ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2263 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2263 ************************************ 26 Mar 2001 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a 12th century Welsh woman, and you asked us to suggest a byname that means "freckled". Here is what we've found. As you observed, the standard modern Welsh spelling of the given name is . It is true that the modern Welsh words and are a feminine/masculine pair; but that distinction doesn't apply to the first element of a compound name like [1]. The important questions for the purpose of accurate historical re-creation are whether the name was used in 12th century Welsh and how it was spelled. In order to interpret spellings of Welsh names, it's important to understand that the spelling varied depending on the language that the scribe was using, among other factors. Welsh and English used quite different spelling systems, and a spelling used in a Welsh document would not necessarily have been used in an English document. Each scribe attempted to represent the actual pronunciation of the name, as he understood it, using the spelling rules of the language he was writing. In evaluating a proposed spelling of a name, the first question we ask is whether that spelling was actually used. If not, we ask whether it would have represented the same sound as the recorded spellings. The earliest examples we've found of women using this name are two 13th century instances and one mid-14th century instance. The name became much more common in the 15th and 16th centuries [2, 3]. We therefore cannot recommend any form of this name as good re-creation of 12th century Wales. The name does occur in 12th-14th century Welsh literature, though, where it is spelled [4], , and [5]. The shift from to is unlikely in the Welsh language of this period: The vowel was pronounced very different from in that language, so the two letters would not have been interchangable. The closest we can come to the spelling you want is a later form which occurs in 16th century English-language documents [6]. In that period, the spelling often occurs in Welsh documents [3]. Unfortunately, it wouldn't make sense to mix these two spellings together to get the that you want: The two spellings systems were not combined this way. The Welsh masculine word for "freckled" is , and we have found several examples of it used as a man's byname in medieval Welsh [2]. We haven't found an example of a woman with this byname, but it is entirely plausible. In a medieval feminine name, it would take the form . would be a fine 14th century Welsh name and a plausible 13th century name. If you want a name suitable for the 12th century, we recommend you choose a different given name. There's a list of appropriate names on the web at: A Simple Guide to Constructing 13th Century Welsh Names http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/welsh13.html would have been pronounced \gwen-WEE-vahr VREKH\, where \KH\ represents the raspy sound in the Scottish word or the German We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, AElfwyn aet Gyrwum, and Adelaide de Beaumont. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 26 Mar 2001 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] The full explanation is complicated. The variation between and derives originally from the influence of the vowel in the following syllable. When the element occurred at the end of a name (or as an independent word), the difference between the Brittonic masculine and feminine inflectional endings was what produced the Welsh distinction between masculine and feminine . (Brittonic was an ancient precursor to the medieval form of Welsh.) When the element occurs somewhere other than the final position in a word or name, whether it appears in Welsh as or depends on the following sound in Brittonic, not on the gender of the compound. begins with for reasons of historic phonology, not because it's a feminine name. There are any number of masculine names with as the first element -- it's only as a second element that the form of the element is gender-related. [2] Morgan, T.J. and Prys Morgan, _Welsh Surnames_ (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985), s.nn. Gwenhwyfar, Brych. [3] Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, unpublished research. [4] Bromwich, Rachel, _The Welsh Triads_ (University of Wales Press, 1978), specifically material from the Brut Dingestow. [5] _The Mabinogion_, trans. Gwyn Jones & Thomas Jones (Everyman's Library, 1974), in "Culhwch and Olwen". [6] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Women's Names in the First Half of 16th Century Wales" (WWW: J. Mittleman 1998). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/welshWomen16/