Readingas

The Readingas (Old English Rēadingas) were a tribe or clan of early Anglo-Saxon England whose capital was Reading; their territory formed a regio or administrative subdivision of the early Kingdom of Wessex.¹ The area of the Readingas adjoined that of the Sunningas to the east and that of the Basingas 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 throughout the Middle Ages.¹

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 [one]".²