Welsh baby names for a girl

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bronwen

+100 it’s my best friends name and I love this one

[Anonymous]

I love Gwendolyn, but not Gwen.

I am an Elizabeth and I love my name. I simply correct those who think I am a Lizzy, Liz, Eliza, etc. I have never introduced myself as anything other than Elizabeth, so I don't know where people get the idea they can change my name. Gwendolyn will need to do the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I studied abroad in Wales. Meredith is a boys name in wales as and pronounced muh - reh - dith by Welsh speakers. The way we say it is Americanized.

I really like the name Anwen (pronounced ann-when).

OP here and I also love Anwen but DH thinks it’s too close to Arwen from Lord of the Rings. Which might be WHY I love it. We are huge nerds and I love Tolkien, whose seems to be quite Wales-inspired by many of his character names. But we are probably not quite nerdy enough to give our baby a name right out of Tolkien. Probably. I may still talk DH into it.

Btw, one of the reasons we went down this path is because the lead in the new LotR show is a Welsh actress named Morfydd Clark. I was like “see, she has an ultra-Welsh name and she’s ver successful and appears to be a lovely person!” We don’t want to use Morfydd but seeing real people using these names inspired me to dig in a bit on my Welsh roots to see if there was a name we loved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the sound of a lot of Welsh names and my grandmother on one side was Welsh, so we are looking at these names for our daughter. My DH is gravitating to the names that don't automatically scream "Welsh!" but I actually really like a lot of the more unusual names. We're looking for something in the middle -- maybe a bit unique but not hard to pronounce and still pretty and recognizably a name. So far we have:

So far, he likes Megan/Meghan, Gwen, or Meredith. I think these are fine but they are not exciting to me.

I like Carys, Emlyn (I have a family member named Emily who we could also honor with this name), Talaith, and Catrin. He doesn't hate these but feels they will be often mispronounced or misspelled and I see his point, though I also think that any name can be misspelled or pronounced (I have a very common western name and this still happens to me at times) and these names are all fairly short.

So far our compromise list is:

Rhiannon
Dylan
Guinivere
Gwendolyn

Thoughts on any of these, or ideas for others?

I really don't like these at all. I'm sorry. Can you honor your grandmother by using her name as DD's middle name? We did exactly that for DD - her middle name is my grandmother's first name.

[Anonymous]

If you name her Rhiannon be prepared for everyone to think you love Stevie Nicks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I LOVE Meredith - my DH rejected it for our girl. Catrin is unusual and pretty with no spelling or pronunciation issues IMO.

[Anonymous]

Brenda

[Anonymous]

Welsh study abroad-er here. Here’s a few more name ideas for you, OP.

Bethan
Rhian (I quite like this one, it’s very popular but won’t make the world think you are a diehard Stevie Nicks fan. Pronounced Ree-en.)
Ceri
Eirlys
Sian

While not Welsh per se, the names Emma, Amy, Claire, Gemma, and Nicola are also popular in Wales.

I do think a Welsh boys name is easier - plenty of options that are more common like Rhys, Gareth, Huw (Hugh),

[Anonymous]

I like Carys or Brynn.

[Anonymous]

Ceridwen is one of my very favorite names

[Anonymous]

Bronwyn or Gwyneth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you name her Rhiannon be prepared for everyone to think you love Stevie Nicks. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I LOVE Meredith - my DH rejected it for our girl. Catrin is unusual and pretty with no spelling or pronunciation issues IMO.

My first association is the (very talented) Rhiannon Giddens. I think the Stevie Nicks association will only get less pronounced.

[Anonymous]

Love Megan and Meredith. Really dislike your list and the compromise list. Sorry!

But I also really love the suggestion of Brynn. That’s my favorite of the names in this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bronwen

This but I think it's spelled Bronwyn. Surprised it took til the second page for the mention. Get a copy of How Green was My Valley and look for names.

[Anonymous]

I really hate the name Dylan for a girl. But I love Brynn, Bronwen, and Meredith.

I know a Corgi named Glynis and I like that name, too.

[Anonymous]

Please don't give your child a hard to pronounce or hard to spell name. Speaking as an adult with a hard to pronounce and hard to spell European name that nobody gets right, even thought it's a fairly common name.