People and languages in post-Conquest Canterbury

Abstract

The balance between French and English in post-Conquest England is still being discussed. One line of investigation not often followed hitherto is analysis of individual communities; and a start is made here with Canterbury, further subdivided into the cathedral priory of Christ Church, St Augustine's abbey, and the town. Evidence is taken, first of all, from the hands and languages of manuscripts, from references by contemporary writers, and from literary work in general. The core of the argument, however, consists of onomastic evidence. From the second half of the twelfth century there survives a considerable corpus of citizen's nicknames; and these show that French forms, although in widespread use and even at times coupled with Anglo-Saxon personal names, were on the whole less original and less picturesque than English ones. The dominance of English is confirmed by its almost exclusive use for topographical names. The linguistic bias of some of the scribes is also investigated: although French is ever-present behind the Latin, Old English traditions are far from forgotten. In conclusion, English, although subject to great and varied competition from French, cannot be regarded as superseded for any function, or even much discouraged. Some of the apparent weaknesses in twelfth-century English material from Christ Church may be due not so much to French influence as to uncertainty resulting from the decline of the former standard literary language based on the West-Saxon dialect.