Above: Bede, the famous Anglo-Saxon scholar was born at Sunderland near the mouth of the River Wear and lived most of his life at Jarrow on the River Tyne. Bede would be familiar with many words still used in the dialect of North East England today. And yet he lived 60 years before the first Viking raids and 130 years before the Viking conquest of Northern England.

Who are the people of the North East?

In this section of the website We go back to Viking, Anglo-Saxon and earlier times, looking at place names and surnames, dialect and history in our search for clues to our region's ancient origins. The results are often surprising. Here you will find some of the region's legends, a 'Geordie Dictionary', some well known North East songs with midi files, so you can hear the tune and some special 'Roll-on Roll off' Place Name maps, so that you can quickly see the meanings and ancient origins of North East Place Names. We will ask how other incoming people may have shaped our region in more recent centuries, particularly during the industrial period of the nineteenth century.

Northern Roots by David Simpson covers these subjects in much greater detail and covers the origins of people in the whole of the north of England with chapters on the Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Viking influence. The Border Reivers and Irish immigration of more recent times. There are features on dialect, place-names, first names, surnames and many other aspects of our northern heritage. It will be useful to local historians and family historians with connections in Lancashire, Manchester, Liverpool, Cumberland, Westmorland, County Durham, Newcastle, Northumberland or Yorkshire or indeed anywhere in the North of England.

You can also look at lots of website links related to place names and dialect on the links page.

DIALECT LINKS

• Durham and Tyneside Dialect Group
• pitmatic.co.uk/
• www.indigogroup.co.uk/durhamdialect/ddalinks.html
• Tees Valley Dialect Society
• members.aol.com/teesspeak/parmo/
• The Northumbrian Language Society http://www.northumbriana.org.uk/langsoc/index.htm
• Yorkshire Dialect Society Homepage
• http://www.clanvis.com/loc/dialect/

PLACE NAME LINKS

• Island name origins in Orkney
• http://www.orkneyjar.com/placenames/pl-isle.htm
• Place name Societies
• www.st-and.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/othersoc.htm
• Place names and Dialect in Scotland
• www.grian.demon.co.uk/spn.html
• Place Names Dale, Holm etc
• www.ramsdale.org/dalr.htm
• Place names in England
• www.personal.leeds.ac.uk/~llcrh/mapfra.htm
• Place names in Northumberland
• pages.unisonfree.net/futers/places.htm
• Place names in the Danelaw
• viking.no/e/england/danelaw/epl-danelaw.htm
• Place names in the Lake District (Cumbria)
• easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~stu/names1.htm
• Place names in Yorkshire
• www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/Misc/Where/QuickGuide.html
• Place names of Viking origin in England
• http://viking.no/e/england/e-pl-england.htm
• Place names of Viking origin in Normandy
• www.viking.no/e/france/lndscpe-place-names.htm
• Regia Anglorum
• www.regia.org

www.northeastengland.talktalk.net