Normans

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the BBC's King and Conqueror series, even though it does have a bit of Braveheart about it. Granted, King and Conqueror avoids the ham-fisted and, frankly, offensive bias in Mel Gibson's skid mark on film, but it does sacrifice historical accuracy for storytelling.

That's not always a bad thing. Something that King and Conqueror does well is cast non-white actors as characters who would, with 100% certainty, have been white in 11th century England. We have to accept this kind of casting as a virtue because cultural nation-building (and maintaining) means telling stories in ways that reflect who we are now, not who some of us partially were then.

And I say partially with good reason. For all the waves of Roman, Saxon, Viking and Norman invasion, it's likely that about 50% of modern English genetics are still Celtic. The Saxons undoubtedly added the largest share of the remainder, but contrary to the idea that they razed England to the ground in a wave of pagan bloodlust, history is more intriguing. Have a look at the names of early "Anglo-Saxon" rulers, for example — Cerdic, Ceawlin, Cynegils — and they are undoubtedly Celtic. There may have been a lot more cohabitation and assimilation than the Christian histories tell us.

The Vikings, too, have been misunderstood. They were perfectly happy to swing axes through skulls, but when archaeologists search English soil for the burn layers and mass graves of large-scale devastation, they are conspicuous by their rarity. But the Vikings worshipped the Old Gods, and the monks wrote the histories.

William the Conqueror, however (and with the Pope’s blessing), lived up to his previous epithet — Bastard! He put England to the sword so utterly that by the time he went to Hell, almost every noble, landowner, and bishop in England was replaced by a French-speaking Norman. They spread like rats from there and became the dominant forces in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland as well. Both protagonists from Braveheart, for instance — Wallace and Bruce — bore names of French origin. The centuries of war that followed had little, if anything, to do with animosity between our islands’ peoples. Instead, they were driven by the ambitions and psychodramas of Norman nobilities.

Names have persisted through time. The Anglo-Saxons didn't use family names, preferring to differentiate people by any viable characteristic, often their occupation. When, surnames were introduced after the conquest, we got a written record of our divided society. Normans generally had surnames indicating a place of family origin in France; many Celts continued with clan names; and Saxons largely adopted their occupations as they'd always done. Except those names stuck. A couple of generations later, someone called John Smith may well have been a butcher.

Of course, a Brit’s ancestry isn’t quite as simple as looking at one’s name and judging how Celtic, French, or Germanic it sounds. Many Celts and Saxons, for example, adopted Normanized names to climb the social hierarchy. And later, many Norman names became Anglicized. Fitz Gilbert, for instance, means son of Gilbert in Norman French, and since the abbreviation of Gilbert was “Gib” it often became “Gibson”. Other names are impossible to trace. My own — Clarke — could stem from the French Leclerc, the Saxon Clerk, or the Irish Ó Cléirigh. Coming from unrecorded peasant stock on both islands, I have no way of knowing.

What is known, is that for almost a millennium, British history has been dominated by people with Norman-origin names. Early American history has too — read the names of the signatories on the Declaration of Independence, and you'll notice a marked Frenchness to many of them.

Even in the later British Empire, most people who held power — whether they called themselves English, Welsh, Scottish, or Irish — could claim Norman ancestry. (Although, ironically, the two most prominent figures — Horatio Nelson and Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington — had Celtic and Saxon names… And in a charming double irony, Celtic-named Nelson was born in England while Saxon-named Wellesley was born in Ireland, at least I think it’s charming). It isn't until after the Second World War, and the start of decolonization, that the British parliament sees a substantial influx of people with non-Norman surnames. (Although, yes, "Churchill" is Norman, but the very French sounding “Attlee” is Saxon).

My point is this: in modern Britain, you are still less likely to be socio-economically secure if you have a Celtic or Saxon family name. Almost a thousand years since the Battle of Hastings, the people who were at the bottom then are still (to a significant degree) at the bottom now. We need to have a national conversation about that.