I happened to be in England recently. Three days ago, I stopped in a pub north of Newcastle (in the vicinity of Hadrian's wall, but on the opposite side of the country from Carlisle.)
The publican was evidently an archaeology enthusiast, because the walls had many interesting maps and illustrations of life in Roman Britain.
One document stated unequivocally that the residents of the area were descended from the Roman legions, and gave examples of local names that might have Roman, Greek, or even Arab origins.
Hardly a word of Latin entered the English language in those days; modern English words of Latin origin mostly came in during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But it seems clear that the Roman (and perhaps African) blood still flows in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall.
-ccm
"Hardly a word of Latin entered the English language in those days; modern English words of Latin origin mostly came in during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. But it seems clear that the Roman (and perhaps African) blood still flows in the vicinity of Hadrian's Wall. "
There is a big reason for this - the langauge spoken in britain during the roman period, p-celtic (modern welsh bretonish cornish) was eradicated from most of modern england during the germanic invasinn/colonization taht began in the 4th cetnruy progressively scrubbed the celt language (though not dna), including place-names, from almost everywhere but wales, cornwales, and cumbria.
There are some words in welsh that are very similar to the latin word, 'pont' = bridge, so there are probably some loanwords there, as well as indo-european words of similar origina (was aur (gold in welsh and roman, Ore in modern english) a loanword or did the indo-european root survive into p-celtic?
Thre precursion of old english was spoken by pretty much no one in roman britain except the german soldiers in the army. Old english as a spoken language in daily life in britain doesn't appear until the romans were gone.
Modern names derived from roman soldiers names is unlikely, the saxon's brough their own names to most of england.