Recently I have felt frustrated at the reception Welsh names have received on Nameberry. Occasionally insulted, because I am Welsh and it’s never pleasant to see names from your culture being derided and dismissed. I know the majority of people on here are American, and [name]America[/name] has had fairly limited exposure to Welsh names because there was never mass Welsh immigration to [name]America[/name] like there was with Irish people.
So I thought I’d do a list, with pronounciations, because invariably, it’s the pronunciation that proves to be the problem. Plus I’ve been threatening to do a list for a while. Here’s a link that explains pronunciations in the Welsh language generally, if you’re interested: http://www.grailcode.com/how-to-pronounce-those-impossible-welsh-names
Most Welsh names are very old, because of a long history of having our culture and language suppressed. The language isn’t really evolving anymore but plenty of people still speak it in [name]Wales[/name].
Wen/[name]Wyn[/name] endings denote gender. Wen is female, [name]Wyn[/name] is male. Obviously I’m not going to list all the names; there are a lot of them. And some are, frankly, unusable because they’re so old. So I’ll just do ones I’ve seen discussed on here, and maybe a few others.
Girls
[name]Alys[/name] - ([name]Ah[/name]-liss) - this is the original form of [name]Alice[/name] and therefore is pronounced in the same way.
[name]Angharad[/name] (Ahng-ha-rahd) - this one is like linguistic olympics for non Welsh people. It’s a really ancient name, meaning either more love or much loved.
[name]Arianwen[/name] ([name]Ah[/name]-ree-ann-wen)
Aderyn ([name]AH[/name]-deh-rin) means bird. Isn’t pronounced like Adderall.
[name]Bethan[/name] (beth-an)
[name]Branwen[/name] (brahn-wen) - this has a soft first syllable, not the same hard one as [name]Brandon[/name]. This name gets “sounds like bran flakes” on here, yet as far as I know, [name]Brandon[/name] does not.
[name]Bronwen[/name] (bron-wen). I honestly don’t know why anybody would name their child a name meaning “fair/pure breasted”. But it seems rather more popular than [name]Branwen[/name]!
[name]Carys[/name] (Kah-riss) means love. Is pronounced with a hard C. Doesn’t rhyme with pair.
[name]Cerys[/name] (Keh-riss) means love. also pronounces with a hard C. Doesn’t rhyme with care.
[name]Ffion[/name] (fee-on) means foxglove. Very popular in [name]Wales[/name] currently.
Enfys (En-fiss) means rainbow.
[name]Seren[/name] (seh-ren) means star. Is not pronounced the same way as the saran gas, which is something I’ve seen levelled at it. I don’t even know what saren gas is.
[name]Rhiannon[/name] (rhee-an-non)
Eirlys (ayr-lys) means snowdrop. That’s the closest written explanation I can come up with, if one of fellow Welsh berries can explain it better?
[name]Efa[/name] (ehv-ah) - Welsh form of [name]Eve[/name] essentially. It sounds lovely but has the difficulty of perhaps looking just three random letters next to each other. But people have said the same about [name]Eve[/name],[name]Ava[/name],and [name]Eva[/name] too.
Rhoslyn (Rhoss-lin)
[name]Nia[/name] (nee-ah) - Welsh form of [name]Niamh[/name].
Boys
Aneirin ([name]Ah[/name]-nye-rin) means noble. It is from this form of the name you get the nickname [name]Nye[/name].
[name]Bryn[/name] ([name]Brin[/name]) means hill - strictly a boy’s name throughout the UK not just in [name]Wales[/name]. I find it being considering a girl’s name in [name]America[/name] really odd.
[name]Dylan[/name] (Duh-lan) needs no explaining as it’s been used in the USA, granted pronounced dill-an.
[name]Gareth[/name] (Gah-reth) means noble.
Iestin (Yes-tin)
Macsen (Mak-sen) Welsh form of [name]Maxim[/name].
[name]Elis[/name] ([name]El[/name]-is) Welsh form of [name]Elias[/name]
[name]Jago[/name] ([name]Jay[/name]-go) - Welsh form of [name]Jacob[/name].
[name]Rhys[/name] - needs no explaining really. Thought as with [name]Bryn[/name], is strictly a boy’s name throughout the UK.
