Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 696

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 696

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/696

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!

You said that you had submitted the name <Angharad merch Albanwr>, intended to mean 'Angharad, daughter of the Scot', to the College of Arms and asked whether <merch> is correct for the period 800-1150.

For most of this period the patronymic marker would indeed have appeared as <merch>, though it would have been pronounced according to the later spelling <verch>, i.e., as \vairkh\. It's possible that by 1150 it would have been written <verch> at least some of the time.

Although <Angharad> is its standard modern spelling, the given name would have been written somewhat differently in your period. The Book of Llan Dav provides the spelling <Acgarat> from your period, and the Jesus College MS 20, whose contents are probably from before 1200, has <Agharat>. [1, 2] (In Old and early Medieval Welsh, the letters <c> and <g> were often used to represent the \ng\ sound.) And from somewhere between the 8th and the 10th century we have a Latinized <Hancarata>, corresponding to a non-Latinized <Hancarat>. [4]

We don't have much information on bynames from your period. In general they seem to have been simple patronymics ('son/daughter of <given name>') or descriptions ('red'). Later records are more extensive and show a wider variety of types. In particular, there are examples of patronymics based on the father's byname, and we even found a few involving ethnic bynames: <Mergh yr Wedeles> 1346 'daughter of the Irishwoman', <Ll[ywel]en ap y Gwythel> 1406 'Llyywelen son of the Irishman', and <Ior[werth] ap Je[van] ap

Gwythell> 1406 'Iorwerth son of Jevan son of (the) Irishman'. [5]
(Letters in square brackets are expansions of scribal abbreviations in the original.) In this period there is roughly an even split between examples with the definite article (<y> or <yr>) and examples without.

We don't know whether this usage can be projected back to your period. We have no early evidence for it, but early evidence of any kind is very limited. Of course this also means that we don't know whether the definite article would have been used. Since such bynames usual begin as simple descriptions, we are inclined to think that it would. If so, it would have been spelled <ir>.

Finally, the earliest known instance of <Albanwr> 'Scot' is from the 14th century. [3] However, the term <Alba> 'Scotland' is found in earlier records, so it's quite plausible that <Albanwr> was already in use in your period. If so, it would have been spelled something like <Albangur> at the time.

To sum up, we recommend that you change <Angharad> to one of the attested or implied early spellings, <Acgarat>, <Agharat>, or <Hancarat>. We're also inclined to recommend that you change the byname to a standard patronymic based on a man's given name, as this seems to be more likely for your period. However, we don't have enough data to say that a byname-based patronymic is definitely wrong for your period. If you do decide to keep this one, we recommend adding the definite article to make the whole name <Acgarat merch ir

Albangur> or the like; this would be pronounced roughly \ahng-HARR-at
vairkh @r ahl-BAHN-oor\, where <@> represents the sound of the <a> in <about>.

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn provided most of the research for this letter. We hope that it has been of use and that you will write us again if you have any further questions.

For the Academy,

Talan Gwynek


[1] Bartrum, P.C., ed. Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966).

[2] Evans, J. Gwenogvryn. The Text of the Book of Llan Dav. (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 1979) (Facsimile of the 1893 Oxford edition).

[3] Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, n.d.).

[4] Jackson, K.H. Language and History in Early Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1953).

[5] Morgan, T.J. & Prys Morgan. Welsh Surnames. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985).