The founder of Wearmouth, and subsequently of Jarrow, was an English nobleman of Northumbrian birth who, while in the service of King Osuiu, had been endowed with an estate appropriate to his rank as a king's thegn, but nothing more precise is known either of the place of his birth or of the location of his estate. Although the date of his birth has not been recorded in any early source, and although we do not know how old he was when he died on 12 January 689, we can nevertheless calculate that he was born within a year or so of Edwin's baptism by Paulinus in 627 and we may even conjecture that some unrecorded circumstances attending his birth at this particular time might account for his unusual name. He has come to be known generally as Benedict Biscop, but Eddius knew him as Biscop Baducing, and it is apparent from Bede who refers to Benedictus as his cognomen, that this name was adopted by him after his abandonment of secular life. Baducing may be taken as a patronymic, but Biscop, though susceptible to other explanations, can most naturally be associated with OE biscop from the Latin episcopus. The name, though certainly strange, is not unique, since it is found as that of a presbyter in the Lindisfarne Liber Vitae and also in the genealogy of the kings of Lindsey.