History of Christian names

by Charlotte M. Yonge

It is curious that his other name, Peredur, has by the sound been turned into Peter. One Robert de Barron tells, that from Bran, the Grail descended to Alan, and thence to Petrus his nephew; and a story of the Breton peasantry still gives the adventures of Perronik, like the original Peredur, an idiot at first, but sent to the Castle of Caerglas to fetch a diamond lance and golden cup, which would raise the dead by a touch.

The later French romances spoilt the nobleness and purity of Perceval’s character, but he is always one of the best of the knights, and succeeds in finding the Sanc-greal. But Galahad, the pure and virgin knight, son of Lancelot, and predestined to occupy the Siége Perilous at the Round Table, resist all temptation, conquer all peril, and finally obtain full fruition of the Greal, then, at his own desire, pass out of the world of sin and care, has, in England, taken the place once the right of Peredur or Perceval, though Wagner’s splendid ‘Parcifal’ has restored to him the chief place. I suspect him, as before said, to have been the separate produce of the story of Cattwg, first warrior, and afterwards hermit and saint, and that Galahad may have been an epithet from his starry purity.

In the Mabinogion, Perceval has a ladye love, whom, however, he only loves with distant chivalrous devotion, and who answers to his sister, who in Mallory’s beautiful story gave the blood from her own veins to heal a lady who could only be cured with the life-blood of a pure virgin.

In the Mabinogion her name is Angharad Law-eurag, or with the hand of gold, and Angharad, or the free from shame, the undisgraced (from angharz), was continued in Wales, but it is now generally considered as the equivalent of Anne, and thus accounts for Anna being universally called in romance the sister of Arthur, and mother of the traitor nephew Medrawd.

The Welsh Angharawd, probably the source of Ankaret, which occurs in the family of Le Strange in 1344, is generally supposed to mean an anchorite; but as it has no parallel on the Continent, it is much more likely to be the Welsh Angharad. Annan was, however, a separate name—for the three sprightly ladies of Britain are Annan, Angharad, and Perwyr.

Myfanwy is one of the unaccountable feminine Welsh names, not yet extinct among families of strong national feeling, though in general Fanny has been substituted for it. It may possibly be Mabanwy, child of the water, or else it may be My-manwy, my fine (or rare one).

The three primary bards of Britain were Plenydd, Alawn, and Gwron, whom Mr. Davies explains as light, harmony, and virtue. Plenydd, it is thought, is related to Belenus; and Alawn is erected by ardent Cymrians into the mythic Greek Olen, who is said to have been the first writer of hymns in hexameter, and whom the Delphic poetess, Boeo, calls a Hyperborean; this name is said to mean the flute-player. At any rate, I have found Alwn Aulerv in Welsh genealogies as brother of Bran the Blessed, and this must be the real origin of the Breton Alan. Elian and Hilarius were both used as its Latinisms.[^[105]]

It is first found in early Breton history, then it came to England with Alan Fergéant, Count of Brittany, the companion of William the Conqueror, and first holder of the earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire; and, indeed, one Alan, partly Breton, partly Norman, seems to have taken up his abode in our island before the Conquest, and four besides the count came after it. In the time of Henry I., one of these gentlemen, or his son, held Oswestry; and as these were the times when Anglo-Norman barons were fast flowing into Scotland, his son Walter married a lady, whom Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland calls Eschina, the heiress of Molla and Huntlaw, in Roxburghshire; and their son, another Alan, secured another heiress, Eva, the daughter of the Lord of Tippermuir; and, becoming high steward of Scotland, was both the progenitor of the race of Stuart, and the original of the hosts of Alans and Allens, who have ever since filled Scotland. That country has taken much more kindly to this Breton name than has England, in spite of Allen-a-dale, and of a few families where Allen has been kept up; but as a surname, spelt various ways, it is still common.

Like mare in Latin, and meer in Teuton, the Gaelic muir, Welsh môr, and Breton mor, are close kindred, and watery names derived from them abound.

King Arthur’s sister, Morgana, or Morgaine, Morgue la Fée, or La Fata Morgana, as she is variously termed in different tongues, was Morgan Maritime—the derivative from sea. From her, or from some lingering old Keltic notion in ancient Italy, the Sicilian fisherman connects the towers and palaces painted on the surface of the Mediterranean with La Fata Morgana, the lady of the sea.