Welsh names

[Enwau]

I've just been reading through baby names threads..

There was a comment about non-welsh people using Welsh names being cultural appropriation... !

I didn't want to derail the thread any more than it had been so thought I'd ask here what people think about those with zero Welsh heritage or connections using Welsh names for their offspring?

I'm undecided. It's nice to see Welsh names out there but I also dislike nouveau spellings and different pronunciations ... But that's just me being precious.

Interesting this thread is gaining traction again, I noticed it last year but never commented.

My DD has a Welsh name. I'm American and DH is English, but with a Welsh dad. FIL grew up and lived in Wales his whole life, minus a couple decades wherein he was married to MIL and had their kids in England. He didn't learn Welsh growing up because it was an English speaking area, but taught himself as an adult and uses it for work now. DH and I live in London.

We do use the English pronunciation, which I understand Welsh speakers to find unattractive but I love - and it's actually a family name on my side, albeit belonging to a Midwest farmer's daughter several generations back who had no connection to Wales whatsoever.

DH is quite proud of his Welsh heritage (admittedly mainly rugby-centric), but yes, I've never been quite sure if all that makes the name we chose ok, in terms of CA.

If we have another DC it would probably get a German name - my mother's family is from there and I happen to love a lot of the names. However from the (as yet imaginary) DC's perspective the connection is just as tenuous as DD's to Wales: one grandparent, no language, no passport. I suppose because the German connection is personal to me (childhood traditions and such), I feel more confident about going there. 🤔

Yes it is.

Calling it CA is a bit ridiculous. What percentage of people actually have a name with origins in their birth country?My name is Latin for example.

@Laurdo, it's not about the origin of the name, it's about the language and culture of the name.
A name like John could be said to be latin in origin, but it's not a latin name.

God this sounds like being hard work.

Bearing a name is not exploiting or misusing it. It is showing the utmost respect to that name.

The narrow world of only using names that come from your direct heritage shocks me.

There was elderly man I was told about whose middle name was Passchendaele. His father had been killed at that battle in Belgium. C A ???

If a child has two English parents then they aren’t culturally or ethnically Welsh, wherever they grow up. Wales isn’t just a different location from England, it is culturally and linguistically another country, Welsh people are Celts, not Anglo Saxons.
My children would have been Welsh, even if they had grown up in another country.

I agree with this.

@sunglassesonthetable , that's not a good comparison.

A comparison might be something like someone with no Polish connection or only a very tenuous one, calling their child Andrzej and saying it was pronounced Ondray and that it was Polish.

I think it is cultural appropriation and I find it annoying. I live in a part of Wales where actual welsh people are hanging on by a thread, while the english people moving here think it is cool to give their children welsh names. So that colours my view rather !

And then those children are growing up in Wales, with welsh names.

A comparison might be something like someone with no Polish connection or only a very tenuous one, calling their child Andrzej and saying it was pronounced Ondray and that it was Polish.

So you're against mispronunciation of the name or actually just having the name in the first place?

If a child has two English parents then they aren’t culturally or ethnically Welsh, wherever they grow up. Wales isn’t just a different location from England, it is culturally and linguistically another country, Welsh people are Celts, not Anglo Saxons.
My children would have been Welsh, even if they had grown up in another country.

Well done to your kids.

How shocking that you think other children they are in school with, growing up in Wales, at school in Wales but with English parents, aren't culturally Welsh. Do they stand out like a sore thumb to you?

There is a word for that.

Cariad gets me. It’s not really a Welsh name. It’s a word, but not a name. It’s like a Welsh person calling their child Love or Darling. And those who do use it pronounce it wrong. It’s two syllables, not three.

Like Meghan did! No H in Megan, why would anyone just throw one in? Beats me.

Cariad gets me. It’s not really a Welsh name. It’s a word, but not a name. It’s like a Welsh person calling their child Love or Darling. And those who do use it pronounce it wrong. It’s two syllables, not three.

There is a Cariad in my son's year at school ( pronounced correctly). She is welsh. 🤷‍♀️

If I'd had a sister rather than a brother she would have had a Welsh name to honour the lady who took my father in when he was evacuated during the war. Would that have been cultural appropriation? At that time DF had no other links to Wales than spending the war there (and loving it).

@sunglassesonthetable , a bit of both. I've nothing against the name, I know more than one, but I'd think it a strange name to give a child with no connection, especially as it doesn't look easy to pronounce, spell (unless you know of it), and even worse to mispronounce it.

a bit of both. I've nothing against the name, I know more than one, but I'd think it a strange name to give a child with no connection, especially as it doesn't look easy to pronounce, spell (unless you know of it), and even worse to mispronounce it.

I don't know the name you're talking about tbh as I've only read this thread. But what you're saying, whilst probably accurate, smacks of an 'ownership' that I find difficult.

I am Irish and seeing names butchered annoys me. I think it is grand to use names from other cultures, but honour the name!

I can understand why you say that, @sunglassesonthetable , but if you changed my example to something like Dewi, and them saying it's pronounced Dowey (it's not), then MN would find nothing wrong with it.

My thought would be:
Why use a name that, although it looks easy to say and spell, is not particularly, and that would have questions about its origin. Why not use one you can pronounce properly, or why not use the English version of the name.

Or @DaNiYmaOHyd I would say, learn the proper pronunciation. Why assume that non welsh people can't do that?

My name is Rhiannon.

One parent is Welsh-speaking Welsh. I was born and bred in England, and don't speak Welsh at all.

I mispronounce my own name, technically, because I use the wrong r at the beginning - it's not a sound I would use, otherwise, and it feels incredibly unnatural to me. I do, however, say '-on' in the final syllable, rather than '-un' (I know it's a schwa - I just don't have that in my phone keyboard).

I wish my parents had just given me an English name, to be honest, and not one that basically sounds weird to me whoever says it because of my weird compromise pronunciation.

A lifetime of hearing names mispronounced. A lot of the sounds in Welsh don't have equivalents in English. You can get approximations, but they're not quite right.
If you hadn't heard of Huw Edwards, would you know how to say Huw? I can remember working at a place close to the Welsh borders, and my colleagues were talking about Hoo.

@FloresApparuerunt , you aren't using the wrong R in your name, there is no R in it. There's am Rh but that's not an R followed by h, it's the letter Rh.

Lots of welsh people say Ree-ann-on, so your pronunciation sounds reasonably OK, but the Ree-annun one doesn't. You could abbreviate it to Non - a name in itself, if you liked.