ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1363 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1363 ************************************ 30 Nov 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for information about the Welsh byname and whether it would have been used between 1100-1300 with your given name . Here is what we have found. is a fine byname for your period. It is recorded in the name 1295 and probably also in the earlier . It probably meant "grayhead", referring to hair color. The word means "head", as you believed. has a range of meanings in common usage, including shades of gray and of brown, but in personal names it very often means "gray" specifically, with the implication of "old" [1]. In some grammatical circumstances, a byname undergoes lenition, a softening of the initial sound that is required by Welsh grammar. In particular, lenition occurs in a woman's byname. In the case, the initial \P\ softens to \B\, and in your period that change was reflected in spelling. Therefore, your byname would be . You didn't ask about your given name , but we found some information that you may find useful. As best we can tell, was not used as a given name in period Wales, though we did find a similar-sounding name. is an English form of the French , which is not recorded before Chretien de Troyes used it as the name of his character in his romance "E/rec et E/nide". (The slash represents an accent on the preceding letter.) Although that story was based on a Welsh tale, the heroine of the Welsh version was named , not . The name does not appear in Britain until the 19th century when Tennyson popularized it with his poem "Geraint and Enid" in the _Idylls of the King_ [2, 3]. We found a similar name, , recorded in 1292 [4]. This is the only example of this name that we've found, so we aren't completely confident that it's valid. It might have been pronounced \AY-nidh\, where \dh\ represents the voiced sound in . Although a woman of your period might have been known by a byname like , in formal circumstances she would have been identified as her father's daughter. If your father were named , you could have been called as well as . We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek and Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 30 Nov 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Morgan, T.J. and Prys Morgan, _Welsh Surnames_ (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985), s.nn. Pen (p.175f), Llwyd (p.151f). [2] Bromwich, Rachel, _The Welsh Triads_ (University of Wales Press, 1978), p.347f. The author writes The name of the heroine of 'Gereint vab Erbin' and of the corresponding poem by Chretien de Troyes, 'Erec et Enide', does not appear to be recorded in any antecedent source, either in Welsh or French. {footnote: occurs, apparently as a man's name, however, in a genealogy given in LD I, xvi, but there can be no certainty that it represents an authentic form. this name does not appear in the corresponding genealogy in the 'Life of St Beuno'.} Its origin has been generally regarded as an enigma (see AT, pp. 100-1); and Professor Loomis rightly rejects the suggestion of earlier scholars that it is derived from a common noun meaning 'a woodlark', for which the lexicographical evidence is doubtful. Elsewhere ... I have suggested that this name arose out of a wrong division of the territorial name (Vannes < Venetis), just as the name of the Breton hero of the tale, , arose out of a wrong division of a similar territorial name , later (as was pointed out many years ago by J. Loth ...). ... This tale of Breton origin was transferred to insular Dumnonia and freshly localized there around the name of the local hero , but the name of the heroine survived this transference unchanged. [3] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), s.n Enid. [4] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Names and Naming Practices in the Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll 1292-3", in Known World Heraldic Symposium Proceedings, 1991 (SCA: Laurel, Maryland, 1991).