Welsh Naming Conventions

Although I seem to find it rarely, there are occasions where a name includes a place identifier. e.g. Steve of Florida. How should that be handled?

Steve of Florida:

I'm putting the "of Maelor" stuff into the suffix field.

There is a field of thought that says to put it in the Display name, but I like having it in the suffix field -- it's more permanent, to my mind.

But I think I made that up.

If there's a title, I put that in the suffix field too -- Llewelyn Mawr, Prince of Snowdonia.

Anne of Albuquerque

Looking good. Thankyou very much for doing this.

Very helpful, Anne, thank you.

Are the nicknames entered surrounded by quotes ("Goch" for example) to indicate they are nicknames and not "middle names" ?

In real life they are not.

I experimented for a while with putting them in quotes, with a translation, to help users see them for what they are.

But I don't think it helps, and I don't like how it looks.

So really that sort of thing should go into the display name ( I don't like how it looks there, either, though), or, better yet, into the About.

I was young in those days.

But the fundamental issue, for me, was that users can't actually read the Welsh names, so things get mixed up.

And then the nicknames turn into surnames long before they actually did.

But when you think about it, the nicknames are crucial (and hence not in the nickname field).

Because if you have a whole bunch of Ieuan ap Madog living at the same time in the same place (and there were), you need to be able to tell them apart in conversation.

Best of all -- and we have several instances of this in Geni -- are the brothers and sisters with the same name, differentiated by the nicknames.

I regularly get merge requests for master profiles with the same name in the same family. I put curators notes up so as to make it clear, but it still doesn't make sense to people.

Anyway.

The Welsh nicknames are sticky.

But no. The quotation marks don't really work. I've been taking them down when I come across them.

We need a better education method.

Yeah. They were never in real life a separate part of the name. They are the real name, only not the first name nor the patronymic.

So the middle name field, plain and simple, is best for them.

But! Why not put them in the first name field, so that Ieuan Fychan is the first name?

Because.

In the records those "nicknames" don't always attach.

So it is clear that they are a crucial, but not completely necessary, part of the name.

Yikes.

Then there is, by the way, another category of the nicknames. Llewelyn Fawr is called that because he was a mighty leader, but he doesn't get called that till later in life --(or perhaps after death -- I need to check). At any rate, not in his youth, which, except for things like Fychan (the younger), would mostly be when the nicknames get applied. Few others look like they were applied to babies.

"Sais " is like Fawr, or Mawr -- it could only have been acquired later, since (it translates directly as Saxon) it means you went and learned English someplace (often as hostage or ward). It isn't applied to people who learned English and Welsh both, growing up, that is, some of the Marcher families. It is applied rather, as far as I can tell, to people who learned English later. (It is useful; it means you can ask them to translate stuff.) ( And negotiate.)

I would find it helpful to see the "nickname" visually distinct from the other name elements if that can be figured out. For the longest time (OK, until yesterday) I thought "Hen" was a clan name or something and didn't realize it's a byname, so was tempted to add it to others in the family, OOPS. (I don't think I ever did, but I wouldn't know to take it out if found that way). I don't think what field it's in matters so much because what we end up seeing in tree view is the total of the name elements put together, so position may not be enough?

Yes, this is exactly the issue I was trying to address with the quotations!

Of COURSE you wouldn't have known that "Hen" meant "the Old." How would you have. So you would have interpreted it as part of the name-that-gets-passed-on, rather than the name-attached-to-this-one-guy.

I hate the quotations, because 1) they aren't really part of the Welsh conception of the name; they would be there solely for the Sais speakers and 2) they are tacky.

Tacky is really an issue for me.

Now, one of the things that is happening is that Bartrum's Welsh genealogies -- with occasional emendations from Wolcott -- are being entered in their entirety into Geni (by me) -- and when I have them in, and merged into whatever their duplicates are in the Geni tree, I Master them.

Will is work if, in the curators notes, the nicknames are translated? That way though they will not be part of the name display, the translation would show up in any merge.

No doubt we'll have decide area by area but my own preference is to avoid quotes around nicknames.

The way I think of it, it doesn't take any skill to recognize which part of Goltharr the Magnificent is a nickname. It doesn't need quotes. If someone is working in an area of the tree with foreign names, it seems reasonable to expect they will be (or become) familiar with that language and its names.

Nevertheless, on Geni my practice is to include the quotes. Because consistency. It makes no sense to come up with individual rules, so I edit according to the style of the surrounding profiles. Now I know not to use quotes for the Welsh.

Ha!

because I said so?

Not enough reason, I think.

Though if the "tacky" part convinced you, I am down with that.

But you cause me to think:

"the Magnificent" is very clearly a nick name, to the English speakers. Because we do not name our children, in general, Magnificent Brannen. Though we could if we wanted to.

The problem with the Welsh is that they are, in American genealogy, ubiquitous.

Many families link back to the Welsh, and the names LOOK exotic, which is great, BUT they seem like they make sense.

So they get Englished -- misspelled, and misinterpreted, and then that gets passed on.

"Hen" does NOT look like a nickname. And there isn't anything in it, even for someone as well versed in genealogy as Erica, to give out danger signals. It's so easily seen as simply a name.

Whereas if we write Madog The Old then things are clear.

I can be convinced to use the quotation marks! I was thinking them up in the first place, back in my Geni youth, when I was first set on my mission of bringing Sanity to the Welsh Tree.

If the quotation marks are the best way to go, I shall use them.

I will always be very clear that I am using them even though they are 1) anti-Welsh and put in for the benefit of the Sais, and 2) tacky. Tacky tacky tacky.

but I will use them.

I will just grumble occasionally.

Also I may mention chile, not clear on this yet.

I would like to point out that in this instance I stand with the Giant Community of Geni Users Annoyed By The Overwhelming Power Of The English Speakers, even though I myself am not only an English speaker but can read and recite all the known dead versions of English. Totally Sais, in that way.

But! Cymru am bith!

Yes. I may well come back to the idea of quotation marks.

Erica Howton, after reading all the above, where do you stand on this?

What will work best for the interested and caring Geni user who is unfamiliar with Welsh?

Anne, you are the most active in this area so I will do whatever you do. Because you said so and for no other reason. I call it pragmatism ;)

In practice it's pretty easy to parse nicknames in almost any European language, whether you know the language or not.

You see a name like Ieuan Goch ap Madog. You think to yourself, there's a given name (Ieuan) and a patronymic surname (ap Madog), so that Goch thing must be something else because no one would have two given names at this period. Probably it's a nickname.

But, if you think maybe it really is a 2nd given name or maybe a clan name, you still treat it the same by putting it in the middle name field, so the result is the same. Easy for everyone.

(Considering changing my Geni name to Justin "Colorado Chile" Swanström. With the quotes. Because some things are too important not to be part of name.)

My 10c worth - I find the "nickname" in the middle name field to be useful when it is sufficiently well known as to act as a feature that distinguishes the name from others like it.

Justin, New Mexico is totally taking Colorado down. It is a lovely fantasy to think you can take Hatch chile seeds and grow them in a different state and call it Hatch chile. No.

But!

We digress!

I'm going to await larger discussion -- just wanted to let you know that I have just spent 30 minutes attempting to figure out what the "Crupl" in Madog Crupl meant.

Because it would not I say sir not translate from the Welsh.

And WHY is that?

Because it is a loan word from the Old English "crypel," which means just what you think it might, "cripple."

So ha ha ha!

But why he wasn't called Madog Gam, which would mean the same thing only in perfectly decent Welsh, I cannot say.

Oh, sorry, I forgot to sign off --

Anne "New Mexico Is Totally The King Of Chile So Just Stop Your Fooling Around, Colorado" Brannen

Erica Howton -- does this work?

Madog Crupl ap Gruffydd Farwn

For those of you who aren't already aware of it, there is currently a religious war over chile between Colorado (the clear winner) and New Mexico (lovely chile but just not in the same league). Anne and I have found ourselves bitterly divided on this issue. We're not quite to the level of having the 2nd Battle of Glorieta Pass, but it's coming. Mark my words.

Anne, I am not that new to Welsh genealogy on Geni.

But from this display (and remember, I am just reading the display unless editing) I would think:

Madog - first name (got that, seen it before)
Crupl - typoese for "crumbled"
ap Gruffydd - patronym (got that, it's got the small particle before a name that kind of looks like it turns into Griffin)
Vychan - it's a place. No, it's a last name, has to be, it's in the last position.

Please help!

I know the answer, but even in the old days when I didn't I would have parsed it differently.

I would have said Madog Crupl (okay, got it, Crupl must be a nickname although I've never seen it before and I'd swear it's a corruption of something else or maybe a place name but I'm not going to touch it)

ap Gruffyd Vychan (because Vychan comes after the ap so it has to be paired with Gryffud so has to be the father's nickname or it makes no sense).

N.B. One issue with the "middle name" field is I am Well Trained to know that there are no middle names (in the modern English sense) before about 1700 A.D. So I could, in a fit of genealogical cleaning zeal, clean out middle name fields. Unless it is very clear to me that it's just a "name in the middle position."

The AKA field reflects back the name in the first position in the MyHeritage "mirror" with quotes around it, in other words auto showing as a true nickname, and using internationalization (I'd be curious what shows for default other languages).

So it's good to remember our audience is not just Geni, but the wider MyHeritage family as well, and be able to think through what they might find clearest to understand.

Oh, Erica, my very dear -- I didn't think you were new to this!

But even Not New doesn't translate to immediate understanding of the various difficult pieces of Welsh names.

I love your immediate translation of the name -- did you see my curator's note on it?

When you look at the profile itself, it's clear that the Vychan is part of the dad's name, right?

(Also! Background to the chile feud with Justin! Colorado stole some of New Mexico's chile and is now attempting to pretend it is Just As Good or Even Better. No.)

In Arizona we have a taco truck on every corner, wonder how NM would stack up on the taco wars.

No, I didn't look at the tree, just the display name you typed. Lazy. Looking at it now, I still don't understand "Vychan" (particularly since I just learned it's a nickname and not a name).

Here's the page on https://wiki.geni.com/index.php/Naming_Conventions#Alternative_Name...

(A lot of it holds up, I think, and controversy is reflected)

There are other punctuation marks if double quotes are uglifying. A lovely mini double bracket is used in German, unfortunately it's not on my keyboard.

The curator note is great!

Madog's dad was Gruffudd the Younger.

I will go look at the naming controversy page!

Alas, if I need to defend New Mexico in the taco truck wars with Arizona, I shall get quite exhausted. Surely there is something to defend on the Texas side, too? Oh, fair New Mexico! We love, we love you so!

(Actual line from our HORRIBLE state anthem, which is ours because it was written by the blind daughter of Pat Garrett, the sheriff who took down Billy the Kid, down in Lincoln County New Mexico. You cannot make this stuff up.)

So, according to the Naming Conventions site, the Welsh Nicknames would, properly, go in the Nickname field.

But that won't make sense, of course, for the Welsh, because the nicknames were so deeply a part of the actual known usage.

It's not like "Buddy" being a nickname for John Smith.

The Welsh "nicknames" show up in the court records, and the medieval genealogies.

hmmmm.......

Here is an instance where I put the nickname into quotation marks, and translated it, in the Display Field. The regular name fields are as usual.

What do we think of this?

Hywel Sais ap Rhys, Arglwydd Sanclêr

Ok. Here is another thought.

What happens if we make Welsh the default language for the Welsh profiles?

Is that what is happening with the medieval French, for instance? Because my browser is set to English, but they appear in French.

Will that help, with the Welsh?

I have been using the nickname field in the Welsh for the INNUMERABLE spelling variations, some of them legitimate and alternative Welsh spellings, some of them the Englished problematic spellings that show up in the English records.

If we put the actual Welsh nickname in the nickname field, it ends up looking like some variant -- it's not at ALL clear that it is an important piece of the name.

I am really opposed to taking the nicknames out of the the regular fields.

If, for various reasons, we need to put them in the First Name field, I would rather do that than relegate them to the nickname field.