ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2607 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2607 ************************************ 6 Nov 2002 From: Escobar de Santiago Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel! You wanted to know if would be an appropriate name for a 13th or 14th century Welsh woman. You also wanted to know how to pronounce three other feminine names: , and . Here is the information that we've found. The name is essentially an excellent choice. The particular spellings you've chosen aren't the best for your period. The specific spelling appears in early 15th century court records [1,2], but in the 13th and 14th centuries the typical spelling was as found in 1292 [3,4]. The shift from final to didn't take place until the 15th century. The spelling of was common after the period that you requested. More common spellings in 13th-14th century records are and [3]. is the typical written form for your name in the 13th and 14th centuries. The pronunciation was roughly \ahng-HAH- raht vehrkh MEH-rik\ [5]. The in should be pronounced quite distinctly and emphatically. The \kh\ in \vehrkh\ is the rasping sound of in Scottish 'lake' or German 'oh' and . is listed in records of 1292-93 [3] and was pronounced roughly \PEHR-wehr\ or \PEHR-@-wehr\, as suggested by English spellings such as [6]. The \@\ stands for the sound of the in and . The name appears in records of 1292-93 in an English linguistic context as , , and [4, 7]. In a Welsh linguistic context it would mostly likely have been spelled in this period. It was pronounced roughly \ih-WEH-ridh\, where \dh\ stands for the sound of in (not the sound in ). is the standard modern spelling of a popular name in late 13th century records, but the extremely wide range of spellings found in Anglo-Latin legal records suggests that the pronunciation may have been hard for non-Welsh speakers to grasp properly, and possibly that there was significant dialectal variation in how the name was pronounced. It appears that there were two basic pronunciations of the name, one used in Merioneth, represented by such spellings as [3,4], which was pronounced \DEEDH-gekh\, and one used elsewhere in Wales, represented by and similar spellings [2,7]. was pronounced very roughly \DEEDH-gee\. [8]. Any of these names would be a fine choice for your period. I hope the information in this letter has been useful. Please write to us again if any part of it is unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Arval Benicoeur, Mari neyn Brian, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Adelaide de Beaumont, Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, and Ursula Georges. For the Academy, Escobar de Santiago 6 November 2002 References [1] Roberts, Glyn, "The Anglesey Submissions of 1406" in _Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies_, vol. XV (1952) pp.39-60. [2] Williams-Jones, Keith, "A Mawddwy Court Roll, 1415-16" in _The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies_ vol. 23 (1970) [3] Williams-Jones, Keith, _The Merioneth Lay Subsidy Roll 1292-3_ (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1976). [4] Jones, Francis "The Subsidy of 1292" [covering Abergavenny and Cilgerran] in _The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies_, 13 (1950): 210-230. [5] The final consonant of was actually pronounced somewhere between \t\ and \d\, but it probably sounded more like \t\, at least to English ears. The final consonant of was pronounced somewhere between \k\ and \g\ but probably sounded more like \k\ to English ears. [6] Hopkins, Anthony, "The Lay Subsidy of 1292: Monmouth and the Three Castles" in _Studia_Celtica_ 30: 189-196, 1996. [7] Pierce, T. Jones "A Lleyn Lay subsidy Account" in _The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies_, vol. 5 Part 1 (Nov 1929) p.54-71. [8] To get a better approximation to the actually vowel of both syllables, round your lips while saying \EE\. (This is similar to the sound of u-umlaut in German and to the sound of the in French 'moon'.) The \g\ stands for 'hard' as in .