Comments | little_details: How in the world do you pronounce "Gwenhwyvac Guinee"?

dave_littler in little_details

How in the world do you pronounce "Gwenhwyvac Guinee"?

Aug 15, 2009 03:38

So, writing this story, set in an absurd early 20th century England, I had a need for a Welsh character with the most awkward, unpleasant-sounding Welsh name I could come up with. Looking at various lists, the best I could come up with was "Gwenhwyvac Guinee", which I think is a pretty good choice. The problem is, in addition to doing this as text ( Read more... )

~names, ~languages: celtic

Comments 24

tyleet27 August 15 2009, 20:44:58 UTC

This is me speaking only from puzzling out pronunciations of archaic spellings of Arthurian names--but I think the "Guinee" would be pronounced "goo-in-ay" versus "geen-ee" or "gwin--ee".

Again, by no means an expert, but it sounds the most likely?

dave_littler August 15 2009, 23:05:02 UTC

Yeah, I figured the last name would be simple enough in that respect. It's the various consonants huddled together in the middle of the first name that had me scratching my head.

ang_the_adverse August 16 2009, 13:53:14 UTC

Actually, 'u' in Welsh is an 'ee' sound. I'm not entirely sure what happens when added to and 'i', but it's Irish that makes it an 'oo' sound, Guinivere is the Irish form.

silly_bella August 15 2009, 20:46:04 UTC

I know that the W in a vowel position can be pronounce as the "oo" sound in book or cool, depending on whether the sylable is accented or not.

Here's a site that might help: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/welsh.htm

Or just google "welsh pronunciation."

(The comment has been removed)

nastasie August 15 2009, 22:10:48 UTC

LOL. Thanks, I needed a laugh.

ETA: Reminds me of this, actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwghlm

dream_xofx_dark August 17 2009, 15:27:33 UTC

Don't you mean Jones?

kagetenshi August 15 2009, 20:48:49 UTC

Ok...I did a little Googling to see if I could be of some help, and it just boggled me. However, you might get better luck with it than I did:

http://www.grailcode.com/how-to-pronounce-those-impossible-welsh-names

Good luck!

dave_littler August 15 2009, 23:06:19 UTC

Bookmarked!

And thank you.

oh_meow August 15 2009, 21:06:34 UTC

You want Gywnhyvar with an r. It's gwin-huh-var. The y is a sort of neutral shrugging sound (a schwa sort of sound if you know about linguistics). Guinee isn't very Welsh sounding, in fact most people are called Thomas, Jones, Griffiths, Evans or Davis, you could go with Gruffudd which is the un-anglicised version of Griffiths or Dafydd (dav-ith ie Welsh for David)

dave_littler August 15 2009, 23:03:15 UTC

Yeah, I was looking into "traditional" Welsh names, and this one stood out for me as sounding pre-English (if you know what I mean), and I liked it for that reason.

But yes, even my own family name, "Littler" is originally Welsh, so I know that most surnames used there now are basically the same as you would find in England. Probably has to do with them not using surnames in the sense that the English did until just a few centuries ago, using patronyms instead.