Young, or child

Latin, cild, cilt.

The title cilt, is variously translated as Young, Child or noble. It could mean boy, heir, noble, son, or warrior. In Domesday Book it is often applied to members of the higher nobility in Anglo-Saxon England. In many cases, those described by this title can be shown to be related to the royal house or to the families of the Anglo-Saxon earls, and some of the richest landowners in Anglo-Saxon England bore this appellation.

Unfortunately, Domesday Book is more inconsistent in its use than it is with most other titles. To some extent, the variations are due to the idiosyncrasies of local scribes or circuit returns; but usage is not always consistent even within individual counties and circuits. It is probably for this reason that some Anglo-Saxon nobles distinguished as Young appear to be singularly under-endowed in Domesday.

For the estates of the greater Anglo-Saxon nobles, see Peter Clarke, The English nobility under Edward the Confessor (1994), and for the problems of identification among even the greatest English landowners, Ann Williams, 'A west-country magnate of the eleventh-century: the family, estates and patronage of Beorhtric son of Aelfgar', Family trees and the roots of politics: the prosopography of Britain and France from the tenth to the twelfth century, edited by K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (1998), pages 41-68.