killed Kennedy, seems especially doomed." I like to think you believe a mad conspiracy that these are the same person.
Boris Johnson naming his kid Wilfred has a precendent; David Frost's son is called Wilfred too. Are people who are desperate to be part of the establishment reclaiming the name?
I’m often struck by the extent to which we really are just totally deprived of any understanding of how deeply Germanic, and, to a lesser but still very significant extent, Nordic, roots.
This is only a small example. But I’m 28. Growing up, for some reason I always thought of the word ‘kid’ or ‘kids’ as being a bit of an Americanism. Us British say ‘Children’, Americans say ‘Kids’, and thus explains their rampant idiocy in comparison, so on and so forth.
Kid actually derives from the Old Norse words ‘Ki∂’. That strange ‘d’ (known as the letter ‘thorn’, a letter our language had up until something like the 16th century) is pronounced something like ‘th’, but sort of roll your tongue as you make the sound and you’re not far off.
‘Ki∂’ meant ‘Young goat’. So 1,200 years on, when we casually laugh at our childrens’ hapless, chaotic fun, and say ‘Kids will be kids’, what we’re really calling them are young goats, presumably causing a bit of an adorable ruckus.’ We’re carrying on a 1,200 year old cultural joke, transmitted from our early ancestors into the present, without even realising it.
To this day, if you go to the Dutch region of West Frisia and meet someone who speaks the dialect of West Frisian, it sounds like a drunken, distorted English. But it’s *so close* even to Modern English that you have this very strange feeling that ‘I feel like I should be understanding this, but I can’t.’ They often sound like they’re speaking Dutch in a Yorkshire accent after a few too many pints of Black Sheep. Look it up on YouTube, someone went and talked to a West Frisian farmer using Old English (*old*, Anglo-Saxon English) about buying a cow, and they understood each other really quite well. it’s fascinating to me and I wish we got more of this.
I love your humour. Shame about your name choices they’re wonderful.
This is fascinating! I’m teaching my son about this whole period of history and trying to shape it into a Substack that other parents can use. Wish I could involve you but suspect you’re too busy.
Despite all of this western civilisation still somehow pulled together a rich heritage through the various aspects of Christian colonisation. I just cannot see what we will ever gain from all these Muslims. And I actually dread what future young people will call their kids. Mohammed and Aisha probably.
My nans name was Ethel. Had no idea of the reason til today.
I suspect a lot is familiarisation with Anglo-Saxon names. The saintly cults of Edward and Edmund were already mentioned. It seems to me the relatively common names Alfred and Harold do not sound strange in the way say Edred or Edwy or even Athelstan do simply because they were associated with famous kings that at least traditionally were taught in history lessons. Perhaps they have a ring of being slightly old fashioned but then that is a kind of fashion unto itself at times.
As for me, my parents gave all three of us biblical names, it seems these were the only ones they considered. All Hebrew names - although it has to be said my name - Samuel - has some distinguished literary associations from Coleridge, Johnson, Pepys, Butler and Beckett. My sister too named in this fashion. I think as some kind of rebellion I gave my daughter a Greek name, Alexandra.
I wondered why my half Danish grandfather (b. 1892) was christened Alfred. Guess Victorian fashion explains that oddity. Two of his children received Anglo Saxon names as well- Edward (hardly unusual) and Alice Winifred. Choice of names can be tricky. Had I been a boy, my forceful grandmother wanted me named Clovis. That might have caused difficulties at school.
Clovis was a hugely important figure in European history but it does rather sound better on a cat these days.
There was a hilarious Facebook click-bait piece not long ago on "Names Not To Give Your Children (unless you want them to hate you)." About sixty such names were highlighted, from Abner to Zenobia, and with snarky commentary: "Gertrude-- the first syllable rhymes with 'dirt', and the second syllable is just 'rude'"
There was quite a fad in the early years of the 1900s for names with the "er" sound in them - Gertrude, Verna, Bertha, Myrtle, Pearl, etc.. I find it entertaining that those were the trendy names of the day. I had great-aunts born in the early part of the 20th century named Bertha, Myrtle and Versa.
Clovis is better known nowadays in the French and German forms Louis and Ludwig.
Interestingly Anglo Saxon names seem to have had a remarkable and enduring popularity amongst Straits Chinese, Peranakan and Hong Kong people. More so than in England, I'd wager.
I was at school in Malaya with an Alfred, two Cuthberts, an Edwin and three Edwards, - all Hokkien and/or Cantonese speakers at home.
In London I have met an Alwin and an Edgar amongst the London Hong Kong diaspora.
Naturally they had Chinese names as well but why choose such obscure English historical figures for Christian names?
I had assumed latent British Imperial prestige but of course I thought it was impolite to ask.
I worked in China for a couple years and discovered that all my student used English pseudonyms. I had the temerity to ask my students about this. They told me that on entering middle or high school, those studying English would be offered a list of English names to use in class. They tended to chose those whose sound or meaning they liked, or those which had some resonance with their Chinese names.
When I suggested that this was all a bit Anglo-imperialist (many years ago and I was still a recovering leftie) they laughed at me. They told me it was their tradition, they rather liked it and I should deal with it. Most admirable.
I wonder how and why Bernie Taupin came up with "Alvin Tostig" as the name of Levon's father (and therefore I guess Tostig is the surname of Levon himself) in the song of that name.
My sons are William, Thomas, Allen (Patrick), James, Daniel, and Jonathan (Francis), because I wanted a Frank, and you can't just name a boy Francis these days, although Francisco is fine among Hispanics.
My daughters are Josephine, Eleanor, Sabina, and Kathleen.
lovely names. William and Francesca were our other choices
Some are family names, some are historical, and some were just picked out.
I'm out of the loop: what's wrong with Francis?
In the US, Francis is thought of as kind of a girly name.
It sounds so much like Frances.
True.
Something remarkable about living in Russia was how very few names were in circulation through the many time zones. It is striking to meet the Chukchi in the far east, with more in common with Inuit, routinely called Vladimir or Svetlana. After the revolution, many Russian names disappeared from the World entirely, only occasionally to pop up in the church or in monasteries. But there was also a fad for ideological or socialist realist names: boys were called Vilen - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - or even Traktor. My mother-in-law was called Lyutsia - shortened from Revolyutsia.
Orlando figures listed some of the names of children 'Octobered’ rather than baptised: Marx, Engelina, Rosa, Vladlen, Marlen, Oktiabrina, Revoliutsiia, Parizhkommuna, Molot and Serpina, Diktatura and even Terrora
Orlando Figes even
Here's an illustration of the major Germanic migrations in history:
https://x.com/TeutonicAesthet/status/1820147855639957698
Another dramatic example of rapid de-Germanization was of German-Americans during WWI!:
https://www.takimag.com/article/tracking-the-teutons/
https://www.npr.org/2017/04/07/523044253/during-world-war-i-u-s-government-propaganda-erased-german-culture
Love this article. Who knew that my American grandma Mildred was carrying forth the torch of names past.
Without that though I wonder about Islam. We’re so good at being conquered without being under Latin or Roman Christian power I imagine we’d have all been Muslim long ago. Great shame that they got here in the end.
We’re not going to be conquered by Islam.
We absolutely are I’m afraid. Just natural. They’re having 4 kids at least to us having 2 at most. We’re inviting 150k Muslim men in a year on boats. That’s larger than most historic invasions
60,000 per year max on boats, not all men and not all Muslim
110k last year and the vast majority are men. And even the women and kids as we know will not subscribe to Christianity. I think that’s significant enough a number at 60k. It’s a fiasco and it’s the end absolute end of Britain
Time for God to lend a hand to the Christian cause, then
I don’t think it outlandish to envisage an Islamic Britain, perhaps a more liberal version of Iran. My hope is for a wind and hydrogen bonanza, and we all carry on as we are. If not, I think most likely - not now, but in a decade or so - is a return to 1950s values, with almost no tolerance of non-British ways. But, also possible is what you foresee: a cohesive and fairly sizeable elite with financial support from outside, offering stability and a tough stance on crime and disorder.
For God’s sake. 6% of the UK population has a Muslim background -i.e. 94% of UK population do NOT have a Muslim background. Quite a few Muslim background people intermarry and their kids are not brought up Muslim. Absolute nonsense that the UK will go Islamic. About as likely as ‘the black man having the whiphand over the white man’ as Enoch said in the sixties.
I quite like Elite Theory, which says you don’t need anything like a majority to rule - see the Romans, the AS, the Normans, and the Merchants with Henry VIII and after, including in a way the New Model Army. A determined, disciplined sub-group can triumph, like the Bolsheviks in Russia and the NSDAP in Germany.
I’m a white man living in a city with a black minority. Black men don’t have a whip hand over me. Neither do the Muslims who live here. My friend’s daughter was at the terrible Manchester Arena attack but I wouldn’t therefore condemn all Muslims for this, anymore than I’d blame all Irish people for IRA terrorist atrocities.
ending this conversation now. Alison, please don't use that kind of language again. Didn't actually mean to delete David's comment and don't know how to undelete
We don’t want this Substack descending to the level of the hell site! Thanks for moderating Ed.
I like this quote from the book you cite:
“The world of the early Middle Ages was one of a diversity of rich local cultures and societies. The story of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries is of how that diversity was, in many ways, superseded by a uniformity. The cultural and political forms that spread in this period were marked, like the alphabet, by a lack of local association and resonance: the western town and the new religious orders were blueprints, and that means they were neither coloured nor constricted by powerful local ties.”
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/The_Making_of_Europe/qVnMDwAAQBAJ?hl=en
I briefly toyed with naming our son Dunstan, but was jovially threatened with divorce, and retreated. I'm glad to hear I am not the only one who does things like this.
I'm guessing you must have read the poetry of William Barnes, who developed an entire language - Anglish - based on what he thought English might have sounded like had the Normans not conquered? There must be a Substack post in that! I wrote a little piece about him years ago:
https://www.paulkingsnorth.net/barnes
I'd be interested in your view on my favourite Conquest conspiracy theory, which is that it was a religious as much as a political colonisation. William carried the Pope's banner at Hastings, which reportedly spooked some of the English, and was given some saints relics to hang around his neck for luck (which worked.) As well as replacing all the English landlords, he also replaced all the Bishops, with cronies loyal to Rome. Then began the demolition of all the wooden Anglo-Saxon churches and their replace with the new 'Romanesque' style. Then the homogenising of the liturgy and the importation of new European-style monastic orders. The Conquest was also, according to this theory, which I am quite convinced by, Roman as well as Norman.
Dunstan, who found the king in bed with a 'strumpet' on the day of the coronaton.
Planning to do a post on Anglish soon!
I think it's not even a conspiracy theory surely - it was all part of the great reform movement of the 11th century which saw the Church taking greater control over European affairs (plus the fact that the Normans dominated southern Italy)
I will look forward to the Anglish post.
Yes, I agree about the 11th century change. Here in Ireland the same thing happened after the Normans arrived of course. Fun fact: St Patrick appears on none of the early medieval high crosses that remain here. St Anthony and St Paul of Thebes were the favoured saints. Patrick becomes the mascot of the twelfth century Roman centralisers.
Time to return both England and Ireland to pre-Norman/Roman Orthodoxy, if you ask me. Somebody needs to start a movement.
It’s funny but i was wondering if now really is the time. It feels like it is. I genuinely feel so.
The process of centralisation went back much further than the 11th century though. The newly converted Anglo-Saxons were Rome's battering ram against what they saw as the perversions of the early Irish church in Ireland and Scotland. See Bede's account of the Synod of Whitby.
That's a fair point. Probably after Whitby Rome was always going to get the upper hand.
As my friend from the Economist says, globalists always win!
Make Angland Great Again!
It's always good to have friends in high places.
The Papacy went through a period of serious degeneracy after the Carolinian era with popes too busy grifting for lands and accumulating mistresses and catamites to worry about enforcing church discipline. The Conquest was roughly contemporary with the Hildebrandtine reforms.
Indeed:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeculum_obscurum
A renewed confidence of Latin Christendom towards re-civilizing (i.e. Christianizing) the barbarians. It makes me wonder if Anglo-Saxon words and names would have declined even without the Norman Conquest.
Tom Holland has recently done a podcast on how this process was foreshadowed by Emperor Otto of Germany marrying a Byzantine princess Theophanu:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wUGVUh6qDyw
Interestingly enough English retained the two "th" sounds which the other Germanic languages,(except Icelandic, another insular tongue) lost. And alone of Indoeuropean languages English still has the original "w" sound in words like "will", "wind" and "work".
Re: When I was growing up ‘Ethel’ was still a stereotypical elderly woman’s name
In the US Ethel is mainly associated with Ethel Mertz, Lucy Ricardo's partner in capers and pecadillos.
As for Chad it's now become a somewhat derisive name for a certain sort of high status young man who has all the luck with the young ladies. I did know a Chad in college. He was a notorious party animal-- and yet managed to excel in class, even getting a perfect score a tough advanced math midterm the morning after he was shown on the TV news in the midst of the uproarious University of Michigan basketball championship riot.
it would have been very disappointing if the Chad from college had been averse to parties. So sounds like a real Chad
C’mon. A “Chad” is a “jock” in US alt-right parlance, I believe.
I've never heard it used that way. I've heard the Incel-derived complaint that "Chad" is monopolizing all the women. But this Chad is very good looking and well-provided for, generally with a good job, though inherited money works too. He may or may not be notably athletic beyond what is needful to keep himself looking good.
I stand corrected!
My robustly Danelaw inhabiting, farming stock grandfather and uncle were / are called Harold and Eric respectively (although others in the family follow the usual apostle / monarch route).
"Oswald, tarnished both by Britain’s most notorious fascist and the man who killed Kennedy, seems especially doomed." I like to think you believe a mad conspiracy that these are the same person.
Boris Johnson naming his kid Wilfred has a precendent; David Frost's son is called Wilfred too. Are people who are desperate to be part of the establishment reclaiming the name?
I’m often struck by the extent to which we really are just totally deprived of any understanding of how deeply Germanic, and, to a lesser but still very significant extent, Nordic, roots.
This is only a small example. But I’m 28. Growing up, for some reason I always thought of the word ‘kid’ or ‘kids’ as being a bit of an Americanism. Us British say ‘Children’, Americans say ‘Kids’, and thus explains their rampant idiocy in comparison, so on and so forth.
Kid actually derives from the Old Norse words ‘Ki∂’. That strange ‘d’ (known as the letter ‘thorn’, a letter our language had up until something like the 16th century) is pronounced something like ‘th’, but sort of roll your tongue as you make the sound and you’re not far off.
‘Ki∂’ meant ‘Young goat’. So 1,200 years on, when we casually laugh at our childrens’ hapless, chaotic fun, and say ‘Kids will be kids’, what we’re really calling them are young goats, presumably causing a bit of an adorable ruckus.’ We’re carrying on a 1,200 year old cultural joke, transmitted from our early ancestors into the present, without even realising it.
To this day, if you go to the Dutch region of West Frisia and meet someone who speaks the dialect of West Frisian, it sounds like a drunken, distorted English. But it’s *so close* even to Modern English that you have this very strange feeling that ‘I feel like I should be understanding this, but I can’t.’ They often sound like they’re speaking Dutch in a Yorkshire accent after a few too many pints of Black Sheep. Look it up on YouTube, someone went and talked to a West Frisian farmer using Old English (*old*, Anglo-Saxon English) about buying a cow, and they understood each other really quite well. it’s fascinating to me and I wish we got more of this.