QUIMPER-VANNES

BBC News Video :  Campaigners call for law to protect Welsh place-names Stories are what make toponymy interesting and the two names featured in this video tell two simple stories. The old name,  Faerdre Fach,  is medieval - dating back to the 14th century. Faerdref or  maerdref , indicates a dairy hamlet on demesne land (feudal land owned and managed by the lord for his own purposes).    These dairy-houses were kept at a little distance from the castles and courts of noblemen and the bonded tenants who lived there supplied dairy and other food products to their feudal lords.  There were two farmhouses here and they were called  Faerdre F awr , ‘great’ and  Faerdre F ach , ‘little’. It's great to know that 700 years later Faedre Fach is still a farm with hens and cows. But it is also a holiday site featuring B&B, self-catering cottages and a riding school. The tourists, of course, can't pronounce the name...

Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon genomes from East England reveal British migration history   [ Nature Communications] English DNA 'one-third' Anglo-Saxon   [ BBC News  19/1/2016] Were one million or more Britons wiped out by the English in a Dark Ages holocaust? The research cited (and summarised) above estimates that on average people in modern Eastern England get 38% of their genes from Anglo-Saxon immigrants dating from the 5th century onwards. They also suggest that this 38% has a particularly strong correlation with modern Dutch and Danish populations. The evidence has been gathered from three burial sites near Cambridge: Linton for the Late Iron /Early Romano-British period; Oakington for the Late Romano-British/Early Anglo-Saxon period; and Hinxton for the Middle Anglo-Saxon period. The research contradicts linguistic evidence (and previous DNA research) that the Anglo-Saxons wiped out the indigenous Britons.  Even in th...