Bernicia

Bernicia (Old English: Bernice, Beornice; Latin: Bernicia) was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom established by Anglian settlers of the 6th century in what is now southeastern Scotland and North East England.

The Anglian territory of Bernicia was approximately equivalent to the modern English counties of Northumberland and Durham, and the Scottish counties of Berwickshire and East Lothian, stretching from the Forth to the Tees. In the early 7th century, it merged with its southern neighbour, Deira, to form the kingdom of Northumbria and its borders subsequently expanded considerably.

British Bryneich

Etymologies

Bernicia is mentioned in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum (§ 61) under the Welsh name of Berneich or Birneich and in Old Welsh poetry and elsewhere under the name of Bryneich or Brynaich. This may reflect the name of a preceding Brittonic kingdom or province, which was subsequently adopted by the Anglian settlers and rendered as Bernice or Beornice in the Old English tongue. If such forms represent a Welsh version of Bernicia, it is unclear why Welsh would need to borrow a foreign name for the area, so the former hypothesis is usually accepted, although no etymological analysis has produced a consensus. The etymology which is most widely cited is that tentatively proposed by Kenneth H. Jackson, which gives the meaning "Land of the Mountain Passes" or "Land of the Gaps". The earlier derivation from the tribal name of the Brigantes has been dismissed as linguistically unsound. In 1997 John T. Koch suggested the conflation of a probable primary form *Bernech with the native form *Brïγent for the old civitas Brigantum as a result of Anglian expansion in that territory during the 7th century.