Welsh names, English fragility: ‘Why can’t he just call himself John?’
Stephen Price
A friend who works in retail relayed an event that played out in (you guessed it) Waitrose, Abergavenny last Saturday, following the historic Senedd election results the day prior.
While at the till, an English man asked one of her colleagues how to pronounce Rhun ap Iorwerth’s name, and my friend joined in the conversation, taking time to pronounce it correctly, thinking it would be met with a ‘thank you’ or an attempt to give it a go.
When he walked past her to leave, he looked her dead in the eye and said, mockingly: “It’s stupid, why doesn’t he just call himself John?”
Incredulous, she answered: “Learn to say it, it’s a good strong Welsh name. You live in Wales! Learn to say it.”
Welsh names are wonderful things. At once both poetic and defiant.
Names from school or the rugby field we took for granted – Ieuan, Gareth, Evan, Cerys and the like, or names that are growing in popularity today such as Osian, Aneurin, Eira and others, and many more that can (and should!) be mined from history, genealogy, warriors, saints and princes – the list is endless.
When it comes to our surnames, we do things slightly differently in Wales, or did. The ‘ap’ or ‘ab’ meaning ‘son of’ like the Irish O’ and Scottish Mac, giving us Prichard, Bowen, Penry and so forth.
Honour
My sister’s young boy was born soon after my mum’s death, and in honour of her, his name stemmed from her maiden name (a loaded term in itself) – Griffiths – with the Price side honoured with Rhys to follow, as should be.
Gruffydd, or Gruff as he mostly goes by, no doubt has a lifetime ahead of him whereby he’ll be encountering repeats of how it’s gone to date for the most part.
Rather than pronouncing the ‘u’ as the english ‘i’ as one would for the number five in Welsh i.e. ‘pump’, more often than not, roll-calls end up with him sounding like his name is short for Gruffalo.
Online, his name morphs into Griff or Gryff underneath even a social media post where his name is clearly written above, and my sister is constantly asked ‘why that name?‘ and ‘why is it spelled that way?‘ (Which can be translated as ‘I don’t like that‘, and ‘it shouldn’t be spelled like that’).
And rather than questioning her decision, the assurance that it was the right name – that it couldn’t be anything but, that he is totally and utterly a Gruff to his core is strengthened with every loaded comment made.
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Over to Rhun ap Iorwerth, whose name we will quite wonderfully be hearing a lot more of for the next few years – how do we say it and what does it mean?
In his own words to ITV: “Rhun ap Iorwerth. So, think R H E E N… And that’s it, yeah. Perfect.”
As for his surname: “Iorwerth. So, ap is the Welsh version of Mac or son of. So, I’m Rhun, the son of Iorwerth. To complicate it, my dad is Edward and Iorwerth is Edward in Welsh. So, Rhun son of Edward. There you go.”
Simple, you’d think? Not if you’re unfortunate enough to have a few anti-Welsh, anti-Welsh democracy, and anti-Welsh language accounts unwillingly show up in your Facebook feed thanks to algorithms or screen grabs shared to other pages.
This week, Rhun’s name was even trending on X, where it was somehow seen as being up for debate and a source of amusement and belittlement.
Take Senedd Waste, who have an issue with our naming systems, or a family’s choice to simply translate one name to their native language.
Wales for a United Kingdom – another hangout for the unkind, decided to share: “Ronald has been sworn in as Supreme leader of the minority devolved separatist administration.”
As someone put perfectly on Welsh Politics Facebook page: “Why do Reform bots and cult members keep posting “His name is Ron Jones” under virtually every mention of Rhun ap Iorwerth on Facebook?
Some even go as far as to claim he was born in England.
“Rhun was born in Tonteg and his birth registered in Pontypridd, checking the indexes we find his mother was a Humphrys and his name was registered at birth as Rhun ap Iorwerth Jones.
“What’s the point of the lie? The lie is an attempt to strip Rhun of his Welsh identity, in the vain hope the Welsh will think less of him. Or to imply he is a fraud emphasising a mythical Welshness to hoodwink daft little Welshies to vote for him.
“As if reassertion of traditional Welsh names would be controversial anyway. My ancestors used ap/ab and ferch freely and there is no reason that we Welsh should feel shame at decolonisation of our names. Ap/Ab is our Mc/Mac or O/Au. It’s our heritage and our right to use as we see fit.
“Welsh have faced imposition of familial surnames for centuries, it is up to us when, if, how and when we abandon the foreign naming system and there is no shame in doing or not doing so.”
A similar thing continues to play out with Zack Polankski.
The Greens’ leader changed his name by deed poll at age 18, making the (I’d say quite beautiful) decision to restore his original familial surname of Polanski, which his ancestors had anglicised to Paulden to escape antisemitism.
This, again, is seen as a nice target for Polanski to be labelled a fraud and a charlatan despite it being all out there in the public domain, and a very purposeful, powerful act by a man who is proving himself to be quite the threat to, again, the unkind.
ap Iorwerth’s decision, no, his parents’ decision(!) to follow Welsh (and not English) cultural norms, is perceived as a threat to the status quo, a threat to accepted cultural colonialism, a threat to ‘for British see English’ identity.
The mirror turned
There was a time – centuries in fact – when minority people, repressed people, sought integration at all costs.
The adoption of the superpower’s language, accent, names even was performed for a multitude of reasons – from social status, to simply putting food on the table and gaining employment or progression in the toughest of tough times – and the impacts of that self-shame live on generation after generation.
One only need look at some Welsh people themselves and their own attitudes to our native language – ‘backward’, ‘a waste of time’ and the like. Seeds sown centuries ago, fed and watered by the descendants of those who had no choice in their denial of the language of their mothers and fathers.
As for the trolls, and the racist accounts, their aim is simply to discredit, to cast doubt on integrity and let’s face it, to mock.
Their hope is to bring others on side, since that’s the only mud they have to sling.
It’s heartening, then, to see that most can see through the loaded history of those who ask: ‘why can’t he call himself John?’ – whose intelligence is beyond learning a name from a country that is finally standing its ground, or simply being respectful and keeping their mouths shut.
The discomfort and backfired mockery of Rhun’s name speaks volumes, and should inspire us to gift our own children with such beautiful, evocative and proudly defiant names.
Change is in the air. So let’s all revel in the discomfort our language offers to those who seek to see us diminished, shamed and kept in line.
Because those days are finally done.
And they ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
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Superb article
The type of English bigotry and ignorance described here, is typical of a certain man (it is usually men) who are useless at languages and are too afraid of losing control and looking foolish when they try to speak “foreign”, not realising that occasionally looking foolish is a necessary part of language learning. As for the online attacks, these are just a modern version of the english prejudice against the Cymry which has existed for centuries. It is a sign of how threatened they are by the prospect of our independence, that their attacks are becoming more unhinged.
100%. We’ve all met that type of old Englishman who adopts that dismissive tone pisstaking attitude as a power move. We shouldn’t generalise though, we need to welcome and encourage the English currently living here to learn Welsh(the English who ‘go native’ are up there with the best Welshmen) but if they don’t like it… well, hwyl fawr butties bach. In my experience he attitude seems to come from ignorance/misplaced sense of superiority stemming from our colonial situation… but they are by no means the worst. The nastiest, most vituperative anti-Welsh comments I’ve ever heard were from a Dutch student… Read more »
Strange how the right-wing reacts to Rhun’s name when their chief poster boy Yaxley-Lennon goes by a completely made-up alias, and his side-kick Farage pronounces his name the French way.
Not forgetting the Reform money man, donor of £18 million, Christopher Harborne – who uses the name Chakrit Sakunkrit at home in Thailand!
I pronunce it Faux-Rage which is his main skill / tactic
In the “son of” discussion it’s always interesting to include Germanic examples, such as the Danish -sen, Norwegian -ssøn, Dutch -szoon, Low German -s and the Icelandic/English -son.
The Anglosphere handles Irish names much better now, largely thanks to the global fame of stars like Saoirse Ronan, Domhnall Gleeson, Niamh Cusack, and Sinéad O’Connor. Most popular names for Children in Wales aren’t of Welsh origin- another symptom of the cultural hollowing-out of Wales
The Irish are generally nice people and are valourised in America – in our globalised world the English now feel a bit small time and parochial making fun of them. We are unknown – like Basques, Latvians, Corsicans or Gaugazians and the English know they can get away with and enjoy dismissing us.
In the the long run this will work to our benefit – they don’t really care about us and won’t realise we’re leaving the UK and putting Cymraeg front and centre until we’re halfway out the door.
Cultural hollowing, or perhaps we don’t all want something the same, None of my kids have Welsh names, but they went to school with alot who did. My choice of names is not hollowing anything, its making them individual. They all speak Cymraeg, something I was not offered as a child.So I am part of the reversal of my families poor history with our language.
There is another doge like account now set up to attack plaid. Same idiots I suppose.
Well said. Gwych.
There are some people who are unfamiliar with how to pronounce Welsh names and will make mistakes. I understand that. It happens. But with a little prompting and re-education, they can, I hope, become more informed and avoid making the same error again. Then there are those who are simply ignorant—but they are lost causes. You can’t legislate for stupidity.
Why can’t they just accept that the whole world isn’t England?
They haven’t recovered from the trauma of the end of the British empire.
Excluding the fact that every country and every community will have a tiny percentage of the “idiots”, for lack of a better word, there’s a high chance that if you ask somebody in a country about their name, the name of a town, etc, and if you ask respectfully, the vast majority of people will appreciate that and discuss it with you. Telling somebody to pretend that they are somebody they aren’t, to forget their own history, is simply ignorant. The people in the shop dealt with it well, and in the manner that I would hope to have my… Read more »
My ex-husband is named Ilian after some obscure Welsh saint, as we’re his father, grandfather and great grandfather. When his dad went to London at 18 to work in the building trade, he had to tolerate being called “Ian” because nobody in 70s London was going to struggle to pronounce the whole 5 letters!! It was Welsh – that’s the same as foreign!! However, when my Ilian went to a good private school in London (daddy did well!), the cultural landscape had changed. He was in a multicultural school (because rich people from around the world still pay for a… Read more »
Living in London with my name is a burden, especially when people continue to get it wrong when I have corrected them, but I refuse to anglicise it. Instead it mostly provides a plethora of funny stories for the dinner table.
An Empire bigot eradicationist demonstrating his belief that Cymru must be a fully compliant and obedient colony at all times. He wouldn’t have the guts to go to Espana to tell Jose he should be called John because his name is ‘stupid’.
What a fantastic article directly connecting the past to the present. As i told a Deform voter on election day ‘you are a moth flying to the light. Turn away now or get burned’ and what we are living through now, to quote Shirley Bassey, is ‘just a little bit of history repeating’. Turn away, resist, fight. Wake up time has long since passed and the sleepwalking continues which will make the final reawakening a rude one.
Great article. The phrase “English fragility” sums up their attitude and reaction to a whole host of things, I think.
What I find funny is the assertion from some of these anti-Welshers that he changed gis name for some kind of advantage as if it’s easy going around with a ‘difficult’ Welsh name.