Talk:Cynric

Pronunciation

How is the name pronounced? Someone please add a guide. SpectrumDT (talk) 16:51, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

If it's a Germanic language name, the first part is cyn[n] and the second part is rīce. By King Alfred's time, that would be something like IPA [kyn'rik], but I am not an expert and that's pretty much a guess. You could try the language reference desk. Angus McLellan (Talk) 17:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Given that Cynric has a Celtic etymology (Hound King), could he be the same person as the one recorded by Wrmonoc of Landévennec's Life of St. Pol de Leon, when he refers to a "King Marc whose other name is Quonomorus". Also rendered Cunomorus, this name means literally the 'Hound-of-the-sea.' If so then as the Hound of the Sea, he held Dumnonian land on both sides of the British Channel, and may have been a British king ruling over Saxons. He is misdated and mentioned amongst Geoffrey of Monmouth's legendary Dukes of Dumnonia as Conomor ap Tutwal (c.410–c.435)

I also wonder if he was even perhaps Gildas's Cuneglas (Blue Hound). Cuneglas (also known in Latin as Cuneglasus and in modern Welsh as Cynlas. He is sometimes referred to as Cynlas Goch meaning Cynlas the Red). He is sometimes recorded as a son of Owain Danwyn, John D. Croft (talk) 06:09, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no historical evidence for Cynrig. The only information is ASC which is not contemporaneous. He should be marked as non-historical to be in line with similar WIKI articles. There is no logic for prioritising ASC over Geoffrey of Monmouth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.115.252.130 (talk) 10:23, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

John Croft, Cu (hound) was a fairly common prefix in Celtic names: Cuchulainn, Cuconnacht, so just because the other names have a prefix meaning hound doesn't mean they are the same person. Cynric would seem much closer to the Cunorix of the Wroxeter stone than the ones you mention. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.104.160.57 (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

POV pushing on this page

As a prelude to taking this to formal arbitration a discussion on the talk page is usually required - this is it.

User:Cagwinn has on this page, and a number of others, repeatedly placed his personal opinion above that of the relevant scholarship, usually making some plea that certain relevant and entirely reputable books or papers are inadmissible as they are not written by philologists, even though the linguistic point at dispute has direct historical implications, and common sense would imply that scholarly historical references would be entirely appropriate.

In the case of this article, which contains very few citations, he has removed material which is multiply cited to reputable scholarly material. He does not refute the the existence of the scholarly material used, he does not offer alternative views supported by more compelling scholarly citations, he does not choose to add an opposing viewpoint to stand alongside the existing material. No, what he does is remove existing fully referenced material, citing no scholarly material as support for this, merely his own views on the subject. This is own research in its most overt form, and is blatant point of view peddling. Both being entirely antithetical to the spirit and the rules of editing Wikipedia articles. Urselius (talk) 23:02, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

You are the one POV pushing! You can't even cite proper modern sources to support your pet theory that the name is Celtic (which is phonologically impossible!); in your most recent edits, you added two sources that were thirty plus years old (totally outdated!) and not even written by linguists, no less specialists in Anglo-Saxon or Celtic studies. Sims-Williams is agnostic, stating that the name may be Germanic or Celtic, but he is also wrong for suggesting the latter, as it is impossible for Brittonic Cunorīx, which had become Cunoris (pronounced /kʊnɘriːh/) in the Latin Brittonic of the 3rd-4th century CE (cf. the PN. Flavia Cunoris from the Ashwell inscription; AE 2005, 900; AE 2007, 147), to have produced Old English Cynric if borrowed by Anglo-Saxons in the 5th-6th centuries CE. Neither could it be the result of an Irish loan in English, for the Goidelic cognate of Cunorīx produced by the 2nd-3rd century CE Cunaris (attested on the Housesteads inscription, RIB-3, 3328 and perhaps in the Kunaris from the Chester inscription, Britannia 40, 2009, p. 321). For both of these names, see: Patrick Sims-Williams, "The Celtic Composition Vowels -o- and -io-", in: Juan Luis García Alonso (ed.) Continental Celtic Word Formation: The Onomastic Data, Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2013, p. 37ff. Cagwinn (talk) 01:51, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

You are now quoting Sims-Williams to refute Sims-Williams! Utter nonsense, Sims-Williams' recoded opinion is that Cynric is possibly Germanic or Celtic in origin. So Sims-Williams is an admissible authority when he supports your personal opinion, but wrong when he doesn't - your logic here is shambolic.

You appeal to generalisations to support the removal of specific instances of scholarly reference to Cynric being possibly of Celtic origins. You need to provide directly applicable scholarship - i.e. something that actually mentions the name Cynric. And even if you managed this, the scholarly work supporting a possible Celtic origin would still be out there and any encyclopedic treatment would still have to address it. Excision of material that you personally do not like from a Wikipedia article is unconscionable, it goes against all Wikipedia guidelines and rules. Urselius (talk) 10:24, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

LOL, you really have no clue about this stuff, do you? You're just here to make Wikipedia suck all that much more than it already does! Sims-Williams is a CELTICIST; thus his opinions on Celtic etymologies carry significant weight. He is NOT an Anglo-Saxonist; thus, if he proposed a bad etymology OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO - before some significant works on Celtic historical philology had even been written (for example, Schrijver's SBCHP) - then it doesn't hold much weight. A scholar who has been writing books and papers for as long as he has can be wrong about some things and right about others. It happens. Deriving Old English Cynric from Brittonic Cunorix may look reasonable to non specialists such as yourself but, on a phonological level, it simply doesn't work. By the time the Anglo-Saxons arrived in the 5th century, the Brittonic final -x had already become an /h/ (and was on its way to disappearing entirely, along with the preceding long /iː/ by the mid-6th century!); there is no way that the Anglo-Saxons would hear it as /tʃ/. Also, the short vowel -u- in Cuno- still retained its quality as /ʊ/ and had not yet been internally i-affected to /ə/ (internal i-affection did not take place until the late 7th to early 8th centuries CE!), so it would not have been borrowed as /kyn/ by Anglo-Saxon speakers (cf. Old English Cundiʒeorn from Brittonic Cunotigernos, i.e. Kentigern, or Cyndeyrn in Modern Welsh and Conthigirn in Old Welsh). I am sure all of this will fly right over your head - you're only interested in pushing old, outdated theories to "stick it" to me. Cagwinn (talk) 18:38, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Entirely irrelevant. You place your own opinion above that of the available scholarship, this is the point being argued. Even if you were entirely and unimpeachably correct, your personal opinion is still entirely irrelevant. Articles on Wikipedia must reflect available scholarship. For your approach to be viable, you would have to publish a monograph addressing the subject and then have it accepted as irrefutably correct by the whole scholarly community in the fields of linguistic and historical research before you could on your own cognisance remove material to the contrary. I do not see this happening. Urselius (talk) 19:08, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Michelet, Fabienne L., Creation, Migration, and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature, Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 267:

"The establishment of the Anglo-Saxon rule over Britain continues the Chronicle's exploitation of the symbolic potential inherent in names and naming. When, in the year 519, Cerdic and Cynric succeed to power, the entry reads: Her Cerdic 7 Cynric Westsexena rice onfengun 7 þy ilcan geare hie fuhton wiþ Brettas pær mon nu nemneþ Cerdicesford.' The two appellations Cerdic and Cerdicesford furnish yet another example of the process according to which place generates leader. But it is the name Cynric which interests me here; for Plummer and Earle note that 'it is possible that the name Cynric is an abstraction from this establishment of the "cynerice"'. If this is the case, that is, if there never was an actual Germanic leader called Cynric, then this entry actually offers a legendary account of how the Anglo-Saxons came to have authority over Britain. Here, the existence of a Germanic chieftain is derived from a political concept, kingship. This passage thus associates the Anglo-Saxons with the establishment of cynerice, with the emergence of a new political organization. Proper names and place-names in the early annals of the Chronicle thus bring together not only the people and the land, but also political authority. The three terms of this equation create a territory, that is, the union of a land (Britain), of a people (the Anglo-Saxons), and of territorial control (the cynerice)."

Salvador Bello, Mercedes (University of Sevilla): The arrival of the hero in a ship: A common Leitmotif in OE regnal tables and the story of Scyld Scefing in Beowulf, SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature Revista de la Sociedad Española de Lengua y Literatura Inglesa Medieval, 8, 1998, pp. 205-222 (pp. 206-207):

"Thus, Cynric, Cerdic's son, constitutes a suspiciously genuine West-Saxon name which was surely intended to provide credibility to the presence of Cerdic's name in West-Saxon regnal lists. It must be borne in mind that the transformation of a continental chieftain into an Insular king had to be supported genealogically; otherwise the origin of his kingship would be dubious."

"Plummer similarly argues that the name Cynric may have originated in the necessary transition from alderman to king: "it is possible that the name Cynric is an abstraction from this establishment of the 'cynerice'" (1899: 13). It can also be inferred that the etymology of this name could well point to the one who belongs to a cyn, in other words, the one of noble stock.1"

"[n.] 1. The etymology of Cynric conjures up the story of King Cynewulf who was murdered by his relative Cyneheard as narrated in the Chronicle (year 755). The conflict to legitimize political power is well-represented in the suspicious emphasis of the two characters' names with cyn. Furthermore, this episode ends with the chronicler's insistence that both characters were of noble lineage: "ond hiera ryhtfæderencyn gæp to Cerdice" (as found in ms. A) ["and their direct paternal ancestry goes back to Cerdic" (Swanton 48)]."

Sprockel, Cornelis, The Language of the Parker Chronicle: Volume I, Springer Science & Business Media, 1965, p. 85:

"ja-stems: Regular forms are: herehyþ...herelaf-..., etc. Short ja-stems with a root not ending in r have gemination of the final consonant in the n.a.sg., which is due to the analogy of inflected forms, e.g. cynn...from -cynnes... but in compounds we find the phonologically regular form cyne- (< *kuni < *kunja) in cynebearn...cynecyn...cynerice...cynedom-... and in names: Cynebryht...-gils...-heard ...-mæresford-...-wald...-wulf...Cyneweard... . Cyn- is only found in Cynric... (cp. cynerice, which is not a name)."

Sprockel, Cornelis, The Language of the Parker Chronicle: Volume I, Springer Science & Business Media, 1973, p. 11:

"The ja-stems should have the composition-vowel -e, but since the nom.sg. of short ja-stem shows doubling of the final consonant and loss of -e..., this form has in some cases caused analogical loss of the -e of the composition-form. Examples are Cyneweard... Cynewulf... by the side of Cynric.... Loss of the medial vowel is not found in any other proper name or common noun with the first-member cyne-, cp. cynecynn... cynebearn...cynedome (d.sg.)... cynerice.... Could it be that the medial vowel in Cynric was dropped for no other reason than in order to avoid confusion with the common noun cynerice 'kingdom'?"

Searle, William George, Onomasticon Anglo-saxonicum, Cambridge University Press, 1897, pp. 157-160 lists the attested spellings of the name (with variants) which confirm that it is a compound of Old English cynn + ric:

Cyneric Keneric [958 AD], Cyneric [956, 959 CE], Cyneric Kinric [1042 CE], Cyneric Cuinericus [693 CE], Cyneric Cynric [718 CE], Cyneric Cinric [733 CE], Cynnric [534-560 CE], Cynnric [748 CE], Cynnric Cynric [704 CE] pp. 157-160.

Fine, wonderful - by all means add information on possible back formation from place names etc. However, none of this material licenses you to remove information on the possible Celtic origin of the name Cynric. Alternative possible linguistic origins, supported by relevant citation, are what this article needs; what it does not need, or Wikipedia allow, is the selective expurgation of any theories that have scholarly support by any editor, including you. That's the bottom line, and if you do not see this then further discussion is pointless.

I cannot help noticing, that earlier you criticised my use of material from "OVER THIRTY YEARS AGO" (caps. yours), then used material dating to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE YEARS AGO (caps. mine) to support your own viewpoint. Please try to be consistent. Urselius (talk) 08:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

More evidence that you simply don't have a clue about what I am saying! My comment about old sources was in regards to the alleged Celtic etymology of the name; Celtic historical phonology has evolved by leaps and bounds in the past 30 years and numerous important studies in the field had not even been written in the 1980s! We know know that it is impossible for Old English Cynric to be a loan from Brittonic (or Irish) Cunorix. Cagwinn (talk) 18:12, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

How do scribal errors and marginal literacy (we know this existed because Aelfred Westseaxna Cyning said so) fit into your cast iron linguistic straightjacket?

Urselius is in the right here. There's no call to remove any sources, though updating the text would be most welcome. Unfortunately, Cagwinn has put some of his worst habits on display here rather than trying to improve the article: treating fellow editors abhorrently, and just blanking perfectly good material rather than making improvements. Cagwinn, if you spent a fraction of the time improving the article that you've just spent arguing on the talk page, it would probably be GA-quality by now.--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:59, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Urselius is not in the right and your sanctimony is overbearing. Spare me! Cagwinn (talk) 18:07, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Urselius is correct that the information is perfectly well sourced, and should be in the article as a notable interpretation, even if it's increasingly deprecated. As we've discussed at many other articles, the solution is to update and expand with up-to-date sources - which you clearly have access to, and could easily add with a fraction of the energy it's taken you to argue about it.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:11, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

The sources are OUTDATED and INCORRECT and he cites only ONE linguist - the others are historians and not even specialists in Anglo-Saxon linguistics! Pay attention, please! Cagwinn (talk) 18:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

You really haven't grasped what is at issue here, at all. Put simply, you are trying to censor what information is available to the reader of the article. However correct your viewpoint might be, you do not have the right to censor material directly relevant to a Wikipedia article, that is adequately sourced to scholarly articles, just because you want to. Urselius (talk) 19:59, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment - RfC's are not meant to discuss or evaluate user conduct. If you think it's a severe case of editor misconduct - take it to WP:ANI. If it's a content dispute, which apparently it is, seen above by your bickering back and forth, then you can always ask for a Wikipedia:Third opinion, be mindful though, they don't want to hear about editor misconduct either. I'd suggest you shut this RfC down, ask for a third opinion, or in the alternative open a new RfC, and ask a brief, neutral question about the issue, leaving any mention of editor's names and their conduct out of it. Isaidnoway (talk) 17:37, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
  • In reality it is both - however, it seems to be resolved inasmuch as the removal of cited and well sourced material seems to have ended. Urselius (talk) 20:50, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

It has not ended - maybe I won't be the one to do it, but it will get removed eventually, as the claim is outdated and incorrect. Congratulations, though, on making Wikipedia a source for BAD information - you should be proud. Cagwinn (talk) 21:41, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Let's see. Once again, the material is not the central issue here, what is is your self-appointed role as censor. I might not be on the side of the angels, but who has been in the forefront of censorship through the ages? The list is very long, but it includes: McCarthy-ite USA in the 1950s, the Vatican (for a long time), Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, all Islamist states, and just about any authoritarian regime that you can shake a stick at. You're in such great company. You are free to add material or to moderate any statement in the article, just like any other editor. What you are not free to do is indulge yourself by removing material with excellent scholarly sources merely on the grounds of your own personal inclinations. This seems entirely just and in accordance with Wikipedia core values and rules. Urselius (talk) 08:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)