It's finally here! The Return of the China Cup

[Lang Spoon]

Then why translate names of English origin?

[Kowalski]

Now I know this'll probably be old ground but here you go.

There are plenty of christian names yn Cymraeg ; M - Dafydd, Ieuan, Hefin, Meirion, Meredydd etc. F - Ffion, Meinir, Mair, Catrin, Bethan etc

Although there are obviously surnames that are more common in Wales I haven't come across many surnames yn Cymraeg, I've seen Tomos (Thomas), Dafis (Davis) and Huws (Hughes) e.g Emyr Huws, but that's all. There's the traditional situation like Gwyn ap Dafydd (Gwyn son of Dafydd) but that's not really popular these days.

I went to uni with some one from Cork called Brian Ó hAonghusa. When we went out for a drink once he told me that his surname was the Irish version of Hennessy. I haven't really come across anything like that in Wales and the only example of someone Cymru-cising a name is the Welsh language campaigner Ffred Ffransis (You can probably guess the spelling of his pre-change name). He's a Rhyl fan.

[3 Colours Red]

...the only example of someone Cymru-cising a name is the Welsh language campaigner Ffred Ffransis (You can probably guess the spelling of his pre-change name). He's a Rhyl fan.

Rhys Ifans did the same thing.

[Kowalski]

Of course, wasn't that to do with Equity?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Kowalski, he had that backwards. Hennessey is the english language version of O'haonghusa, I don't know who this aonghus fucker was but there are two distinct families named after him. One is hennessey (Descendant of Aonghus) and the other is the son of Aonghus (Mac Aonghusa) or Guinness/mcGuinness/Maggenis.

There's lots of people in wales with Irish surnames, as a result of a fucking massive tidal wave of Irish people flooding in during the Famine. So many people moved relative to the size of the welsh population that it's difficult to see the two groups as distinct in the middle of the 19th century. particularly when they got down to settling down and intermarrying, with all the enthusiasm of the welsh soldiers that accompanied the normans. the Fourth most common surname here is Breathnach or Welshperson (Walsh/welsh)

[3 Colours Red]

Of course, wasn't that to do with Equity?

I seem to recall him saying he did it for nationalistic reasons but there probably already was a Rhys Evans registered so a little from column A, a little from column B.

[Kowalski]

Berba, I may have misspelled Brian's surname, it's been 16 years since I last saw him.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Oh I've no doubt you're close enough. The point is though that it isn't the irish version of an english name, it's an irish name, and hennessey is the anglicized version. And at some point in the last 150 years someone moved from cork to Wales, and eventually one of their descendants wound up being an international goalkeeper for Wales. There was a family called hennessey living right across the road from me growing up. (in much the same way that in the last 150 years someone called Mac an Bhaird, moved from donegal, and eventually their descendant wound up sitting on the Welsh bench waiting for Hennessey to retire.

I suppose the thing that strikes me as odd, is that in the middle of this long broadcast where literally every other single word was in welsh, the names were all the same as in english. It's the two names being the same that I found puzzling. Then again this makes more sense when you factor in that only a third of welsh people have welsh surnames. I wonder what the proportion is here. The mere existence of the Irish sea meant that Ireland didn't get the same flows of migration from england, but all the Norman names got themselves an Irish version sometime in the 12th century, so they don't really count as distinct. And in a lot of cases if you see an english surname in rural ireland, it's just that the time came to pick an english version of their name, they just picked a name. There are a lot of people dotted around Connemara called Hopkins, but that's not evidence of an anglo-welsh invasion, that's just how they translated O h-Oibicin.

BTW, I can't believe anyone in Wales is called Edwards. Surely that would like an irish person being called macCromwell.

[Kowalski]

We had two Edwards (Sion & Ryan) in the Bangor team a couple of seasons ago. There are three Edwards brothers in Prestatyn's squad while another brother plays for Connah's Quay.

[3 Colours Red]

Mam's side of the family are all Edwards and a great-grandad born in Oswestry is about as un-Welsh as my research would suggest.

In my work, having to take a lot of customer names for the purposes of arranging deliveries and collections, I'd wager it's one of the ten most common surnames in the LL postcode area.

Mind you, my name sounds more Irish than it does Welsh.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Imagine the fun and games of being a postman in pre famine Tipperary, when one in four people was called Ryan.(well over 100,000) or connemara where there are a fairly limited number of surnames which no-one ever used instead going for a name-father's name-grandfather's name combo.

[ursus arctos]

My father's family maintains that I am the tenth eldest son in succession to have my first name.

[Ray de Galles]

Try having John Thomas as the family name, luckily I am the second son.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

hahahahahahahah. hahahahahaha. Your poor brother.

[Bored Of Education]

Piss off.

[Lang Spoon]

When did surnames actually take off for the plebs in Ireland, Berba?

The oldest surnames are patronymic, and might well have been only used by the elites. The first occupational surnames (like o’Cleirigh for Clerk) are from around the millennium, but still designated fairly high status. I could see most Irish not needing a formal surname until the Tudor Conquest, and increased urbanization/forcibly settling communities that practiced transhumance.

[Patrick Thistle]

Berba, you might want to read up on the campaign to exterminate the Welsh language in the 19th and early 20th century. Both my grandads were beaten at school for speaking Welsh. I'm not sure if that's linked to Anglicised names. You do find more people with Welsh first names and surname construction in the North and West where Welsh held out; less so in the industrialised towns. (Look up the Blue Books and the Welsh Not for more on the cultural cleansing.)

I'm not sure why it's funny hearing an "English name" in Welsh compared to hearing a Korean or Japanese name in an English commentary. If Park Ji-Sung didn't jar then it's probably more to do with only being able to understand the names when listening to Welsh language commentary. In English your brain is following everything else that's said.

I don't speak Welsh having been raised over the border and it being beaten out of my family but I love listening to Welsh commentary because it tends to sound like the commentators actually enjoy watching.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

O'cleirigh doesn't mean clerk, it means son of the Cleric. Mac an tSagairt (Taggart, MacTaggart) is son of the Priest, and Mac an t-easpaigh, (MacAnespie) is son of the Bishop. Priestly celibacy arrived really fucking late in Ireland. Some emissary turned up in Clonmel at some point to inform the various clergy that they had to essentially abandon their families and children, so their families and children beat him to a pulp and threw him in the river, and there was no more heard of it for quite a while.

Apparently fixed surnames started to take off in the 12 century, before the Norman conquest, and they became very popular after that. A lot of the times, people just claimed kinship to some long dead chieftain or leader. The People who called themselves O'Neill, were essentially claiming to be descended from Niall of the nine hostages, and in fairness they were probably right. They're all descended from some sixth century fucker, so it may as well be him.

the Patronymic aspect lived on in the first three first names though. There are an awful lot of Irish names though. but a lot of that is down to people translating the same name in a number of different ways. The page linked to a couple of pages back points out that the pruning of names brought about by the reformation, and the enthusiastic adoption of methodism, limited the options of patronymics, which didn't happen here until the famine, which meant that the Irish were drawing on all sorts of pre-christian names, and just making shit up. Garcia's name in irish literally translates as Early riser. Whelan and Phelan are the same name, and it means seagull, or cliffdweller. Foley means pirate or plunderer. And then there's all the norman names.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Berba, you might want to read up on the campaign to exterminate the Welsh language in the 19th and early 20th century. Both my grandads were beaten at school for speaking Welsh. I'm not sure if that's linked to Anglicised names. You do find more people with Welsh first names and surname construction in the North and West where Welsh held out; less so in the industrialised towns. (Look up the Blue Books and the Welsh Not for more on the cultural cleansing.)

We did that to ourselves. we didn't need an organized campaign.

I'm not sure why it's funny hearing an "English name" in Welsh compared to hearing a Korean or Japanese name in an English commentary. If Park Ji-Sung didn't jar then it's probably more to do with only being able to understand the names when listening to Welsh language commentary. In English your brain is following everything else that's said.

It's because no literally no other words are in english, and they're not talking about koreans. They're talking about their own players. The slightly jarring thing is that they have their own word for literally everything, but not their own players. So I was very curious about that. I must say I've watched quite a bit of football with non english commentary over the years, and welsh sounds good for football. Romanian is the best, Dutch the worst, and chinese commentary doesn't seen to be connected to what is happening on the pitch.

[Lang Spoon]

But surely all the O Donnells, Mc Donalds, Mc Donnaghs etc weren’t all descendants of one of the sons of Somerled, but rather descendants of Western Highlands/Islands Gallowglass mercenaries whose war parties of bored Angry Young Men once owed loyalty to the McDonalds?

[Patrick Thistle]

It's a bilingual country and people swap between the languages mid-conversation so it probably doesn't sound as weird to me. Listening to people speak Welsh you often hear some English words in there, a bit like with most European languages tbh. It's not uncommon to hear Wenglish, which is English enhanced by Welsh words like cwtch, cariad, dim problem, iechyd da, bore da, nos da, and so on.

I don't see the 'But they're your players with English names' as an issue, because 'John' is a common name for people in Wales, even though it has an English origin. We wouldn't expect a Welsh player called Mohammed or Kylie to Welshify up their names so I don't see what your point is about John.

[Lang Spoon]

Well yep to be fair, O’Cleirigh/Cleirigh supposedly arrived by the 1th century. When all Irish scribes would have been priests or monks. And the celibacy rules wouldn’t come about for the Western Church till the next century.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Names contain Donnell, or Donald are all the same name, Domhnall, translated into english in a haphazard way. You don't have to go back very far to find a point where Ireland and scotland are basically the same country with the same language. There's no guarantee that a scottish name in ireland means a scottish ancestor. though people have been swapping between the two places since the bronze age. I mean scotland means land of the irish. But i think an important thing to remember is that for most of history you're talking about a tiny number of people. Estimates of the population of ulster at the time of the plantation vary from between 50-200,000 people. That's really not a lot of people, in what was a relatively huge area.

[ooh aah]

chinese commentary doesn't seen to be connected to what is happening on the pitch.

This is true. Chinese commentators spend most of their time talking about what they ate for dinner.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I'm really pleased to hear that. It sounds like the commentator are on a minute delay or something, because while you have no idea what people are actually saying, generally speaking all football commentators are going to get excited at the same points, you know the exciting bits. It's not that it seems to be muted, it's that the excitement or the involvement of the commentators happens at odd times.