Name Quest, Part III

The Secret Saint

L.G.C. Smith

As part of an extended series of posts that originated with the topic of Names, I’ve been chronicling my discoveries about where my last name came from. Two weeks ago, I left off with the question of whom the not-so-randomly distributed Coddington and Cuddington parishes of the English Midlands might have been named for.

The twelfth-century mention of a St. Cotta in association with the Anglo-Saxon minster at Breedon-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire spurred me to try to find more traces of this elusive fellow. I boned up on British history in the early medieval period. I stuck my toe into the scholarship on the early English church. I became interested in Anglo-Saxon hagiography. Eventually, I discovered the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England database (http://www.pase.ac.uk).

Using all these tools, I found a shadowy mid-seventh-century Northumbrian nobleman and abbot who looks like a candidate for the source of the place name Coddington. Here’s a summary of the evidence from textual sources.

Vita Sancti Wilfrithi or Life of St. Wilfrid, attributed to Eddius Stephanus, or Stephen of Ripon, early eighth century, 709-720 AD.

Wilfrid was a major force in organizing the early Anglo-Saxon Church in the mid-late seventh century. He was a hard-line devotee of Roman, as opposed to Celtic, practice, and he was a man of extraordinary energy and administrative ability. He also sounds like kind of a pill – not a meek and beneficent sort of saint. He comes across through the ages as arrogant, argumentative and relentless; the sort of man you might respect but not necessarily like. He’s also one of the most readily documented figures in Britain in the seventh century.

Wilfrid got his start in the Church when he was fourteen-years-old. He went to the Northumbrian Queen Eanflæd, wife of King Oswiu, to ask to be allowed to give himself to the service of God. Eanflæd granted him permission to do so, assigning him to “One of the king’s most loving and faithful companions, a nobleman called Cudda, had also resolved, on account of his paralysis, to give up worldly ambition and dedicate himself to monastic life at Lindisfarne. The queen commended the newly arrived Wilfrid to join him in the service of God and act as his servant.” (from Webb, J. F.; Farmer, D. H., eds. (1998), The Age of Bede: Bede — Life of Cuthbert; Eddius Stephanus — Life of Wilfrid; Bede — Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow; The Anonymous History of Abbot Ceolfrith; with the Voyage of St Brendan (Revised ed.), London: Penguin Books.)

Wilfrid is an important link in the scarce and scattered mentions of Cudda. Because we know the dates of Wilfrid’s life, we can broadly estimate when Cudda lived to see how that correlates to what we know about the seventh century foundations of the Coddington parishes. Wilfrid lived from 633-709 AD, so in 647 when he was fourteen, Cudda was clearly an adult. We don’t know how old he was, but it seems reasonable, based on Stephanus’s text, to assume he might have been considerably older than Wilfrid. It’s well within the realm of probability that he would have been old enough to take a lead in organizing the Coddington minsters in the late 620s when the Cheshire sites first appear in church records.

Bede’s Life of Cuthbert (from The Age of Bede, cited above)

Cudda is also mentioned in hagiographical material on St. Cuthbert, but in quite a different manner. In contrast to the rather modern sounding factual report from Stephanus, Bede ties Cudda directly to the miracle of Cuthbert’s incorruptible body. In Chapter 17, Bede reports this tale, which he had directly from “Herefrith, a sincerely devout priest and present abbot of Lindisfarne.” Cuthbert reputedly gave these instructions to the monks of his community when he knew he was dying: “When God takes my soul, bury me here close to the oratory, on the south side and to the east of that holy cross I myself put up. To the north of the oratory you will find a stone coffin hidden under the turf, a present from the holy Abbot Cudda. Put my body in it, wrapped in the cloth you will find there.”

If this is the same Cudda who was Wifrid’s master, and I think it is, it’s unlikely he gave Cuthbert this stone coffin. He was probably dead long before Cuthbert came to Lindisfarne. However, I don’t think the thrust of this text is primarily historical. Its purpose appears to me to be to link a lesser saint, Cudda, with Cuthbert, who was a much bigger deal. Whether it was Bede or his informants who sought to bolster Cudda’s cult is impossible to say. Someone was tending to keeping Cudda’s memory alive. Perhaps the center of his cult was the shrine of St. Cotta at Breedon-on-the-Hill, which lies in the center of Mercian territory around which the Coddington parishes are located.

It’s significant that Cudda is identified here as an abbot and not a priest or bishop. Abbots didn’t have to be ordained, nor did they necessarily give up their lands and secular responsibilities. Later in the seventh century, both royal and noble families founded monasteries run by members of their families, including women. Monastic rule was not uniform in the first half of the seventh century. As the Anglo-Saxon Church came into being, there were a lot of irregular practices, including married clergy. Being an abbot was as much about administration as it was about teaching.

No mention is made of where Cudda’s minster or minsters might have been. Of the known early Northumbrian minsters (with the exception of Lindisfarne), most were founded in the last half of the century, and he isn’t on the lists of abbots. Bede and other Northumbrian chroniclers would not necessarily have been interested in or able to find out as much about Mercian minsters, partly because Northumbria and Mercia were rival kingdoms through most of the seventh century. Also, the Mercian kings didn’t convert until quite late. The Coddingtons look like good candidates for Cudda’s network of minsters, even if Bede might not have been familiar with them in the early eighth century.

Another very old text, the Durham Liber Vitae, which is believed to have first laid upon the altar at Lindisfarne and moved with the monks when the late eighth century Viking attacks forced them to flee with St. Cuthbert’s incorrupt body, eventually settling their community at Durham, contains a list of abbots. Cudda is the second name on this list. He wasn’t an abbot at Lindisfarne, but if he retired there, as the story from Stephanus goes, and he was an abbot, it would make sense to find his name there.

The last text where Cudda is mentioned in in Willibrord’s Calendar of Echternach. Willibrord was a Northumbrian missionary to Frisia. He was a student of Wilfrid’s and he included several Northumbrian saints in his calendar. Cudda appears here as Cydda (I’ll spare you the linguistics this time, but it’s almost certainly the same name) and his Feast Day is given as July 28^th or 29^th. No one seems to know who he is, but I would lay odds this is Wilfrid’s teacher, the venerable Abbot Cudda, a Northumbrian nobleman who revived an older British monastic network that had been laid low by Æthelfrith of Bernicia – who was probably a cousin. Cudda nurtured some of the earliest English minsters in an era scholars know little about.

It’s impossible to say if the story I’ve constructed is historically accurate or not, but I’ve been astounded to find it hold up, strengthen even, as I continue to learn more about this period of history. Starting from a name, I discovered a fascinating tale that connects farther back than I could ever have dreamed. Cudda was all but lost, but his name persisted for fourteen hundred years, concealing secrets for me to slowly untangle. It’s been a satisfying quest, and it’s not done yet. At some point, I’ll have to write this up in academic lingo with all the proper arguments, references and citations. It would be nice someday to see St. Cudda’s name back on the lists of Anglo-Saxon saints.

Name Quest, Part II

L.G.C. Smith

Two weeks ago, I wrote about my search to discover where my last name, Coddington, came from. What I expected to be a fairly straightforward answer, that it’s an English place name of a common Anglo-Saxon type, got more interesting when I realized that most of the Coddington/Cuddington parishes in England had church foundations in the seventh century. That’s early, even in a country where plenty of villages date back to Roman times, and no small few are older than that.

Picking up the tale again, on GPT1 (Gene Pool Tour #1) we stayed in a time share in Staffordshire, of all places, because it was almost equidistant between so many of the Coddingtons. After a week spent sussing them out and reading their parish church brochures, my sister, Sarah, had had enough poking about. She insisted we spend a day doing normal sightseeing: a ruined castle and Sherwood Forest. I did manage to stick the priory church at Breedon-on-the-Hill on the itinerary because I wanted to see the Saxon stone carvings there.

After slogging around in the rain at the castle ruins at Ashby-de-la-Zouche (there are better castle ruins, but that was the closest), we turned up at Breedon around noon. In the car park, the first thing we saw was a couple in a Fiat Panda making a go of breeding on the hill without quite enough steam on the windows to ensure complete privacy. My father still thinks this is one of the punniest coincidences he’s ever witnessed.

We poked through the churchyard, then went in to see the carvings. Dad and Sarah zipped around and left Mom and me trapped by an old codger from Leicester who proceeded on a low-key rant (we were in a church, after all) about how Leicester had hardly any English people left in it, and how sick he was of all the immigrants. Uncomfortable, but not wanting to be rude, I read the church history brochure while my mother disengaged as gracefully as possible. One line in the brochure, however, nearly obscured this unvarnished view of English social tensions. It said that Hugh Candidus, a monk of Peterborough, noted in the 12th century that in the Priory Church of St. Mary and St. Hardulf at Breedon, there was a shrine to a St. Cotta in Anglo-Saxon times.
St. Cotta? Who was he? When did he live? How’d he get to be a saint? Might he have something to do with the Coddingtons?

The difference between the –tt- and the –dd- isn’t necessarily substantive. Medieval spellings make this quite clear. Even in the 21st century, I can’t tell you how many times my last name has been misspelled with –tt- instead of the double d. (We are not fairy squashers!) The long /d/ is often articulated in everyday speech as an alveolar flap, which is, strictly speaking, neither a /t/ nor a /d/. Many people pronounce ‘later’ and ‘ladder’ with the identical sound for the middle. It’s not phonemic, but exists as an allophone of both intervocalic /t/ and /d/ in American English. There’s an IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) symbol for it, a kind of small r-shaped thing. The original –dd- in Coddingtont has sometimes been spelled as –rr-. There’s an entire branch of the family, confirmed through DNA analysis, that spells their name Corrington.

It was possible that St. Cotta might have been St. Codda when written by someone else’s hand. Or even St. Cudda. The original vowel wasn’t pronounced as it is in either Standard American English or Standard British English pronunciations of /o/ and /u/. It was a bit more fronted and rounded, and when followed by the suffix –ington, the /i/ further fronted in a process called i-umlaut. It’s a sound change thing in Old English. By the 16th century, in the southeast of England, mostly Surrey and Kent, the rounded vowel eventually influenced the perception of the initial consonant producing the spelling ‘Quiddington.’ There are other geographical/social contexts where it looks like the rounding and fronting was lost very early, perhaps by the eighth century, and possibly due to influence from local British dialects (this may be a stretch; I’m still working on it) producing Cadda or Catta. That’s another story, though, and I’ve probably already delved too far into phonology for most folks as it is (and not enough for linguists -- sorry!).

After the trip, I began running down all the obscure Anglo-Saxon saints I could find. No other mentions of St. Cotta. Drat. But I didn’t give up. I went back to my maps.

I couldn’t help noticing that the Coddingtons, (shorthand for all the various spellings), appear in a ring around the Midlands of England. The answer to what this might signify might seem obvious to those of you who know even a little about the Anglo-Saxon period. It wasn’t clear to me because I didn’t know much more than that there had been Anglo-Saxons at some point. I’d been boning up on Roman Britain for a few years, but past 5oo AD, I was lost until the 15th century, and I was on shaky ground there.

Nonetheless, that ring of names kept niggling at me. It couldn't be a random distribution, but I don't do math, so I couldn't really prove that. I started checking on other common –ington names to see how they were distributed. Doddington, Billington, Addington, Ellington, Eddington and more. Sometimes I saw a suggestion of a regional focus to the distribution, as with Piddingtons in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire. Others ranged north to south and east to west. As one example, there are Doddington place names from Kent to Northumberland with lots in between. No other fairy rings jumped out at me. There might be some, but I didn’t find them.
[Image]Mercia in the 8th Century or so

Eventually, I learned enough to recognize that the Coddingtons formed a ring that roughly followed the bounds of the Kingdom of Mercia in the mid-seventh to eighth centuries. Boundaries were pretty changeable then, so it was a bit hard to tell given my lack of Early Medieval Britain expertise. The Surrey Cuddington where my family most likely came from was perhaps too far to the south and east, though the Chertsey Abbey charter from around 674 AD that first mentions that lands in Cuddington were granted to the abbey by Frithuwold, a sub-king under Wulfhere of Mercia. At least some of the time, then, Mercian interests held sway in the area.
Next I wondered what the link between these sites might be. The simplest reason appeared to be that they represented a monastic network. I learned that the growth of minsters, the Old English word for monasteries, exploded in the mid to later seventh century. As the Anglo-Saxon kings converted to Christianity, they endowed the Church with extensive lands. Members of royal households often became abbesses and abbots in control of these lands. The practice gradually worked its way down the social ladder so that many landed families established their own minsters. Certainly many of these foundations were piously motivated, but the tax advantages of converting family land to Church land under family control seems to have been at least as big a factor.
I examined the Coddington sites more closely. I availed myself of the wondrous Ordnance Survey Explorer Series Maps, and pondered the many Coddingtons for hours. And hours. I stuck the maps up on the wall in my hallway and stared at them some more. To my delight, place name and geographic patterns emerged.

Most of the sites were within a couple of miles of a major Roman road. There seem to be Roman Roads everywhere you look in Britain, so that might not mean a great deal, but these included some of the Really Big Roads. The Dee Valley sites in Cheshire are close to the extension of Watling Street north of Wroxeter (Viroconium) to Chester (Deva). The Surrey site is on Stane Street from London to Chichester. The Nottinghamshire site is close to the Fosse Way between Leicester (Ratae) and Lincoln (Lindum). The Derbyshire site near Crich was close to the road from Derby (Derventio) to Rotherbury, and the ones in Herefordshire and Buckinghamshire are also close to major routes. The Vale Royal site in Cheshire is along a supposed Roman road from Chester to the saltworks at Northwich.

Most of these sites are also close to a major river crossing or bridge. The Cheshire sites are close to the Dee, the Derbyshire site to the Derwent, and the Nottinghamshire site lies slightly to the east of the River Trent. Three of these along the northern arc of the circle share some surprising place name clusters, as well.

Coddington, Cheshire sits next to Aldersey Parish and a couple of miles west of the crossing of the River Dee at Farndon. Coddington, Derbyshire sits across the River Derwent from Alderwasley Parish. Coddington, Notts, is a few miles east of an ancient crossing of the Trent near the Roman Ad Pontem, now Thorpe Parish, which sits immediately south of another Farndon.

It’s possible that 'Farndon' derives from an Old English fern root, but given the presence of the alder names, I think it’s more likely to come from the old Celtic root fearn, which also means alder. Alder trees grow well in damp soil, and once cut, their wood doesn’t rot in damp ground as quickly as most. It was often used for bridges in pre-industrial times. There’s a certain sense to riverside settlements using alder or fearn in their names, but why would these three Coddington parishes occur next to them? Once again, that doesn’t appear random. But why alders?

[Image]
Fearn is also one of the Ogham letters, the Celtic alphabet used primarily in inscriptions in the sub-Roman and early medieval periods in Britain and Ireland. The letters have tree and plant names. They’ve been associated with both Druidic practice and the early Celtic Church. I assumed a lot of this to be faux folklore manufactured during Victorian times when anything Celtic was fair game for highly romanticized treatment. However, studying these place names made me willing to reconsider that. Particularly when it struck me that the first syllable of Coddington sounds fairly similar to Welsh coed, which means a wood, timber, or trees. Even more so when I finally noticed that the Cheshire Coddington and Cuddington west of Malpas are quite close to the site of what Bede describes as a major British monastery at Bangor Monachorum, and which is called Bangor-ys-y-Coed today. (First Breedon on the hill, and now Bangor under the wood. We poor Coddballs are doomed to indignity.)

Supposedly, the Celtic Church’s liturgical year may have been influenced by the Ogham tree names, which were also used as a calendar, with a month for each tree. The trees each had a spiritual significance passed down from druid times that the early Celtic Church may have incorporated. The Alder month was the month in spring in which Easter fell. The alder represented resurrection and the teaching of the tenets of Christianity. The cross has long been referred to as a tree. I think the Coed in Bangor’s modern name may have arisen out of an older symbolic use of ‘wood’ as the Cross.

Here’s Bede’s account of the monastery at Bangor:
For afterwards the warlike king of the English, Æthelfrith, of whom we have spoken, having raised a mighty army, made a very great slaughter of that heretical nation, at the city of Legions, (Chester) which by the English is called Legacaestir, but by the Britons more rightly Car-legion. Being about to give battle, he observed their priests, who were come together to offer up their prayers to God for the combatants, standing apart in a place of greater safety; he inquired who they were, and what they came together to do in that place. Most of them were of the monastery of Bangor, in which, it is said, there was so great a number of monks, that the monastery being divided into seven parts, with a superior set over each, none of those parts contained less than three hundred men, who all lived by the labour of their hands. Many of these, having observed a fast of three days, had come together along with others to pray at the aforesaid battle, having one Brocmail for their protector, to defend them, whilst they were intent upon their prayers, against the swords of the barbarians. King Æthelfrith being informed of the occasion of their coming, said; "If then they cry to their God against us, in truth, though they do not bear arms, yet they fight against us, because they assail us with their curses." He, therefore, commanded them to be attacked first, and then destroyed the rest of the impious army, not without great loss of his own forces. About twelve hundred of those that came to pray are said to have been killed, and only fifty to have escaped by flight. Brocmail, turning his back with his men, at the first approach of the enemy, left those whom he ought to have defended unarmed and exposed to the swords of the assailants. Thus was fulfilled the prophecy of the holy Bishop Augustine, though he himself had been long before taken up into the heavenly kingdom, that the heretics should feel the vengeance of temporal death also, because they had despised the offer of eternal salvation. (from Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England, Book II, Ch. II)

I don’t think the Bangor monasteries were all at Bangor, though that’s been the common assumption. I think they were spread out over a wide range of British territory before the Angles and Saxons appeared, and that they had centers of teaching that served a wider community of farms and settlements. I think they kept up roads and bridges in the post-Roman period, as well as providing other services. They were central points for social and economic organization as well as religion.

The Coddingtons existed as part of this monastic network for a long while before they were called Coddington. After Æthelfrith’s massacre of so many of the Bangor monks, I think the network was crippled for many years. Around 625 AD, I believe Hugh Candidus’s St. Cotta began to rebuild the Bangor monasteries, establishing new teaching centers next to the old Alder-named locations of the old houses.

All that was left was to figure out who he might have been. Next up: The Secret Saint.

A Name Saga

Part One
L.G.C. Smith

My parents are great, but I'm giving them a bye this week in favor of going to back to our previous topic, names. I've always loved names of all kinds. Place names. Personal names. Surnames. Saint's names. Names of gods and goddesses. Made-up names. Porno names.

Hi Mom, Hi Dad.

When I was eight or nine, I looked up the meaning of my names. Lynn: Boring and common, but redeemed by being a Celtic water word. Llyn in Welsh is a lake or pool. Linn in Northern England and Scotland is a pool at the foot of a waterfall, a waterfall, or a steep-sided mini-gorge in a stream course. Gail: For my aunt. Since I liked her, that was good, plus it can be construed as a variant of 'gael,' which supports the Celtic theme nicely.

Then there's my surname. Coddington. (Smith is my husband's name, and I only use it as a pen name.) Other than identifying it as an English place name, I didn't get very far with figuring it out until I made it a part of the trip prep for my family's first Gene Pool Tour of England in 2002. My parents, one of my sisters and I decided to visit some of the Coddington parishes as a means of getting us off the usual tourist runs.


We didn't know if our line of American Coddingtons had come from one of these parishes. We were pretty sure we came from an ancestral line out of Surrey -- from Bletchingley and Dorking, a proud pair of English place names, not quite rude, but definitely yuk-it-uppers. Not that English people necessarily find them so. I once asked a guy who lived in Reigate, smack between Dorking and Bletchingley, and who had just told an off-color tale from his Yeoman Warder days if anyone joked about those names. "Oh." His eyebrows beetled thoughtfully. "Because of dorks. No, not really."

Both my parents have ancestors who came from Dorking in the 1500s,
raising the ugly specter of in-breeding. Gah.

Eventually, DNA analysis confirmed that though we have a gap in our genealogical paper trail in the late 18th century in New York State, our immigrant ancestors are indeed Stockdale Coddington, barber-surgeon of Bletchingley, and his son, John, whose mother came from Dorking. They showed up in Massachusetts in the 1630s bringing their name with them. If they brought any stories about where it came from, they didn't get passed down along with the nearly static y-DNA haplotype.

My attempts at sussing out the meaning of Coddington (or Cuddington, as they're the same name in different guises due to spelling vagaries, sound change and vowel rounding issues over time) invariably resulted in a definition along the lines of "the settlement of Codda/Cudda's people." The -ing means 'the people of' in Old English (OE), and the -ton denotes their farm or settlement. This was neither helpful nor exciting.

More interesting, although not very flattering, was the interpretation offered by Reaney & Wilson in "A Dictionary of English Surnames." They posit the root codd as coming from an unattested Anglo-Saxon personal name or nickname, probably Codda. The meaning, they claim, is obscure, possibly coming from OE cod(d), which means a bag. Alas. Slang being nothing new, you know where this went. Codpiece. Cods. Charming. R&W write that the name might have been used for a man with a belly like a bag, and that doesn't improve matters. Especially since we have several of those in my branch of the Coddingtons. It appears that many other Coddingtons have escaped this self-fulfilling name curse. We have not been so lucky.

Some Coddington men. My dad says his Uncle Merrill's nickname was Uncle Barrel.
Uncle Merrill has been gone for decades, but the body-type continues.

Still, I was willing to accept this somewhat disappointing derivation. I dutifully reported my findings to my family, who all thought it riotously funny and appropriate. From my perspective, as the barrelliest of the bunch, the upside was that we were not named after codfish. If anything, the fish appeared more likely to have been named after our bag-bellied ancestors.

The age of Coddington as a place name was the first thing to surprise me (in a good way) and prompt me to look more closely at whether we had been named for our stomachs, or other bag-like appendages. (Ew.) Domesday lists several Coddingtons, spelled variously. There is Cotintune in Cheshire. Cotingtune in Herefordshire. Cotintun and Cotintone in Nottinghamshire. Cuntitone (that one seems to have gone the opposite direction of the male cods) in Cheshire. Codintone in Surrey.


These correspond to the contemporary parishes or villages of Coddington, Cheshire (east of Farndon); Cuddington, Cheshire (west of Malpas); the other Cuddington in Cheshire, in the map above, west of Northwich; Coddington, Herefordshire (north of Ledbury); Coddington, Notts (east of Newark on Trent); and the almost vanished Cuddington, Surrey. In addition, there's a Cuddington in Buckinghamshire (west of Aylesbury); a Kiddington in Oxfordshire between Woodstock and Chipping Norton that used to be called Coddington or Cuddington, I don't recall which; and a defunct Coddington parish in Derbyshire that has been long absorbed into Crich.


Thus on that first GPT, we had Herefordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, and Nottinghamshire Coddingtons on our To Visit list. We made them all. We didn't make the Surrey Cuddington, the most likely candidate for our ancestral origins, because I hadn't found it yet. Later I learned that Henry VIII took it over to build Nonsuch Palace and have a hunting ground that made a continuous run from there to Hampton Court. He razed the church and village and sent the incumbent Coddington off to Ixworth, Suffolk with a fine priory recently liberated from the Church thanks to the Dissolution. The Surrey Cuddington parish persisted somehow as an odd, almost lost thing for many years, though they have a church now in Worcester Park.

Our visits to the Coddington churches showed that these parishes were older than the entries in the Domesday Book, which was done in 1086-7 AD. Considerably older. In the churchyard outside All Saints Coddington in Herefordshire stands a Saxon preaching cross. The church history leaflet claimed it was seventh or eighth century. The Coddington in Cheshire appears to have been founded in 627 AD through a charter out of Canterbury under Archbishop Honorius. This is shockingly early for an Anglo-Saxon minster. The Cheshire Cuddington near Northwich was established under the aegis of Archbishop of Canterbury Theodore. His term of office began in 668 AD. The Surrey Cuddington is mentioned in the charter documents for Chertsey Abbey in 674 AD. The surviving charter is probably a forgery replicating earlier documents that had been lost or damaged, but it's generally thought to be fairly accurate in confirming the abbey's known lands.


When we visited these parishes, I didn't know that there wasn't much of an Anglo-Saxon church in the early seventh century. The parish system was centuries in the future. English minsters were only beginning their development. There was an established British Church in the early seventh century, but Augustine and his Roman successors in Canterbury didn't typically get on well with the British bishops and clergy. When the two factions did talk they argued about precedence -- Roman or Celtic authority was at stake -- and how to calculate the date of Easter. This was a sticking point that seems to have represented tensions between the traditional Celtic liturgical calendar and that used in Roman observance. It was nominally straightened out at the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD, but not fully settled in actual practice for many decades after that. By 700 AD, the Anglo-Saxon Church had grown tremendously with minsters, or monasteries, all over what was slowly becoming England. These places called Coddington were already old, established sites within this framework by the time Bede was a boy.


It's unlikely to be a coincidence that so many of the places called Coddington were established as such early religious centers for the emerging Anglo-Saxon Church. All these years later, almost 14 centuries, that history and a common name link them. I couldn't find any known links anywhere, so I started looking harder. There's more here than a random bunch of fellows named Codda or Cudda for their bag, er, bellies, leaving their names across the landscape. For one thing, they don't have the same kind of distribution that many other common -ington names have. There are none in Northumberland. None in Devon. They make a ring around the Midlands.

At this point, I'm going to break off. I'll resume this tale when my next turn comes around in two weeks.

Maddee Spills on Names

The other day I walk into a local store where I shop now and then, and meet up with a woman who is very nice but let's just say decidedly odd. She's uber tan, uses greasepaint or some such thing to tame her wild hair, and has a mustache. She's poring over photos spread out on the counter.

"Whatcha looking at?" I ask.

"My daughter just had a baby!" says she.

"Oh she's cute!" [sorta] "What'd they name her?"

"Mitten."

Ummmmmm... what is the proper response to that?

MITTEN? WTF??



Okay, so I have a THING about names. I love names. I soooo agree with the rest of the Pens that names should mean something, they should match the person, have the right FEELING.

Which is why, when I got divorced some years back, I decided it was time to reinvent myself with a new name. And I did. I dropped the little Swiss Girl name I was born with; traded it in for the name of an island off the coast of Morocco, of all things. Why? I was trying to give honor to my father, whose family came from there. And Madeira is a lovely place, so I've heard. Full of colorful flowers and tropical vistas and that works for me.



The problem is that as lovely a word as Madeira is, it didn't completely "fit" me. It's a little too pretty. Or a little too formal. Or something. So I shortened it to Maddee, which feels more like ME.

Little side note: the reason for the weird spelling is that I wanted to own my domain name (and maddiejames.com is taken -- she's a romance writer). Now how many people would take domain name availability into account when naming themselves? I bow at the altar of the internet.



I know people roll their eyes about me changing my name in my 40s -- I realize it's weird. But life is an adventure, right?

I did it a little earlier for my son. Yep, he was born with a different name too -- and no, he wasn't adopted from some foreign country where his original name was hard to pronounce. He was born in my very own stomach (well you know what I mean). The thing is, we were SUPPOSED to have a girl. I was so positive of this that when my husband chose the name Quade "if" it were to be a boy I said "whatever." As far as I was concerned, it was going to be a girl named Quinn. And to make a very long story short, a boy popped out and my husband said "his name is Quade, right?" and I was like "whatever" 'cause you know how after you have a baby you're so relieved that it's OUT that nothing else really matters?

But really? Quade? Does it not sound very grownup and not unlike the hero of a lusty romance? And can anyone really bond with a baby with a lusty romance name? I couldn't take it. I had to change it. This after the official birth certificate and 100 Christmas cards welcoming Baby Quade to the world.



Christmas cards went out the next year which said: "Same baby, new name."

I should have done that after my divorce. "Same woman, new name."

Well hopefully not the same woman. Hopefully better.

So Quade became Riley. The name is much more common now, but 15 years ago, when my sweet little patootie was born, I had never heard of it. At least not until a big bald man walked into my office one summer morning selling strawberries. I bought some, asked his name, and fell in love. With the name, not him (lest you think that's why I got divorced).



(I know this man isn't bald but he's wearing a strawberry suit. A STRAWBERRY SUIT! Doesn't the internet rock?)

And now I am finally getting to the POINT of this post, which is that unlike my son, named after a strawberry peddler, my daughter was named after a character in a BOOK. And really, what could be better than that? I love good character names, love them with a passion. And when I read The Prince of Tides 18 years ago, I fell in love with the name Savannah. Like Riley, back then it was quite unusual. And the character was beautiful and had flaming red hair. Okay, she was a crazy person. But it was still a great name. So when my little sweetie was born with a head of bright red hair, how much more perfect could that have been?



Little side note #2: saying "sweetie" reminds me -- when I was married, I used to call my husband "sweet pea" and sometimes "sweetness." And one day on accident I put them together. Wait for it....

Okay back to book character names. Here are my faves of all time...

Novalee Nation in Billie Letts' Where the Heart Is. One of my favorite books, and one in which names are very important. There's a very curvy character who names all her children after snack foods (Brownie, Praline, Baby Ruth, you get the idea...).



Scout (and Atticus) Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Of course Harper Lee is a damn cool name too. And Gregory Peck? HOT!



Antsy Carruth in Gar Haywood's Man Eater. I adore that name -- can't you just picture this woman?



Saxon Roberts in Jack London's The Valley of the Moon. Seriously awesome name. I would have named my daughter Saxon if Saxon Mack hadn't sounded so weird.



Troo O'Malley and her sister Sally O'Malley in Lesley Kagen's Whistling in the Dark. Troo is SUCH a cute name. And Sally O'Malley. I mean come on -- what's cuter than that?



My daughter (when she's older, please) wants to name her daughter Huckleberry. Another literary gem.

Sophie, it will be the height of true fandom when someone names their son Goat. You wait -- it's gonna happen.

xox me, maddee

When Gigi Isn't Gigi and Anand Can't Be Anand

By Gigi -- whose name isn't really Gigi

When I was around the age I was in this picture here, I'm told I started calling myself "Gigi."

It's not really my name, but apparently I wasn't so fond of the other nickname everyone wanted to call me: "Gina."

If you've ever met me for more than five minutes, you can tell I'm so NOT a Gina. Why? Well, I'm not exactly sure. And there you have the mystery of names. But there's definitely something to it. Over 30 years later, I'm still Gigi. And it still suits me much better than Gina.

It often takes me a while to settle on character names, because I want to have that same feeling that a character fits with their name. When I hit upon the perfect name right away, it's pretty damn exciting.

For example, one of the main characters in the book I'm working on now jumped off the page as Anand Vishwanathan. A seafaring adventurer from the south of India, it was so completely his name.

Only... It turns out Anand Viswanathan is a super-famous Indian chess player. And not just any famous chess player -- but a guy who happens to be the current World Chess Champion.

Unfortunately, he looks nothing like my Anand Vishwanathan. Somehow it doesn't seem a good idea to leave my Anand with the same name as a superstar known as the "Tiger of Madras."

There are the pesky little legal reasons to consider (yes, I work with lawyers, and my agent is a lawyer, so I hear way too much about legal issues in my daily life) -- but the main problem for me is that when people read my book, I don't want them thinking about the real life chess star. I want them to form a new picture in their minds of the character I've created. Since many mystery readers are chess players, it's a fair bet many of them will know about the real life guy with the not-so-common name.

(Yes, I know it's my fault -- I didn't Google the name when I was writing my rough draft. The name was just so perfect that the rough story outline flew out of me, and I didn't stop to do research until after that first rough draft was complete.)

So if anyone out there has ideas for a new super-cool Tamil last name for my fictional Anand, who was born along the coast in the Kingdom of Travancore in the late 1800s and went on to become a sailor who came to San Francisco right before the quake of 1906 -- I'd love to hear it!

Martha May Not Be My Name

Here's something you should know about me.

Sometimes I lie about my name.

My mom picked it for Biblical reasons. I can't even tell you how upset I was to be named for the shrewish gal in Jesus' crew. We all know Mary was the favorite.

Back to my dishonest nature...

Cecilia was one of my best friends in elementary school. She was tall, Swedish, and had calves longer than my entire torso. I envied the crap out of her. She was smarter than I was. Funnier. Prettier. Nicer even, dammit.

We would hole up in Cecilia's room watching New Kids On The Block music videos to figure out which to marry and what our joint wedding would look like. She would generously let me have high-pitched crooner Joe, but we both knew that if Joe had a choice, he'd pick her.

I was what you would call a midlist girl. I showed up, but no one really cared. I wasn't spectacular enough of a failure nor a success to be noted, but Cecilia liked me and that was nice.

My parents were big fans of sending me away to long sessions at brainy camps, only instead of being surrounded by awkward nerds, I had to deal with sophisticated, smoking Euro teens since I lived overseas.

Once summer, sitting cross-legged during camp orientation in a crowded gym floor, surrounded by effortlessly chic, lithe French and Italian girls, I introduced myself as "Cecilia."

A complete, utter lie.

But instead of taking it back, I smiled and said, "Ceci for short."

Here's what you need to know about this newborn Ceci - she is fearless and outspoken and witty and somehow ridiculously popular just by virtue of faking it. She strung along a hot, Yugoslavian* kickboxer twice her age. She aced her tests and spouted depressing French poetry to entranced masses. She ran rooftops. She broke into country clubs to play lousy tennis games.

When I returned to school, a part of Cecilia burrowed inside and came back with me. I never recaptured that height of awesomeness, but I stopped envying my friends. Instead, whenever I felt that tingle of "I wish I was like that," I would take a piece of my friend and burrow it inside myself.

I have Cecilia's confidence. Maria's daring. Alexandra 's savoir faire. Viviane's brashness.

So if you ever meet me and I tell you my name is Juliet or Sophie or something else, just go with it. I'm working on a little piece of Pens.


* It was still Yugoslavia back then.

Name...calling

After a week of debauchery...okay, not exactly debauchery, just lots of late nights and copious amounts of chardonnay, dirty martinis, and now thanks to Sophie and Juliet, Laphroig (not all on the same night people!)...my post was not up at midnight.

I outlined several ideas in a trusty notebook during the RWA conference:

Naming Your Characters with as much thought and consideration as naming your babies. I search through ethnic names and historically common names and current baby name books. I give thought to their personality and their family background. I try to have the name *mean* something, even if I'm the only one who ever gets the context.

Name Dropping: a vertible who's who of who the Pens hung with at the recent RWA conference in Orlando. We played with some of our past guest posters, Tawny Weber, Karin Tabke, Alicia Rasley, Rachelle Chase, Kristan Higgins, Sarah Maclean, and more. Because we're a social lot, we met some new guest posters this past week that we'll introduce you to this year. This was all outlined in a more pithy and cute manner, but frankly my notebook is sitting in my carry-on in the entryway floor with my suitcase, unpacked.

I also had a few more ideas, unformed except for a paragraph or so in my head.

What you're getting is, the 'I woke up at five am-ish, realized I forgot to finish my post, and load into Google rush job!' post. (Now that I'm back on the West Coast, my body has decided to go East Coast).

Here it is, a completely different idea: The name calling post. I'm a Do-Do Head Or a Doo-Doo Head. Just pick whichever you prefer. :) Or call me a new one...cause honestly, I'm going back to bed.

Lisa

What’s in a name?

Please welcome today's guest, Avery Aames, author of newly released The Long Quiche Goodbye.

Avery Aames is the author of A Cheese Shop Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. She likes to read, cook, garden, and do amateur photography. You can visit Avery at www.averyaames.com. She also blogs at Mystery Lovers Kitchen, a blog for foodies who love mysteries, www.mysteryloverskitchen.com as well as at Killer Characters, a blog overtaken by cozy authors’ characters, www.killercharacters.com.

Names. Indiana Jones…James Bond…Hercule Poirot…Nancy Drew. Names are very important to distinguish the character that leaps off the page. John Smith would never be Indiana Jones. Jim would never be James. Hercule…I can’t even imagine another name for Hercule, can you?

Names are very important to me as a writer. If I name a character Nikki, she takes on a personality of her own. Strong, kick-ass, alert. If I name her Charlotte, she’s gentler, more refined, a bit of an artist. Both are passionate but in entirely different ways. Now, I’m not saying that a Nikki couldn’t be an artist and a Charlotte couldn’t be kick-ass, but for me, this is who they are…who they have become. Have you met people who match their names? When I think of the name Janet, I think direct, funny. Ginger is a long, lanky exotic dancer or actress with red hair. {Yes, I’m probably influenced by Gilligan’s Island.} Kat is a whole lot different than Katherine or Kitty or Kate.

When I began writing A Cheese Shop Mystery series, I started with a few characters. That list quickly grew to an alphabet of characters. In cozies, writers populate entire towns. At some point, I realized that I had an Amy and an Amelia, and it dawned on me that the two couldn’t dwell in the same story. They just couldn’t. They started with A and they sounded the same. Multiple times, I found myself typing mistakes--entering Amelia when I meant Amy and vice versa. [Side note: Have you ever read a book where there’s an Ann, Amy, Analise, and Annabelle…or some such combination, all with that sort An or Am combination and after a while, you’re wondering who’s walking onto the page?] In The Long Quiche Goodbye, Amy was an eight-year-old twin, and Amelia was a twenty-two-year-old Amish woman. Amy was leaping off the page with personality; Amelia wasn’t. So I kept Amy, and I searched the Internet for the most popular Amish names. I landed on Rebecca. [I didn’t have an R-named character other than Rags, the Ragdoll cat. I didn’t think the two would be confused.]

Suddenly Rebecca took shape. She was plucky, coltish, curious. Amelia wasn’t any of those things. She was shy and tentative and, well, just not very memorable. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying all Amelia(s) are shy and tentative and unmemorable. Look at Amelia Earhart. Talk about personality. But in my world, Amelia didn’t have pluck. Rebecca did!

Another problem with the names I had chosen cropped up when I realized that I had two characters whose names sort of rhymed. Kristine and Kathleen. And they not only rhymed, they started with the same letter K, they were both thin, they were the same age, and they were forthright. Uh-oh. How many times do you think I got their names wrong? If I couldn’t keep them straight, how could I expect my readers to? So I changed the names. [Let’s hear it for the global “replace” tool on my computer.] Kristine remained Kristine. It fit her. She was regal and wanted to run the town. Kathleen became Vivian, a much nicer name for an antique dealer. The name Vivian had a softer tone, an artier feel. She sailed into The Cheese Shop with the grace of a clipper ship. Kristine marched onto the scene.

Don’t get me wrong. I know people are not named according to their personalities or their looks, but when I write, I try to fit the name to the person.

On a personal note…true story: My real name isn’t Avery. {How many of you knew that?} It’s Daryl. I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve heard people say: “Where’s your other brother Daryl?” or “Funny, you don’t look like a boy.” The name Daryl sticks with people. They expect me to be direct and strong, though not masculine, and many expect me to be good at football. [I can’t even begin to tell you how many Darrells there are who play football, both white and black. Most are wide receivers or tackles. If I’d played, I would have been a safety.] Avery, on the other hand, is the kind of gal who would love to take things slower, slip into your kitchen, pour a cup of coffee (or wine), and talk about cheese.

If you’re a writer, think about how you choose your characters’ names. Are there any that aren’t quite fitting the name and screaming out for a new one?

For readers, think about your friends. Would you have named them differently? How about your family? Do any have nicknames that have stuck because that’s just who they are? Peanut, Pooh, Tweedle Dee, Rocko?

Names. I love them! And I’m thrilled to have a couple of my own.

Best to all,
Avery
Say Cheese!

The first book in Avery Aames' Cheese Shop series, The Long Quiche Goodbye, came out on July 6. You can purchase the book at Avery’s bookseller page: www.averyaames.com/book1_sellers.html

Names That Inspire Devotion

--Adrienne Miller


I named my first heroine Charlotte Fenton. It wasn’t a random name. Charlotte was for Charlotte Bronte. And if you have to ask why, then you’ve obviously been spared the experience of me cornering you at a party to drunkenly lecture you on why Jane Eyre is most amazing, life-changing novel ever written. Others have not been so fortunate.


The Fenton part, on the other hand, is a little more interesting...and a little less fan-girl creepy. Fenton’s is an ice cream parlor in Oakland. Okay, not just any ice cream parlor. It is the ice cream parlor, with flavors so drool worthy and portions so huge you’d think that you had died and were given a counter seat at heaven’s own scoop shop.


Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. Chances are you know about Fenton’s. Did you see Up?

Yep, it’s a real place, and as wonderful as Russell makes it sound in the movie. It's a beloved institution. My great grandparents used to go there when they moved a few blocks away in the 40's. My grandparents as well. Then my parents. And now me and my kids. That's five generations of sweet ice cream love. 

Here it is in real life.

When I was pregnant with my first son, I ate at Fenton’s almost every day. On those days that I was so sick that I could hardly keep anything down, I would make Tom walk down to Fenton’s with me and order us up a couple of hot fudge sundaes with extra nuts. It was so dang good, it could knock morning sickness on it’s ass.

The day Jack was born we figured he was built almost entirely out of Mocha Almond Fudge.

As for Jack, he was born in 2003. The year a little movie with another Jack came out.

A few years later, another movie came out, and Jack got a little brother, Will.

I’m not saying I names my kids after a couple of fictional pirates. I’m just saying some names, they stick with you.

A Pen by Any Other Name…

I answer to a whole lot of names. Yes, it’s true. I have not one, but two, pen names. Pseudonyms. Noms de plume. Whatever they’re called, I’ve got a couple of them. So far.

People comment upon this. Frequently. And right underneath the comments I often sense a tiny little bit of annoyance.

Well, I’ve got news for those folks who are already confused by my multiple monikers, and seem to want to take me to task for it. I’ve got plans for more. I’ve discovered I like fake names. It’s like having multiple personas. I’m at the point where if I weren’t an author, I might have to have a couple of aliases anyway, just for fun.

I’m not the only one. I know for a fact that a lot of folks make things up when asked what name to put on their coffee drinks. The other day I saw a Xena and a Maverick at the Peet’s counter. Please. And just how many girls at the bar do you think are really named Chloe and Zoey and Dakota? Scalawags, all. I love it. Go on with your bad selves, be wild with those coffee names!In Spanish, rather than saying “my name is Juliet,” you say, “Me llamo Juliet,” which means, literally, “I call myself Juliet.” I like the idea that you “call yourself” something. It makes it seem like one’s moniker is something temporal, active, alive. As though chosen on purpose rather than simply put upon you when you were a defenseless infant.

In fact, it's common in Mexico for people to go by not one, but several, nicknames depending on their situation and their whim. Partly, of course, this is because a great many people have the same first names (Jose and Maria are biggies) so a little improvisation helps simplify matters. I once knew a family of five girls, and each of them was named Maria. In the United States this was a bureaucratic nightmare –try telling the front desk clerk at the health clinic that there are five Maria Garays in the waiting room-- but amongst family and friends there was no confusion at all. Maria de las Flores called herself Flor or Flora or Flo; Maria de la Gracia called herself Estrella-- not sure why; Maria de los Angeles went by Angelica or Angelita, depending on her mood…etc.

The point is, they called themselves whatever it was they had decided upon.

So I think it’s a little small minded to insist we all stick to one name, specifically the one granted to us by our parents at what one can only imagine was a rather stressful time: a moment of raging hormones and sleeplessness in which we are most likely to be unduly influenced by sappy AT&T commercials or melodramatic 19th century novels. So far I’ve had two official pseudonyms (I’m not going to get started on my bar names, much less coffee names, I promise). Hailey Lind was the first; it’s an old family name I use when I write with my sister. I do believe t took my sister and me more time to decide upon a name than it did to write our first book.

The second name was easier, because I chose it myself. I wanted something toward the beginning of the alphabet. I figured that for an author, color names are good because they’re easy to remember, and even easier to spell. Black seemed a natural for something to do with witchcraft, but it was too plain. Blackwell struck me as just about perfect. As for the first name, I needed something that I had a reasonable shot at remembering whilst downing cocktails –because it there’s one thing we know about mystery writers, it’s that they’re most often found in the bar. (Again with the bar references...looks like someone needs a drink.)

Of course, I should have consulted with Sophie Littlefield. Then I would have been Andromeda Petrovic or Wildcat McGee. Something really exciting.

And my “real” name? Complicated, of course. When I was in college I decided it was rather patriarchal to keep only my father’s last name. And boring, too. So I took my mother’s as well, and hyphenated them. Flash forward twenty-five years…to problems with the DMV, the doctor’s office, every piece of junk mail in the world. It’s not a legal problem – in fact, one of the interesting things I learned was that you can call yourself any damned name you want, so long as it’s not for purposes of fraud. Jesus Christ? You go, girl. Minnie Mouse? Why not? Paris Hilton? Sure…just don’t try to convince people you’re the famous blonde who forgets her underwear. No, changing my name was fine, but computers hate hyphens, and people on the other end of the line don’t much like them either.

Anyway…I suppose I might well use my lifelong name for the next novel I’m writing, which isn’t a mystery. Why not? Julie Goodson-Lawes might as well step out into the limelight. On the other hand, now that I look at it, I'm rather partial to Wildcat McGee....

Not So Pleased to Meet You, Derek Stone

by Sophie

NAMES

There aren't many aspects of writing on which I have a confident grasp - a sense that I do them right more often than I do them wrong - but naming my characters is one of them.

Not everyone agrees with me; readers and reviewers occasionally raise an eyebrow or toss a virtual tomato in my direction for a name they find clumsy. But 9 times out of 10, I'm pleased and even delighted by the names I choose.

The problem is that I have no idea how I do it.

Maybe it's presumptuous of me to think other writers might like to know my secret, but if there was a way for me to share my naming talent I would. In fact, there are a few authors out there who I'd love to send a plucky but well-meaning form letter:

Dear ______,
Next time you're kick-starting a new project, won't you consider giving me a call?

While you're certainly adept at _____, and I admire your facility with ____, I hope I'm not being too bold by suggesting you need a little help naming your characters. I couldn't help noticing that you named your last character ________, which is about as special and evocative as a can of chicken noodle soup.

All best regards,
- Sophie

(I threw in the compliments because everyone likes a little sugar with the medicine, and I can nearly always find something to like about a person's writing.)

Seriously, it stops me in my tracks when I'm reading happily along and run smack into a Derek Stone. Or a John Murphy. Or a Claire Johnson. Or any of a thousand bland, flavorless names that have been slapped on heroes and heroines who have so much more to offer. I imagine them in Fictionland, meeting each other at cocktail parties...they start out all confident and game-faced, since they're usually fantastically handsome/gorgeous, as well as tremendously fit and clever. But their cheery smiles slip a little each time they introduce themselves.

"I'm Allyssa Gray," a slightly embarrassed raven-haired beauty says, extending a perfectly-manicured hand to the tall, handsome man in an Armani suit (Armani! Why does it always have to be Armani!!), who blushes and mumbles "Jake Williams." Then all the sexual tension in the encounter evaporates as each assumes the other will be just about as exciting in the sack as their name.

Not in my world! My characters might not be stunning to look at, but when Stella's thoughts turn to love, she's got her choice of Goat Jones and B.J. Brodersen or even Jelloman Nunn, though he's more of a friend. Tell me that didn't just send your mind in interesting directions!

I've named characters Dot and Mud and Mo and ThreeHigh and Twister, and a thousand other things that just sort of popped into my head. Occasionally I have a little trouble with surnames, especially if I need a Polish or Irish name, for instance - as in my young adult - but I poke around online and on the spines of books and in my kids' school directories until I find something that catches my fancy. Kazmeircz Sawicki, the hero of BANISHED, got his name that way, as did Dor MacFall (AFTERTIME, 3/11).

Not long ago I blurbed a fantastic book (trust me on this - you're going to love PURGATORY CHASM by Steve Ulfelder), the hero and dead guy of which are named, respectively, Conway Sax and Tander Phigg. I loved this book so much that I did a bad thing - I sent the first page to a fellow author who I suspected would love it just as much as me, which I had no right to do since it's not published yet, but I couldn't resist. I anticipated a drooling exchange about the deftness of these opening lines, but what I got back was "Tander Phigg! Awesome name!"

That's what a terrific, unique name can do for you - catch the attention of even the most jaded reader. So why do people keep settling for boring ones? Beats me.

(One more comment on names: twenty years ago I was in a PayLess Shoe Store buying a pair of silver flats and the clerk runs my credit card and says to me "Sophie Littlefield? With a name like that, you should be a romance writer!" So, long-lost friend, wherever you are, many thanks...)