#welsh names

[bodhrancomedy]

Listen, for people wanting to call out colonialism, there are way too many of you mocking Irish, Welsh, and Scottish names.

No, they’re not alphabet soup, no they do not look like “you’ve thrown letters at a wall and used what stuck,” they are living, breathing languages which we did CPR on after the British Empire shot them.

Like, people DIED to keep them alive.

Every time I see some (English/American) interviewer make an entire segment forcing Saoirse Ronan to list off Irish names, I die a little inside. It’s particularly galling to see the same people ooh-ing over how “mystical” they sound, or claiming ancient heritage to us.

Realise there’s a world beyond your myopic lens and just accept sometimes you’ve got new stuff to learn. Fuck knows I do.

[gawrkin]

Fun fact: "Morgwen" or rather Morwen/Morwenna is real legit name in Welsh/Brythonic.

It means "Maiden", although it can be a portmaneau of "Mor" (meaning "sea/of the sea") and "Gwenn" (meaning "white/blessed/beautiful"). So, basically "the White Sea" or "the Beautiful Sea"

[pronoun-checks]

What are some vintage sounding english names you like? What about irish or welsh names? (If you have some of those to suggest, please include both traditional and anglicized spelling options!). Masculine or neutral, no feminine names please! Thanks for your time

No problem!

William/Will

Charles/Charlie

Oliver/Ollie/Oli

Theodore/Theo

Edward/Eddie/Ed

Jack

Arthur

August

Aodhán/Aiden

Fionn/Finn

Seán/Shawn

Ciarán/Kieran/Kieron

Caoimhín/Kevin

Niall/Neil

Aeron/Aaron

Rhys/Reece

Owain/Owen

[wylldebee]

Besides Behindthename, anybody know any good sites for welsh names? And I mean good sites, as in sites with proper welsh names and their proper meanings (or as close as they can be)?

[whitegoldtower]

Looking back through my family tree and I’ve run into some gorgeous names, mainly my great grandmother and her siblings.

Here’s some of the prettiest:

❤️Morfydd (my great granny) - means “Maiden”

❤️Idwall - “Lord of the Wall”

❤️Gwyn - “white, fair, blessed”

❤️Blodwen - “fair flower”

❤️Olwen - “white footprint” (in mythology, she was the daughter of a giant, and was so gentle that white flowers would spring from her footsteps)

❤️Gwenllian - “fair and flaxen”, I’m guessing she was a blonde…?

❤️Elwyn - “friend of elves”… me too, love

❤️Rhonwyn (gran’s sister) - “Fair Lance / Slender / White-Haired”

Also a really cool lore drop; Morfydd and Blodwen had jet black hair unlike the other siblings, and Blodwen was known to be particularly beautiful, so much so that apparently she had the nickname “the black rose” (according to my dad and grandmother). I’ve seen pictures of her, too, and honestly, she was completely stunning.

In my opinion, Blodwen looked like the absolute image of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Proserpina.

[legitbabynames]

Elliw

Photo by Alexander Grey on Pexels.com Origin: Welsh Gender: feminine Meaning: “colour” Pronunciation, sounds kind of like Eshew The name is derived from the Welsh lliw, meaning “colour.” The name has been in use since Medieval…

[emmi-kat]

Reblog with what languages.

[a-library-ghost]

whoop whoop, gansey boy!

[baldnt]

holy hell i found him y’all. he is indeed in rural Virginia.

[ashesforart]

Have a friend traveling Wales right now and she has informed me that theRE'S A WELSH TOWN NAMED MERTHYR?? Which sounds a lot like merthur??? And apparently merthyr in Welsh means martyr?? I'm gonna throw up.

[piss-off-erik]

honestly shoutout to Moira Quirk. That woman acted the shit out of the locked tomb series and I really really hope she’s narrating Alecto too. Do I remember any character names?! NO! Would I recognise Magnus’ sweet Welsh accent from three rooms away? INSTANTLY!

[evidenceof]

"War's over."

HARRY WELSH, DICK WINTERS, LEWIS NIXON SKINNY SISK, DAVID WEBSTER, JOE LIEBGOTT EP 10 Points | Band of Brothers

[that-bitch-kat3]

you know a wolfstar fic is good when you need to pull up google translate in another tab

[official-wales]

i yearn for the welsh cakes

[llyfrenfys]

See, I personally find this quest to find pagan/pre-Christian elements in Welsh/Irish literature quite unnerving - I don't know about anyone else.

There's something to be said about genuinely discovering pre-Christian elements in a narrative or story and that being where evidence and study has led you. But I see some people on this fruitless quest to find pagan elements in very Christian texts and sometimes it feels like if no pagan elements can be found, people start making stuff up out of whole cloth - and that can be very dangerous for already not-well known texts in minoritised languages!

There's already so much misinformation out there about Irish/Welsh texts and literature in general - so it hurts to see people carelessly adding to the misinformation either out of ignorance or lack of respect for the source material.

I promise you the source material being Christian doesn't ruin it - you can in fact, enjoy these myths without making them into something they're not!

[laurasimonsdaughter]

A fairy's true name

Earlier I wrote about how much trouble I had finding even one example of a fairy trying to learn a human’s name to use it against them, but folktales where it is the other way round do exist!

Until recently the best example I had for this “use a fairy’s true name against them” plot, was Rumpelstiltskin (and all its variants, for there are many). But technically the Rumpelstiltskin plot itself is not enough to claim that knowing a fairy’s true name gives you power over them. After all, a specific deal was struck between the fairy (or dwarf, or imp, etc.) and the human, with the finding out of the name releasing the human from their debt to the fairy. (Best examples including a fairy: Peerie Fool, Tríopla Trúpla, Titty Tod).

But it turns out that the tale type “The name of the helper ATU 500��� contains stories in which I would argue it is made clear that knowing a fairy’s name holds power:

In these stories a the supernatural creature in question is a helpful house spirit or neighbour to the human, but immediately leave them forever as soon as they (sometimes through trickery) find out their name, after they refused to tell them:

Hoppetînken, a mountain dwarf (German, Kuhn, 1859)

Gwarwyn-a-throt, a spirit/elf/bogie (Welsh, Rhys, 1901)

Silly go Dwt, a fairy (Welsh, Rhys, 1901)

And these stories contain what I would call “strong circumstantial evidence”:

In Winterkölbl (German Hungarian, Vernaleken, 1896) a grey dwarf who lives in a tree makes a young king guess his name before he will (somewhat reluctantly) consent to let him marry his human foster daughter (she was abandoned, he did not steal her!).

In The Rival Kempers (Irish, Yeats, 1892) an old fairy woman sets a young woman the task of guessing her name, but then gives it to her freely (with some extra help to win her good fortune), because she was polite and generous to her.

Conversely, in The Lazy Beauty and her Aunts (Irish, Kennedy, 1870) the three fairy women who help the protagonist with her spinning, weaving and sewing, actually introduce themselves by name, but they are clearly nicknames: Colliagh Cushmōr (Old Woman Big Foot), Colliach Cromanmōr (Old Woman Big Hips), Colliach Shron Mor Rua (Old Woman Big Red Nose).

But my two favourite examples are Whuppity Stoorie (Scottish, Chambers, 1858; reprinted by Rhys, 1901) and The heir of Ystrad (Welsh, Rhys, 1888, reprinted in 1901). I'll summarise them below the cut:

Whuppity Stoorie (Scottish, Chambers, 1858; quotes from Rhys, 1901)

A woman is left by her husband. She has a baby boy to feed and her only hope is that her sow will have a big litter of piglets. However the sow gets ill and as the woman weeps with the fear that the pig will die, she sees an old woman coming up the road. “She was dressed in green, all but a short white apron and a black velvet hood, and a steeple-crowned beaver hat on her head. She had a long walking staff, as long as herself, in her hand --” This “green gentlewoman” tells her that she knows the woman’s husband is gone and that the sow is sick and asks what she’ll give her if she cures the pig. The woman heedlessly promises her anything she likes. So the green woman cures the pig with a spell and some oil and then reveals that she wants to have the woman’s baby in return, thereby revealing to the poor woman that she is a fairy. The fairy is unmoved by the woman’s sorrow, but does reveal that: “I cannot, by the law we live under, take your bairn till the third day; and not then, if you can tell me my right name.” Luckily the woman overhears the fairy woman singing her own name and gets to keep her child by addressing her as such, after which: “If a flash of gunpowder had come out of the ground it couldn't have made the fairy leap higher than she did. Then down she came again plump on her shoe-heels; and whirling round, she ran down the brae, screeching for rage, like an owl chased by the witches.”

The heir of Ystrad

A young gentleman hides in the bushes to see “the fair family” dance on the river bank. There he sees the most beautiful girl he has ever seen and wants more than anything to win her for his own. He jumps in the middle of the circle of fairies and grabs her by force, while all the others flee. He is kind to her, but keeps her captive, and eventually she agrees to become his servant. She steadfastly refuses to tell him her name though, no matter how often he asks. One night he once again hides near where the fairies play and he hears one fairy lament to another that last time they were there, their sister Penelope (Pénĕlôp) was stolen by a man. He returns home joyfully, calling is favourite maid by her name, which greatly astonishes her. The young man finds her so beautiful, industrious, skilled and fortunate, that he wishes to marry her. “At first she would in no wise consent, but she rather gave way to grief at his having found her name out. However, his importunity at length brought her to consent, but on the condition that he should not strike her with iron; if that should happen, she would quit him never to return.” They marry and they lived “in happiness and comfort”. She bears him a beautiful son and a daughter and through her skill and fairy fortune they grow richer and richer. But one day while trying to bridle an unruly horse the husband accidentally hits his wife with the iron bridle. As soon as the iron touches her, she vanishes. But one cold night she comes to his bedroom window one more time, telling him that if ever her son should be cold, he should be placed on his father’s coat, and that if her daughter should be cold, she should be placed on her petticoat. Then she disappears forever.

I adore both of these stories. Whuppity Stoorie is probably the clearest example of the power of a fairy's name. But The heir of Ystrad is as good a fairy bride story as The Shepherd of Myddvai and that has been a beloved favourite of mine for as long as I can remember. Either way they're both wonderful takes on the power it grants to know a fairy's name.