Editing Vortigern (section)

==Vortigern as title rather than personal name==
It has occasionally been suggested by scholars that Vortigern might be a [[royal title]], rather than a personal name. The name in [[Common Brittonic|Brittonic]] literally means "Great King" or "Overlord", composed of the elements *''wor-'' "over-, super" and *''tigerno-'' "king, lord, chief, ruler" (compare [[Old Breton]] {{lang|obt|machtiern}}, [[Cornish language|Cornish]] {{lang|oco|myghtygern}}<ref name="RMN">{{Cite book | last = Morton Nance| first = Robert | title = A New Cornish–English English Cornish Dictionary | publisher = Agan Tavas | place = Redruth | year = 1991 |isbn= 1-901409-03-1   }}</ref> a type of local ruler - literally "pledge chief")<ref>Snyder, Christopher A., The Britons, John Wiley & Sons, Apr 15, 2008, p. 155</ref> in medieval [[Brittany]] and [[Cornwall]].

However, the element *''tigerno-'' was a regular one in Brittonic personal names (compare [[Saint Mungo|Kentigern]], [[Catigern]], Ritigern, Tigernmaglus, et al.) and, as *''wortigernos'' (or derivatives of it) is not attested as a common noun, there is no reason to suppose that it was used as anything other than a personal name. In fact, an [[Old Irish]] cognate of it, {{lang|sga|Foirtchern}}, was a fairly common personal name in medieval Ireland, further lending credence to the notion that Vortigern was a personal name and not a title.