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Welsh Middle Names

80 Welsh names with meanings and plain-English pronunciation — a language of vowel-rich, penultimate-stress names that is a natural fit for the middle slot, and the culture with the strongest practical reason to use it.

Welsh is not Gaelic and does not sound like it. It is a Brythonic language, a separate branch of Celtic, and its names are built from transparent everyday words rather than from saints and dynasties: Seren is "star," Eirlys is "snowdrop," Heulwen is "sunshine," Enfys is "rainbow," Cariad is "love," Eira is "snow," Tesni is "warmth from the sun." Almost every name on this page can be translated for a curious child in four words, which is a rarer gift than it sounds. The other structural feature is stress. Welsh puts the accent on the second-to-last syllable, almost without exception, so Angharad is ang-HA-rad, Myfanwy is muh-VAN-wee and Rhiannon is hree-AN-on. That gives three-syllable Welsh names a rising middle beat that lifts a flat first name rather than flattening it further.

Two letters deserve a sentence each. Ll is not an L: it is a voiceless sound made with the tongue in L position and breath pushed round the sides, which English speakers approximate as "hl" — Llywelyn is roughly hlew-EL-in, Llio is HLEE-o. Rh is a breathed R, so Rhiannon starts hree-, not ree-, and Rhys is closer to a puffed REESE. Neither sound has to be produced perfectly for the name to work; an English mouth saying Llywelyn as "loo-EL-in" is doing what most of England has done for six hundred years. But knowing what the letters are for tells you which names will be misread and which will not. Ffion, Bethan, Nia, Carys, Alys, Bryn, Idris and Morgan all survive an English reading intact and are the safest first-position picks; Myfanwy, Gwenllian, Aeronwy and Peredur are middle-slot names, where a misread costs nothing.

Wales has the strongest practical case for a good middle name anywhere in Britain, and it comes from a historical accident. The old system was patronymic: a man was Dafydd ap Gruffudd, "David son of Griffith," his name rebuilt every generation. When fixed surnames were imposed, the patronymics froze — ap Hywel became Powell, ap Rhys became Price and Preece, ap Owain became Bowen — and the whole nation collapsed into a handful of surnames. Jones, Davies, Williams, Evans, Thomas and Roberts cover an enormous share of the Welsh population, which is exactly why Wales came to rely on the middle name as the distinguishing element, and why Welsh public life is full of people known by first plus middle plus surname in full. If your surname is Jones, the middle name is not decoration; it is the part that identifies the child. Our guide to middle-name traditions worldwide sets the ap system beside the other patronymic cultures.

Genuine anglicized forms exist and are worth knowing. Llywelyn is written Llewellyn and, in older English records, Fluellen; Rhys is Reece and Rees; Siôn is the Welsh John, the source of the surname Jones; Gwenllian shortens to Gwen; Gruffudd is Griffith; Maredudd is Meredith, which crossed to America as a girls' name; Iestyn is Justin; Ifan and Ieuan became Evan; Dewi is the Welsh for David and gives St David's own name. Two cautions. Gwendolyn is genuinely Welsh in root but was popularised through English literature, so it reads English to Welsh ears. And Morgan, Meredith and Rowena have all shifted gender or nationality in English use — worth a moment's thought if the point of the name is accuracy.

Top picks, annotated

For girls

For boys

Pairing rule for Welsh middles: mind the W and the double G. A great many Welsh names open on Gw- or contain a W vowel (Bronwen, Anwen, Olwen, Gwenno, Heulwen), so two of them in a row turn the full name into a hum — Gwen Bronwen Owen is all one sound. Alternate: put a Gw- or -wen name against a first name that ends on a plosive or a sibilant (Beatrice Gwenllian, Jack Emrys, Kit Anwen), and let the vowel-heavy names sit next to consonant-heavy surnames.

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Nearby origins: Irish, Scottish, English, or all 24 origin lists. For the word-names in wider company see nature middles and mythology middles, and if the Welsh connection runs through a grandparent, start with honoring family.