History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

Bran the Blessed may thus be our old friend Cymbeline, a name repeated in Cornwall, but from literature, not tradition. Cartismandua, or Aregwydd, is the wicked queen, and Caradwg one of the sons.

As to Imogen, the real charm of the play, no British lady either accounts for or explains her name; but in German genealogies we fall upon Imagina of Limburg, in 1400; and there are various other instances of the like, so that Shakespeare may be supposed to have heard of one of them, and adopted her as the heroine of the old story of the deserted and betrayed wife, which he so strangely placed at the court of the last independent British prince. Or Imogen may be a Shakespearian version of Ygnoge, daughter of Pandrasus, emperor of Greece, and wife of Brutus, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth. In Anne of Brittany’s funeral oration, in 1514, her birth was deduced from this last.

Caradwg’s own proper name comes from the same root as the Greek χάρις, grace, and the Latin carus, dear. It means beloved, and has the Breton form Keridak. Caer Caradoc, in Shropshire, retains the name of his camp. He had a worthy namesake in Caradawc Vreichfras, or strong armed, called the pillar of the Kymry, and one of the three battle knights of Britain. Vreichfras means the strong arm, but the French trouveurs rendered it Brise-bras, the wasted arm; and told of an enchanter who fixed a serpent on the knight’s arm, from whose torture nothing could relieve him but that she whom he loved best should undergo it in his stead. His faithful wife offered herself; the serpent was just about to seize on her, when her brother smote off its head with his sword; but her husband thus never recovered the strength of his arm! Others, however, read Vreich-fras as Fer-a-bras, iron arm; and thus, perhaps, from some Breton romance, was one of the Hauteville brothers called William Ferabras. Hence, again, did the French and Italian romancers name their fierce Moorish champion Ferraù, or Ferragus, the same who lost his helmet, and possessed the healing salve, valued by Don Quixote as the balsam of Fierabras!

Caradwg’s wife, Tegan Euvron, or golden beauty, was mentioned by the Triads as one of the three fair ladies and chaste damsels of Arthur’s court, possessing three precious things, of which she alone was worthy,—the mantle, the goblet, and the knife. Later romance and ballad have expanded these into the story of the three tests of the faithful wife; and Sir Caradoc and his lady remain among the prime worthies of the Round Table.

In the twelfth century a saint named Caradwg retired from the world in disgust at the violence shown to him by his master, Rhys, prince of South Wales, on learning the loss of two greyhounds that had been in Caradwg’s charge. He lived in various hermitages in Wales and left a well in the parish of Haroldstone, called by his name. Moreover, soon after his death, he was said to have suddenly closed his hand, in frustration of the designs of the historian, William of Malmsbury, who wanted to cut off his little finger for a relic. Our insular saints were decidedly of Shakespeare’s opinion, and had no desire to have their ‘bones moved’ or be made relics of.

Caradwg, Caradoc, and Keriadek continue to be used in Wales, Scotland, and Brittany.

Cara, friend, was sometimes prefixed to a saint’s name by the Christian Gael, as Cara Michil, friend of St. Michael, as the name of his devout client, and thus arose such surnames as Carmichael.

This pursuit of Cymbeline and his family has carried us far from Bran the Blessed. Under this, his proper name, he stands forth in old Welsh, romance as the original importer of the Sanc-greal. One very old and wild version says that King Bran brought from Ireland a magic vessel, given him by a great black man in Ireland, which healed wounds and raised the dead.

In the twelfth century the Sanc-greal had assumed its Christian character, and Bran the Blessed, as the first Christian prince of Britain, was said to have received it from St. Joseph of Arimathea, and guarded it to the end of his life. No wonder, therefore, that Brittany loved and honoured his name.

Bran was a Pictish prince, killed in 839, in battle with the Danes, and it is highly probable that St. Birinus, the Keltic apostle of Wessex, was another form of Bran.