Kingdom of Rheged

thumb|The River Eden, Cumbria|Eden Valley is thought by some to have been the heartland of the kingdom of Rheged. Rheged () was one of the kingdoms of the ('Old North'), the Brittonic-speaking region of what is now Northern England and southern Scotland, during the post-Roman era and Early Middle Ages. It is recorded in several poetic and bardic sources, although its borders are not described in any of them. Archaeological work from 2012 onwards on a site in Galloway in Scotland is interpreted by the excavators as showing that it is a royal centre of Rheged. Rheged possibly extended into Lancashire and other parts of northern England. In some sources, Rheged is intimately associated with the king Urien Rheged and his family. Its inhabitants spoke Cumbric, a Brittonic dialect closely related to Old Welsh.

== Etymology == The origin of the name Rheged has been described as "problematic". One Brittonic-language solution is that the name may be a compound of rö-, a prefix meaning "great", and cę:d meaning "wood, forest" (cf. Welsh coed) although the expected form in Welsh would be *Rhygoed. If association of the name with cę:d is correct, the prefix may be rag-, meaning "before, adjacent to, opposite". Derivation from the element reg, which with the suffix -ed has connotations of "generosity", is another possibility.