History of the Reed family in Europe and America

12 ORIGIN OF THE NAME,
speech, talk, account ; reden, to speak. Dut. rede, speech ; reden, rea-
son. Dan. rede, account and ready. Ger. bereden, to berate; rath,
advice, counsel, a council or senate ; raihen, to advise, to conjecture or
guess, to solve a riddle. Dut. raad, counsel, advice ; raaden, to counsel.
Swed. rod, Dan. raad, counsel ; rada, raader, to counsel, to instruct.
Wei. rJiaith, straight, right (that is, set right), decision, verdict; rheitheg,
rhetoric, from rhaitli. Dan. ret, law, justice, right, reason. Swed. rati,
ratta, id. Ir. radh, a saying ; radham, to say, tell, relate. Wei. adraivz,
to tell or rehearse. Gr. fiea, for jie8o, to say or tell, to flow; {njTop, a
speaker, a rhetorician. Goth, rodyan, to speak. The primary sense of
read is, to speak, to utter ; that is, to push, drive, or advance. This is
also the primary sense of ready; that is, prompt, or advancing quick.
The Sax. gerad, ready, accords also in elements with the Wei. rhad,
Lat. gratia ; the primary sense of which is, prompt to favor, advancing
towards, free. The elements of these words are the same as those of
ride, and Lat. gradior, &c. The sense of reason is secondary, — that
which is uttered, said, or set forth ; hence counsel also. The Swed. ratta,
Dan. ret, if not contracted words, are from the same root."
The present different methods of spelling the word arise,
in a great measure, from fancy ; there being not less than
eleven orthographical forms, in which the natural result is
the same. The mode of spelling in use by our Puritan
ancestors was usually Reade, but, in some cases, Reede ;
and one of them spelled it Rede. One who figured with
Napoleon I. spelled his name Wrede. A Bavarian general,
who fought against Napoleon at the head of the Bavarian
troops, wrote it Reid. His biographers, however, sometimes
wrote it Ried. The Irish formerly spelled it Reedha, or
Redha ; from which came " ready." The Scotch method
was formerly Raid. The mode of spelling the name in
this country has gradually assumed one of the three follow-
ing forms ; namely, Read, Reed, and Reid : but it affords
no clew to the history of the word, as different members of
the same family use all these methods.
It was common, in the infancy of governments, for kings
and princes, who had been vanquished in the more civilized
countries, to steal away with their effects and retainers, to