Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 09:03:46 +0000

Subject: Re: Welsh/English name

> Greetings! I have a lady here who wants a Welsh first name and an
> English last or place name. Can she do this okay since the two
> countries/cultures border one another, or must she "pick a place and stick with it"?

Most bordering countries have some degree of "name bleed" over the borders. Welsh and English is a very well documented case of this.

The problems tend to arise when the two cultures having the "name bleed" use radically different spelling conventions, such that a reader in one language would have no chance to pronounce the name correctly. In this case you still have "name bleed" but written forms of the name tend to be entirely within one spelling tradition. So you would get "Aonghus MacAodheghain" in Scots Gaelic, which would be spelled by his lowland Scots, or English, brethern as "Angus MacEgan" or "Angus MacKeegan" or some such. But not "Aonghus MacKeegan".

Welsh, despite a few odd-to-English-speaking eye sounds like the dd and ll orthographies, is actually quite close to English in Orthography. One doesn't often get "Englished Welsh" but one sees "Englished" Irish Gaelic all the time.

Do note that the SCA will not let you form a single phrase in more than one language. "Von Koln", yes. "de Cologne", yes. "Von Cologne", no. The same kind of thing applies with patronyms too -- except that sometimes you might find something that "looks like" two languages ("ap Robert", where "ap" is Welsh for "son of" and "Robert" looks like English). But it isn't really two languages, since Robert got borrowed into Welsh without a spelling change...

You get a feel for this after a while. In specific instances where there's doubt, it's best to try to see if you can document specific instances, or get help doing so, rather than lay down firm, 100%, inflexible dicta about "you can/can't mix these languages."

Zenobia Couronne Rouge