hrj

Long-term readers are probably aware that one of my major hobbies has been researching historic names and naming practices in Europe, and especially among the Celtic languages. Here's a brief (and un-footnoted) write-up of a question that has puzzled me for quite some time.

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When you look across history and across cultures, one of the most common ways to identify people in names, once you’ve established their “given name” (i.e., the principal label that identifies the individual), is by indicating whose son or daughter they are, that is, by using a patronym. (These names may sometimes refer to the mother rather than the father, but we’ll use “patronym” for the general category.) When you look at modern inherited surnames, you can see the traces of this type of name in many languages.

It is also the case that words for close kinship are extremely stable across time. One of the classic ways of illustrating the relationships and differences within the Indo-European language family is by tracing the words for “mother” and “father” in the various branches.

Given these two observations, it is somewhat peculiar that within one closely-related language family, the Celtic languages, we find some curious discontinuities in the words for “son” and “daughter” that appear in the various recorded languages. (Patronyms may also be formed without overt words meaning “son” or “daughter”, for example, using a possessive form, but this article is only looking at names with the overt elements.)

Gaulish

While the various Gaulish languages (whose relationships are debated) are not exactly direct ancestors of the modern Celtic languages, they represent the oldest examples from that family.

I have yet to find a Gaulish name formula that includes an independent word meaning “son”, however both men and women may bear patronyms indicated with a suffix -gnos (masculine) or -gna (feminine) that has a sense of “child of, progeny of”. (In fact the -gn- part of it is directly cognate with the “gen” of “progeny”.)

Bratronos Nantonignos (Bratronos son of Nantonos)
Severa Tertionigna (Severa daughter of Tertiu)

A related word that shows up in Gaulish inscriptions is geneta, meaning “a young woman”, quite possibly with the implication of “a daughter”, although it isn’t found in name formulas (that I know of). Remember this word; it becomes relevant later.

There’s a name that shows up in Gaulish inscriptions, Maponos, which is based on the root word mapos meaning “son, young man”. I have no examples of mapos being used in patronymic name formulas, but keep it, too, in mind for later.

Daughters show up in one set of names indicated by the word duxtir (which, in fact, is cognate with English “daughter”).

Severa duxtir Valentos (Severa daughter of Valens)

Goidelic Langauges (Irish, Scottish, and Manx Gaelic)

So you remember that Gaulish word geneta I told you to remember? In the Goidelic branch of the Celtic family, the cognate of this becomes the standard word for “daughter” in name formulas. In the earliest records, written in Ogham letters, it appears as inigena.

Inigena Cunigni Avitoria (Avitoria daughter of Cunignos)

By the Old Irish period it had become ingen, then modern Irish inghean, continuing to appear in name formulas. The Scottish Gaelic form is slightly different but still clearly from the same origin.

Lasarfina ingen Chathail (Lasairfhiona daughter of Cathal)

Remember that Gaulish name based on the word mapos? In Irish, sons are now using a word cognate with this that appears in the earliest Ogham inscriptions as maqas.

Andagellas maqas Caveti (Andagellas son of Cavetas)

This is, of course, the familiar mac of later Irish and Scottish surnames, which are derived from literal patronyms.

Aodh mac Maghnusa (Aodh son of Maghnus)

But that’s not quite the end of the story. Remember the Gaulish word duxtir? It still shows up in names, but as an internal part of given names. Early Irish given names are formed in a number of interesting ways, one of which involves a noun (like “son”, “daughter”, “devotee”, “hound” etc.) followed by a possessive name. (In fact, this would be an interesting topic for another name squib.) And the word used for “daughter” in this context is a reduced form of the same root as Gaulish duxtir.

Dar-Erca (a feminine name)
Mac-Erce (a corresponding masculine name)

Brythonic Languages (Welsh, Breton, Cornish)

I’ll use Welsh as the example here because it has the largest set of early name records. Sons use the word map, cognate with Gaulish mapos and Gaelic mac. This shows up in the earliest records in the regular form map, but by the later medieval period has been reduced to ap, although the ordinary noun for “son” remains map.

Higuel map Caratauc (Hywel son of Caradog)
Hywel ap Caradog (the same)

Daughters, on the other hand, use an entirely different word from any of the ones seen before: merch. This shows up in the earliest records in the regular form merc. It sometimes became reduced in later centuries to ach, similarly to how map was reduced, but for various socio-linguistic reasons, women’s names were more likely to retain the full, regular form of the word.

Elen merc Loumarc (Elen daughter of Llywarch)
Elen ferch Llywarch (the same)

But remember that other daughter word, Gaulish geneta and Gaelic inghean? That’s still used in Welsh as geneth, but only as an ordinary word meaning “a girl” without any sense of meaning “daughter”. And there is no equivalent word to Gaulish duxtir and Gaelic der used in any sort of “daughter” sense in Welsh.

Summary

Although we think of relationship terms as being fairly conservative, and despite the fact that the Celtic languages have consistently used some sort of formula indicating parentage in names, the formulas that we see in use seem to have been re-invented regularly over the centuries, showing traces of connections between the languages but finding new ways of expressing the same concepts.

ETA: A couple very minor corrections made after the initial posting.

(I continue my three-part series on Alpennian language and names.)

Alpennian Names

As with the underlying parameters of the Alpennian language, the location and common history with its neighbors sets out the basics of the names in use.

Personal names will have some sort of deep-level substrate of both Latin and Germanic compound names with constant infusions of the standard European name pool, introducing names of Christian significance and those that became popular through cultural exchange among the elite levels of society. The latter developed into what one might think of as the “European international name pool”. All of this would be well established long before the early 19th century setting of my novels. In fact, the differences between the personal name inventories in different European countries at that time were relatively subtle, expressed largely in the way individual names developed within the rules of the local language, or how they were adapted when borrowed into local usage. In some ways, I’ve exaggerated the distinctiveness of Alpennian names to emphasize that we aren’t in familiar territory. And I’ve emphasized certain aspects of the Alpennian name pool in non-historic ways to be able to use certain aspects of naming as a class signifier.

The differences between Alpennian names and those of neighboring countries come from two major sources: the Alpennian sound-changes described in the previous section, and the choice of a starter set of name elements. As I noted before, for reasons of geography and (relative) obscurity, I used the obsolete Langobardic language as my jumping off point on the germanic side of the equation. My source lists hundreds of recorded Langobardic names (both male and female) which can be deconstructed into prothemes and deuterothemes (roughly: prefixes and suffixes) as well as supplying some models for non-compounded names and diminutives. These compounding elements have parallels in other germanic languages but the specific sets, frequency, and combinations are distinctive.

In addition to this starting Langobardic name pool, I added in the Latin forms of a vast number of popular names from Christian tradition. Names that would have come into Alpennian use later (by borrowing) were adapted similarly, not because they would have gone through the same historic sound-changes, but on the principle that they would have been modified to fit the Alpennian sound-system at the time they were borrowed. So they may not follow the sound rules strictly, but the result won’t violate the overall patterns of the language.

But it’s not entirely that simple. There might be a certain conservatizing force on Latin names due to the continued use of Latin in liturgical, academic, and legal contexts during the formative periods of the language. Furthermore, names might have been re-introduced multiple times, resulting in inconsistent variants. Names introduced later from the international pool might use that foreign version as a starting point and then might be modified by analogy to conform to Alpennian phonology, or might retain their “foreign” shape as a sort of exoticism. All of these forces give me a little extra freedom in creating the “look and feel” I want for the name pool, as well as providing more variety than a purely mechanical system would.

As the author, I can also use the device of presenting a truly foreign name (of a non-Alpennian character) in the spelling appropriate for that character’s origins, in order to signal those origins. So, for example, the estate manager René LeFevre is signaled as being of French origin by his name (with whatever other implications one might choose to draw about his origins and personal history). Similarly, there’s the example of Jeanne de Cherdillac who is ethnically Alpennian but who married a French exile and self-consciously affects a French name and mannerisms as part of her social “performance”. Similarly Barbara’s Italian fencing master in Chalanz has an obviously Italian name, and so forth. Some of the professors at Rotenek University have names indicating foreign origin, in part as a way of indicating the international character of the institution. This is one technique I use regularly to indicate the cosmopolitan nature of Alpennian culture. Names of figures in Alpennian history may be referred to by the “modern” Alpennian forms of their names, or by Latin versions of those names, reflecting how they would have appeared in records of their own time.

On gender

One of the quirks of how I derived Alpennian names is that the original inflectional endings of Latin and Germanic names were lost (though gender-specific associations of particular compound elements or borrowed names were retained). So many names have identical forms used for both men and women, such as Iulien (from Julianus/Juliana). Alpennian grammar--like other Romance languages--retains clear distinctions between masculine and feminine in many forms. (We see this most obviously in gendered forms of the titles of address.) Alpennian society is not by any means gender-neutral or even particularly progressive regarding gender issues. We see in the aspects of “honor culture” a clearly patriarchal leaning, despite certain legal allowances that are more progressive-leaning. But one of the ways I wanted to distinguish the names from other Romance cultures was in not having women’s names always end in “-a” or “-e”.

I may digress a bit on the topic of gender politics: there are structures in Alpennian society that allow for (although don’t overtly encourage) greater gender equality. For example, inheritance is not strictly by male primogeniture. While the tradition of a semi-elected royal succession is unlikely to have been intended to allow for preferring a female heir over available male ones, it makes that possible. And the same case applies to the inheritance of titles. As the old Baron Saveze notes toward the beginning of Daughter of Mystery when he’s baiting his nephew Estefen, there’s nothing in law barring him from leaving the title to Estefen’s sister Antuniet. Or rather, from commending Antuniet to the prince as his chosen heir. There are legal and traditional guidelines for what they call the heir-default -- the person closest in blood and, by preference, male. But the structures that were originally set up to allow power to pass to the person best suited to hold it have the side effect of allowing for women to inherit that power. So the gender neutrality of Alpennian name forms hold a faint reflection of this potential gender equality on a symbolic level, but it was never meant to be cause and effect in either direction.

On Diminutives and Pet-names

Getting back to naming practices in general, another thing I had to come up with was guidelines for diminutives and pet-forms and whatnot. My basic diminutive suffixes are -ek and -et, but with -et provecting to -ez, as in Annek (from Anna) or Tionez (from Diana). They may also occur with a final vowel (sometimes with the consonant doubled) as in Akezze, Toneke. Toneke is a great example of several principles. The original root is from Latin Antonia and following the usual sound-changes we get Antuniet. (The final -et may either be by analogy to French Antoinette or may be the Alpennian diminutive.) But the pet-form clips off the first syllable leaving “-tun-“ which -- now that it picks up the stress -- “remembers” that the vowel was originally o. So the stem returns to Ton- and now we add an entirely different diminutive ending to get Tonek or Toneke. There are a few other techniques for forming diminutives. This not only gives me a greater variety of options when dealing with the fact that -- as in most European societies of the time -- there should be a lot of focus on a small set of popular names like John and Elizabeth. Now I’ve done this with Elizabeth -- in fact it’s something of a running gag in Daughter of Mystery that there are a lot of Elizabeths running around and most of them have an alternate variant form of the name (like Lissa and Bezza) for everyday use to be able to distinguish them. Similarly in The Mystic Marriage, I have two prominent characters named Anna and this is commented on. And one of them gets a clear alternation between the more formal Anna and the affectionate pet-form Annek that everyone uses -- but not to her face.

Another circumstance where diminutive forms show up a lot is in surnames, because a lot of working-class surnames are derived from patronyms, and very often from diminutive forms used as patronyms (as in English -- though it isn’t always directly appearant there if you don’t know the history of the names).

Names that Don’t Follow the Rules

Now, I have sometimes broken the rules of name derivation, either because a character was very emphatic about wanting a particular name, or because the Alpennian form just semed unesthetic to me, or because the correct Alpennian form seemed to have too modern-American a feel to me. I can usually excuse this as being a reversion to an original Latin form. For example, the correct Alpennian form of Barbara should be “Parber”. But not only had Barbara carried her name from the moment she introduced herself to me, I just don’t like the look of Parber at all. So for whatever reason, she uses a Latinate form. Another example is Anna, where the Alpennian form should properly be simply Ann, but that felt too modern so I went with the Latin form. Part of my backstory for this is that use of Latinate forms is something of a class marker with upper class families often preferring them to the vernacular. This puts an interesting twist on the alternation between the more formal, upper-class Anna and the definitively Alpennian diminutive Annek, which is something the character delibrately encourages to emphasize her Alpennian roots. (This is more relevant to events in The Mystic Marriage, so I’m being a little cagy on details.)

Names and Class

I’ve touched a little bit on class issues in names. I wanted to create some clear class markers both for given names and surnames, though I don’t expect the average reader to pick up on them necessarily. It just helps in creating a consistent and distinctive “feel” that helps with worldbuilding. The ways in which I did this aren’t necessarily historically sound in terms of how name pools developed. In general, Alpennian working class people will have names that derive from Germanic roots (that is the Langobardic name pool that I used to create my linguistic “look and feel”) plus the most common of the Christian-origin names, but often using Alpennian diminutives. So, for example, when Barbara says that, whoever her father was, he wasn’t some “Mefroi Iannik” (using the working-class title “mefroi”), she’s emphasizing that he wasn’t of low birth, with Iannik (an Alpennian diminutive of John) standing in for the “common everyman”. The kitchen servants in the Fulpi household have names like “Luzza” and “Gaita” (from germanic roots) or “Aggy” (a pet-form from Agnes). Middle-class given names are more likely to be from the traditional “pan-European” name pool, both of names of Christian significance (especially saints’ names) and popular international names like Richard and Frederick. Upper-class given names draw on this same pool, but also include more recent borrowings from other cultures like Charluz (an Alpennization of Charlotte) or classical names (like Tionez, which is an Alpennian diminutive of Diana).

It is very common for the reader to encounter working-class people only by their surnames. (I’ll get into class dynamics regarding address and reference in the next section.) This isn’t always apparent because, as noted above, the most typical form of working-class surname is taken from a patronym and therefore may look very similar to a given name. (In fact, there are certain characters where I haven’t yet determined whether the name I’ve used for them is a given name or surname.)

Upper-class surnames are typically derived from proper names of places, originally indicating ownership of the land indicated. To generate these names, I started out with the earliest identifiable forms of place names in the general region of south-east France, north-west Italy, and Swizerland, and then applied Alpennian sound-change rules to them. There are also some upper-class surnames deriving from occupations or offices that would have held appropriate status. For example Chazillen comes originally from “castellanus”, someone responsible for the administration of a castle. There’s a certain snobbishness revolving around upper-class surname origins and their relationship to landed titles. Generally older titles will be held by someone who has a surname different from their title, simply due to the way they changed hands down the years. Having a title identical to your surname is generally a marker of a relatively recent elevation, as it either means that the title has been created fresh or that a family with a declassé surname has adopted the title as their surname when receiving it. A surname deriving from a more descriptive place-name (rather than a proper name) such as “Old Mill” (Vezemul) is generally a marker for middle-class origins (or lower), and similarly for surnames derived from working occupations. But there’s a fair amount of overlap at the class margins due to historic mobility.

The final part of this essay will cover forms of address and reference and issues of class dynamics and courtesy in how people speak to and of each other.

ETA: This is my first experiment with posting videos and I still have some troubleshooting to do. The videos are Quick-Time format but I don't have the advisory apparatus to tell people they need Quick-Time to view them. Please bear with my learning curve. Feedback in the comments on what systems/programs are able to view the videos or not may be useful. Sorry about this.

Further ETA: I have a confirmed success on a Windows machine running Firefox 3.6.12 and with QuickTime installed. And a confirmed failure on a Windows machine running Internet Explorer with no QuickTime installed. I suspect that the key difference is simply whether QuickTime is installed. (Duh!) I'll see if I can add a built-in message to that effect. It may be that I should look into Flash eventually, unless a better idea comes along.

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Looking at the rise of all these name-groups in parallel, all starting to shoot up at roughly the same time, you'd think that they're all part of some single fashion, ruled by the rhyme. But when you look at how each individual name spreads geographically, something even more curious happens. The geographic data is taken from the Babyname Wizard "name mapper". In this case, it plots the relative popularity of a name in each of the 50 states, but only for names appearing in the 100 most popular for that state. So some of the spelling variants that show up in our top 1000 list for the entire USA never make the cut-off for the map. I'm going to oversimplify a bit by charting a simple "yes/no" for each state and leaving off Alaska and Hawaii (not because they aren't interesting, but because I'm looking at a more big-picture trend).

( Behind a cut due to heavy video content. )

To be concluded in Part V

Jaden

There are several possible sources for this name. There is a Biblical Jadon in the Book of Nehemiah but this spelling is a late-comer to the fashion, making it less likely as an origin. There is a French surname Jadin (probably from an occupational surname meaning "seller of bowls and pans" -- Dauzat), but in addition to the problem that this spelling never gets into the top 1000, it doesn't seem to have been a significant surname in the U.S. For the most part, the Jaden group seems to have been coined for the sound, or composed from elements taken from other popular names, such as Jay or Jason. Another component to this name is the general popularity of names of the form "CVCVC" (where C=consonant and V=vowel) ... but that's a topic for another column.

The Jaden group first shows up on the charts in 1994 as Jaden and Jayden and adds more variants rapidly: Jadon in 1998, Jaiden and Jaydon in 1999, Jaeden in 2000, Jadyn in 2001, and Jaidyn and Jaydin in 2004. All together they make up 7.9 out of every 1000 boys names in 2005. As with Aidan, there’s a sharp increase in popularity starting after 1998 to go along with the increase in spelling variants.

Attested spelling variants that haven't made the charts include Jaidon, Jadan, and Jadin.

( Behind a cut due to heavy graphic content. )

To be continued in Part III

So I thought some more about starting a blog of amusing observations and essays about (mostly modern) naming trends. And I thought about starting up a new blog for it on some place like blogspot or the like. And then I thought, "I've got a perfectly good blog here on LiveJournal and I'm more and more saving it for essays (and putting the chit-chat on Facebook instead) so it makes more sense just to do it here." But I also want to store the essays somewhere I have complete control over -- i.e., my website. So here's how it's going to work. I'll post the name blogs here on LJ so people can comment and discuss if they want (and also for better publicity), but I'll also post them on my website for the permanent record. Depending on storage space, some of the essays may end up being teasers with a pointer to the website version. (For example, the one I'm about to post has a number of short embedded videos and I'm not sure of the logistics of doing so here.)

So the first (well, actually the second -- because I already posted the LaTrina rant and essay) will be an extended discussion of the recent fashion for boys' names that rhyme with Aidan. I started writing this several years ago but updated it for the more recent data and finished up all the graphs and trend-videos and whatnot. I've never embedded a video before! It'll be going up in five parts, of which the last is still in progress, so it'll come a little later.

One interesting phenomenon I've observed is that having written a baby-name book is a great conversation starter. Not because people then ask you interesting questions about naming practices and trends, but because everyone in the world is an expert on naming practices and trends and has only been waiting for the chance to show off this knowledge to someone who will truly and properly appreciate their expertise. (It may be a special-case variant of mansplaining, although of the more gender-neutral variety.)

But just as telling someone you're a linguist gets you inundated with that person's pet grammar peeves -- many of which will be completely wrong-headed -- telling someone you study names will result in you getting inundated with their pet name peeves. And it is unfortunate that some of the most popular and oft-told "terrible baby name" stories in American culture reflect cultural misunderstandings and cultural ignorance that can be extremely difficult to distinguish from racism.

I had one of those conversations recently and wish to offer some advice to the world at large. (I hope I don't need to offer it to my f-list but if a reader finds themself feeling defensive on reading this post ... think about it a bit before responding.) Names in one culture may be coincidentally similar to -- even phonetically identical to -- words in another culture. Sometimes the words they are similar/identical to have socially unfortunate meanings. This is not a reflection of the intelligence, common sense, or taste of the person so named or the person who chose the name.

Just for example (avoiding personal names for the moment), the King Dong Chinese restaurant in Berkeley was not named in reference to royal male organs. Once you get over your little adolescent giggle, try one of the lunch specials. Pretty much everything is delicious.

And, to get to the specific example from that conversation: if you start telling me a story about some African American woman you heard about (or met, or saw on TV) named LaTrina, and it is clear that the point of your story is "look how ignorant and uncultured the parents of this woman must have been to have named her after a toilet", do not get all defensive on me when I point out that your telling of this particular name anecdote creates a strong impression of racism on your part.

Never mind for the moment that about 99% of the time when stories about this name get told it's a Friend-of-a-Friend story with all the usual fictionality of a FoaF. Because being "true" is no excuse. The question is why are you telling this story? About this particular name? While ignoring the larger sociolinguistic context in which this name exists (and in which it is completely unremarkable)? While ignoring the fact that "latrina" itself is not even a word in English? Why? Because, you see, your telling of this story about this name does not exist in a vacuum. There are lots of stories you could tell about names that sound odd to you within your narrow cultural experience. But you told this one. And you are one of a large number of people who tell this same story about this same name. (And remember: I've spent a lot of time listening to people tell me stories about names and naming practices.) And I can follow contextual implication as well as the next person, and it's blazingly clear that the story was not meant to be a neutral commentary on a coincidental similarity of sound.

So when you tell me a "funny" story about a woman named LaTrina, don't get all huffy when I point out to you what the story says about you.

Yesterday and today I set myself to working on titles and forms of address to be used in the novel. I ran a large number of possible roots and compounds through the phonological mill, applied my general principle that romance roots are considered more upperish-class and germanic ones more lowerish-class, and picked the results with the right "feel". The next step was putting together a matrix of all relevant combinatorial interactions of class, formality, age, and intimacy and sketching out the general social rules for address and reference. The exciting part was that as I started firming up the results, I could feel the tone of the story shift from "generic Englishy feel" to "definitely Somewhere Else". "Mistress *placeholder*" is a rather different person from "Maisetra Sovitre". One of the fun things I hope to do in my overly-analytical way is to track the shifting relationships between the main characters not only in how they address and refer to each other, but -- in the case of the two POV characters -- how people get referred to during their "stage time". Yes, it's a bit excessively picky, but it's sort of like getting the food right, or the clothes right. I have most of the main characters named at this point, so I think I'm ready to start the revision process on Part I. I'm guessing that what with one thing and another this process will take me through the end of the year.

Worked on the name-set for the novel this evening. I've got a working list that I've rung the phonological changes on, although I want to do some tweaking to adjust the look-and-feel. Next step is to start matching up names for the current characters that need them (as well as for the known characters that haven't been introduced yet). Next up is place-names, noble titles, and forms of address for all possible combinations of rank, status, and formality of addressor and addressee. Then I'll be ready to do a serious revision pass on Part I.

The oldest and youngest brothers have flown back to California (since they have a play rehearsal for 12th night). I'll still be here in Maine until the 1st and have shifted home base from the middle brother's house (formerly Sibling Central) to the parents' house. The great skiing has passed -- yesterday I went out for a couple hours but the packed trails had turned to ice and the wind had blown all manner of organic material into the tracks. The best runs were across the open meadow where the grainy crust had warmed up just enough to give the right balance of tooth and drag. There was a small shower of new snow last night but nothing useable. The forecasts suggest there may be more snow Monday night and Tuesday, so I may get a couple more decent days in. Or, I suppose, I could drive somewhere that has better conditions, but I could do that back home. The novelty here is the whole "walk down the street to the ski trail" aspect.

Other than that, I've been messing around on the computer a lot. Mostly doing a bunch of really tedious coding in the Medieval Welsh Names database. When I get around to making my New Years' Irresolutions, I think one of them will be to get the names database online in interactive form. It will always be a work in progress -- and people who want to use it for researching and documenting names for the SCA are going to need some serious training in "you can't just say 'I found it on hrj's website'." When I started this project, I saw that I could go one of two directions. I could either make the data "safe" to use, with highly filtered and interpreted content and eliminating anything with any degree of uncertainty. Or I could present the material simply as a data resource, with all the interpretations flagged as to degree of confidence and rationale, and with all the background information about context dumped into the user's lap, and with the onus for responsible usage also dumped on the user. And I concluded the only sane path was the second one. The first approach would only reinforce the illusion that there are simple answers and absolute truths. The second approach reminds people that there is always uncertainty and interpretation and you just have to lump it and do your best.

The one nod I'll be making to user "safety" is that the planned report form for search results will have all the background data on the source and all the explanations of confidence levels included in the format. It'll be repetitive and redundant, but it will make it much harder for an end-user to take snippets of data out of context and claim that I said they mean things that I never said or meant.

I regularly get random e-mails from people asking me what their name means (or what their kid's name means), which can get amusing. I got one today from someone whose niece got named "Peren" because the parents liked the sound, and the only place he could find the name on-line was one of my web articles so did I know what it meant? So I gave the whole spiel about how we don't always know the meanings of names and how relatively short simple names like this may show up coincidentally in multiple languages, so if they picked it just by the sound there may not even be a reason to assume that it's Welsh just because there's an identically-spelled name in Welsh sources. Yadda yadda yadda. So he tells me they picked the name from the lists at babycenter.com.

Guess who did some consulting work for babycenter.com and expanded and corrected their Welsh listings? (Peren is listed there as "meaning uncertain" and I haven't managed to get any more certain about it in the mean time, alas.)