Hi all,
I'm a welsh-speaker and I'm really lucky that my husband has agreed we can give our daughter a welsh name. But because he doesn't speak welsh, I didn't consider that what he thinks sounds nice and what I think sounds nice are very different! We have finally agreed on a name that we both really like - Aeron. But there's something that's worrying me a little.
It's a unisex name that's also pretty unusual. I live where there aren't so many welsh-speakers (Newport) and the only close friends I have who speak welsh haven't heard the name used at all. I have, once or twice, but only for boys. To be honest, giving my daughter a name that's more common on boys doesn't bother me in the slightest - there are quite a few unisex welsh names that skew one direction or the other. What does worry me is that people will think I made a mistake, rather than a conscious decision. Like that I picked a name from an inaccurate internet list without knowing what it meant, rather than thinking about it pretty carefully.
Aeron is the name of a river (which is a common source of given names in welsh), which apparently got its name from a long-forgotten battle god who had male and female aspects. It's also, coincidentally, the welsh word for "berries" which is a feminine noun, and names from the natural world are a very common source for girls names in welsh. It's listed as a unisex name in the baby name book I got from a welsh language press compiled by a respected welsh academic. So like...I think on logic it makes sense as a girl's name. Plus I like it a lot and haven't found another name I'm happy with.
But I wanted to know, from other welsh speakers, if you met a girl named Aeron, would you shrug and go, "Oh, okay, fair enough..." (like Teifi or Eirian) or would it be as weird as a little girl named Aled or Dylan or Iestyn?
Am very happy to continue the conversation in welsh or english! Hapus i barhau'r sgwrs yng nhymraeg neu'n saesneg!