The Readingas (

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

''Rēadingas'') were a tribe or clan of early

Anglo-Saxon England Anglo-Saxon England or Early Medieval England, existing from the 5th to the 11th centuries from the end of Roman Britain until the Norman conquest in 1066, consisted of various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms until 927, when it was united as the Kingdom of ...

whose capital was

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spell ...

; their territory formed a '' regio'' or administrative subdivision of the early Kingdom of

Wessex la, Regnum Occidentalium Saxonum , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of the West Saxons , common_name = Wessex , image_map = Southern British Isles 9th century.svg , map_caption = S ...

. The area of the Readingas adjoined that of the Sunningas to the east and that of the

Basingas The Basingas were an Anglo-Saxon tribe, whose territory in the Loddon Valley formed a '' regio'' or administrative subdivision of the early Kingdom of Wessex. Their leader, Basa, gave the tribe its name which survives in the names of Old Basing an ...

to the south. The subdivision retained a role beyond the Anglo-Saxon period as Reading remained the administrative center for a distinctive grouping of hundreds within

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Ber ...

throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. The name may have been taken from a personal name and mean "''Rēada's'' people", or it may be based on a topographical root and mean "The people of the red ne.

References

Bibliography

* History of Berkshire Peoples of Anglo-Saxon England {{England-hist-stub