Product Code Database
Natanleod, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, was a king of the Britons. His inclusion in the Chronicle is widely believed to be the product of folk etymology.
Natanleaga, however, is generally thought not to preserve the name of a defeated British king, but is instead derived from the Old English element næt ("wet") (in its weak oblique form natan).Sims-Williams, "Settlement"Yorke, Kings and Kingdoms, p. 4. The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society, ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), s.v. NETLEY MARSH. However this hypothesized weak oblique form is not otherwise attested according to Bernard Mees. Potential onomastic evidence for a Celtic origin exists: a recent find of pottery at a Roman settlement at Healam Bridge west of Pickhill, North Yorkshire contains the Gaulish name Natonus, which could be linguistically related. According to this theory the second element of this name is the Old English lēod ("prince" or "chief") and the source used by the Chronicle's compiler may have read something like "Natan leod". Edwin Guest in 1842 suggested a similar derivation, although lacking the Healam Bridge evidence supposed " Nate to be a fem. subst. signifying a district, Natanleod will mean the Prince of Nate, and Natanleaga the lea of Nate."
If his origin is as an invented persona, Natanleod is not unique in the early part of the Chronicle. Similar folk etymologies are believed to have produced the Jutes king Wihtgar, Port, the supposed eponym of Portsmouth, and others.Campbell, Anglo-Saxons, pp. 26–27. James Campbell notes the similarity between such Anglo-Saxon traditions and the Middle Irish language dindshenchas, such as the Metrical Dindshenchas, which record traditions about places.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Natanleod was frequently identified with Ambrosius Aurelianus, or even Uther Pendragon. Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, refers to this identification with scepticism: "By the unanimous, though doubtful, conjecture of our antiquarians, Ambrosius is confounded with Natanleod, who lost his own life and five thousand of his subjects in a battle against Cerdic, the West Saxon."
|
|
