History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

[95]. Knight, Pictorial History; Mazzaroth; Knight, Celt, Roman, and Saxon; Grimm, Deutsche[Deutsche] Mythologie; Jones, Welsh Sketches; Irish Poems; Montalembert.

Section III.—Keltic Nomenclature.

The Kelts were highly poetical and romantic in their nomenclature. In general their names were descriptive; many referred to complexion, and many more described either masculine courage or feminine grace and sweetness. But, unfortunately, the language is so uncertain, and its commentators are so much at war, that in dealing with these, after the well-criticized ancient tongues, is like passing from firm ground to a quaking bog, and in many cases there is but a choice of conjectures to deal with.

The names to be examined are of various kinds. First, the historical ones that have come through Latin writers, terribly disguised, but the owners of them certain to have existed. These are usually more Cymric than Gaelic, and Welsh and Breton writers find explanations for them. A few truly mythological ones will be considered with these, and placed according to the order—if order it can be called—assigned to their supposed owners in the pedigree of Brut, in which England used to believe on the word of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Welsh on that of their native chronicle of Brut. Then follow a most controverted collection, chiefly of the two Gaelic nations. They were the property of a set of heroes called the Feen, who are the great ancestry of the chiefs of the Scottish race in both islands, and who are said to have performed fabulous exploits at some distant period, which gains some sort of date from the poem representing Ossian, the last survivor of the band, as extremely miserable under the teaching of St. Patrick. The fact was probably that the floating myths of the Gael attached themselves to some real adventurous band, and the date is no more to be depended on than those of Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it gives a point by which to arrange the names still in great part surviving both in Ireland and Scotland, though often confused with those imported from other languages.

After this follows the cycle of names made popular by the romances of King Arthur’s court, which naturally find their place at the time of the fall of the Roman power in England. These, as far as they can be understood or interpreted at all, are Cymric, and some have become tolerably well known throughout Europe.

The different classes connected with one or other of these will nearly dispose of all the Keltic names worth notice. The remaining will chiefly belong to the saints, in which Wales, Brittany, and Ireland were particularly prolific. The odd thing is that all the Welsh saints were in some way or other of royal birth, so that the royalty of Wales must have been peculiarly pious. Brittany, likewise, had sundry hermits; and Ireland deserved its title of the Isle of Saints, though, as will be seen, some of them were of a strangely Irish order, and regarded as strong cursing powers.

The Gaelic race had the remarkable custom of calling their children the servant, the disciple, or the votaress of the patron saint, and it is not till recent times that the prefixes Giolla, Maol, and Cailleach have been entirely dropped, and their traces are often remaining in appellations in Ireland and Scotland.

The name was entirely personal, not hereditary; but the pride of ancestry caused the father’s, grandfather’s, forefather’s names, to the remotest generation, to be heaped upon one head, connected in Welsh by Mab, or, as it was contracted, Ap.

The Welsh, about the fifteenth century, found these pedigree names unmanageable in contact with ordinary society, and contented themselves each with one ancestral surname for good. Some incorporated their Ap, as Pryce, Ap Rhys, Pugh, or Ap Hugh; some, in English fashion, adding the possessive s to the end of the father’s name, like the hosts of Joneses and Williamses; others took some favourite name from the roll of ancestry, or called themselves after their estates.

In Gaelic the word Mac, the son, or O, or ua, the grandson, connected the person with the ancestor whose name was chosen.