Beda (name)

Beda is a given name and surname of multiple origin.

As a masculine given name, it originates as an Anglo-Saxon short name, West Saxon Bīeda, Northumbrian Bǣda, Anglian Bēda (the purported name of one of the Saxon founders of Portsmouth in AD 501 according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle)[1] cognate with German Bodo. Beda Venerabilis was a Benedictine, in whose honour the name Beda was popularly chosen as a monastic name by Benedictines, and in modern times entered wider usage as a given name among Roman Catholics in continental Europe.

Béda is an unrelated Hungarian feminine given name.

Beda is also an unrelated Russian surname (from беда, "trouble, misery").

  1. ^ J. Insley, "Portesmutha" in: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde vol. 23, Walter de Gruyter (2003), 291.