History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

The title of the swineherd is accounted for in the Welsh tale of a sow called Henwen, the old lady, who was placed under his charge, and came swimming straight for Britain, with Coll holding by her bristles, wherever she swam. There were predictions that Britain would suffer harm from her progeny, and Arthur therefore collected his forces to oppose her landing; but at Aber Tarrogi she came to the shore, and at Wheatfield in Gwent she laid three grains of wheat and three bees, whence corn and honey are the great pride of the district. At Dyved she produced a barleycorn and a pig, to the subsequent benefit of Dyved beer and bacon. She favoured Lleyn with rye, but on Snowdon she bestowed the wolf and the eagle, and on Mona a kitten.

Without going back, like Mr. Davies, to make the sow either into the ark, or a Phœnician ship, it is worth observing that there are traces in Ireland of some pig myth. There is a famous poem called The Hunting of the Pig, resulting in its being slain at Muckamore; and muc, a pig, and torc, a boar, are constantly found in old names of places, as if the swine cult had been of a higher kind than that at present received by the species.

Not wholly substantial is the next British Coel-ap-Cyllin, who with Bran the Blessed, and his own son Lleurig, makes up a triad of promoters of Christianity in Britain.

We are scarcely sure of more than his existence; not quite that he left his name to Colchester, and far less that he is the father of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine.

Col or Gall was the name of a companion of St. Columbanus, and, like him, one of the great missionary saints of Ireland, who finished the imperfect work of conversion of the Kelts, scattered in the borders of France, Germany, and Switzerland. His name of St. Gall is still attached to the great monastery near the Lake of Constance.

The prefix cu is, in its primary meaning, a dog, and is thus declined: cu (nom.), con (gen.), coin (dat.); thus showing its kindred with the Sanscrit çvan, Greek κυων (cyon), and Latin canis, the chien of France, and cane of Italy; hund and hound elsewhere. Only the land of the magnificent wolf-hound would have made his designation (elsewhere a term of scorn) into the title of the brave warrior, and thence into that of a chieftain. And so again it is the Kelts of Britain that transmuted the mungoose and snake of the Indian legend into the faithful dog and wild wolf of Bedgelert, the grave of the hound. Caleb, and an occasional Danish Hund, have alone elsewhere endured the name of the most faithful of animals; but in Gaelic it is a most favourite prefix. By the author of the Annals of Ulster, it is literally translated Canis, making us wonder whether, in the Scala family, Cane, so famous in Dante’s time, could have been a rendering of some ancient Celtic Cu.

Conn, when standing alone, as in the case of Conn of the Hundred Battles, means wisdom.

Several of the most distinguished Fenians have this prefix, and have handed it on to a great number of successors. Conghal would seem to have been the proper name of Finn’s father; and, in Macpherson’s poem, a Congal reigns over Ulster, as many a Congal assuredly did both before and after his time.

Connal, or Connel, a name sometimes said to mean friendship, is given to one of the Ossianic heroes, who makes a great figure in Macpherson’s epic, and is said to have named Tirconnel. The name continued in great favour, and the popular tales of the Highlands describe a certain ingenious Conall, whose adventures are a most curious mixture of those of Ulysses and Sindbad the Sailor, and are related in the same way as those of the Three Calenders and other worthies in the Arabian Nights. History says that Congal Claen, king of Ulster, slew Suibne, king of Ireland, but was then attacked and defeated by Domnall II., Suibne’s successor; that he then fled to Donald-brec, or the Freckled, king of the Scots, and brought him to Ireland to be defeated at Magrath, in 637. An Irish saint, called Congal, founded the Great Abbey of Ben-chor, in Ulster, answering to Ban-chor, in Wales, and thus formed the nursery of the great missions of the Irish Church in the sixth century.

Conan of small renown, as Macpherson calls him, was an unfortunate Fenian, who always served as the butt of the rest, and is called in other legends Conan Maol, the bald. He is in character a good deal like the Sir Kay of Arthur’s court. The M'Connans now have borrowed the English names of Kenyon and Canning. His name comes to light in the Cymric branch, in the person of the British Conan, or Kynan Meriadech, who is said to have led a migration of Britons to Armorica, and to be the patriarch of the Dukes of Brittany. Of him is told the pretty tale of the spotless ermine, that took refuge under his shield, and was spared by him, its skin thenceforth forming the cognizance of Brittany, with the motto, Malò mori quàm fœdari.