NYT: English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest

[An t-Ileach]

...Absence of Celtic place names? What about Avon? What about London?

"The Celtic cultural myth “is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,” said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286."...

Of course, by 1286 even the Viking culture of Jorvik would have passed away into Mediaeval England, so having an ancestor in Flockton in that year tells him and us next to nothing about what he's arguing about.

As for the putative absence of Celtic place names in England, where would he like the opposing list to start (and end)? I suppose Avon was a good one, and London certainly. There's also The Wrekin in Shropshire (Dinlleu Gwrygon), Hereford (Hen Ffordd), the River Cam, the River Thames, Exeter (Caer Uisc), Kent (Caint), Cumbria, and so on...