Ecgberht

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The Old English royal name of Egbert, the ninth-century king of Wessex who extended his rule over much of England
2. A historical personal name borne by the early medieval West Saxon monarch regarded as the first overlord of all England
3. The Anglo-Saxon king of Wessex in the early 800s whose conquests laid the foundations for a unified English kingdom

Etymology: Ecgberht is the Old English form of a name meaning "sword-bright": "ecg" (edge, sword) joined to "beorht" (bright, shining), the same elements that give modern "bright" its sound and sense. The name was carried by Ecgberht of Wessex, who reigned from 802 to 839 and is generally regarded as the first king to hold authority over all of England, though the extent of his overlordship was real but uneven, and his successors' position was far from settled. The spelling reflects Old English orthography rather than a modern spelling reform. The letter "ȝ" was not used here; the combination "cg" represented a palatal stop sound, and the "h" marks a sound that disappeared from English over the following centuries. Modern readers usually meet the name as "Egbert," a form that developed through regular sound change as the old letter combinations fell out of use.