Not everybody knows this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
GunStuff
The Romans referred to Hessen as the land of the Chatten.
In the 1st century AD, the Chatten/Chatti were a tribe living between the rivers Fulda and Werra. At one time they had a spot of bother with the Cheruscans about bride-stealing (the Cheruscans were the tribe of Arminius, a.k.a. "Hermann the German") and like them were regarded by the Romans as awkward customers. Somewhen around 83 A.D, after getting on the Romans' nerves too badly for too long, they were attacked by the Romans under Domitian (I guess he had to justify a triumph) and large numbers fled down the Rhine to Batavia - now Holland.
There are two place-names in Holland - Katwijk an der Maas, just south of Nijmegen, and Katwijk an See, up the coast from Den Haag. The soft chat... has hardened to kat... in German and Dutch, and of course ...wijk is the same as English ...wick, meaning a settlement or village.
So Kat...wijk is equivalent to Chat...wick.
It looks like some of the Chatti stopped in Nijmegen, and others carried on to the North Sea coast.
But the really adventurous (or desperate - who knows?) Chatti got on the boat, and sailed off to Britannia. And at W 1°42'10.8" / N52°21'17.28" you can find the hamlet of Chadwick End. Sounds like a place where the Hobbits used to live!
It took some time before the former Chatti made it to the New World, but they did eventually reach Boston, where the former main building of the Chadwick Lead Works is a preserved building. And in the Civil War, "K" company of the 1st Massachusetts was a Zouave unit formed as the "Chadwick Light Infantry".
All of this light-hearted history only goes to show that people move around a lot, if you give them a couple of thousand years!
But I would guess that the family name associated with the cool cat is probably something with Kat... or Katt... Am I right?
:wave:
Patrick