Orphaned, disconnected Welsh King Gruffydd_ap_Llywelyn

Question

Was surprised to stumble upon this dateless,empty, disconnected profile.  Googling surfaced his Wikipedia entry with dates and details.

Way above my pay grade.  Hoping the Wales or Medieval project will take him on.

Comments

Isn't he a duplicate of https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Ap_Llewelyn-23 ?

---

Great catch, Eva.  I thought he MUST have a dupe somewhere and searched on both the given and surname (separately) and could not find him.

---

I looked for his mother :-)

---

Lesson learned -- when someone is lost, ask their mother!

Answer 1

Thanks for the catch, Jillaine.  I'll merge it with the existing profile and take care of it.  Welsh names are spelled in different ways by the English which accounts for the variations.

It occurs to me that before doing the merge, however, is a good time to weigh in on whether the preferred spelling should be LLywelyn or Llewelyn.  That will determine which profile gets merged into which.

Comments

tHanks, Jack.  He's all yours.

---

Based on a cursury Google review, it looks like Llywelyn is the older (and therefore more appropriate) spelling.  Any thoughts from Welsh language experts?

---

The modern usage is that digraphs in Welsh should be capitalised on the first element e.g. Llan when required and both elements capitalised when the whole word is in upper case e.g. LLAN. For alphanumeric and dictionary ordering LL and ll come before L and l (lowercase (el) in the alphabet and are distinct letters in the alphabet. They only occupy one space in a crossword puzzle in Welsh for example.

As for typographic style it is OK to use Ll or IL and Unicode characters exist for both forms from Middle Welsh.

Ỻ = U+1EFA uppercase alternative Latin form

ỻ = U+1EFB lowercase alternative Latin form

Steve J

---

Hi, Steve.  Good background on the double "l".  Now, the question I'm struggling with is use of the "y" vs "e" in the LNAB, i.e. "ap Llywelyn" or "ap Llewelyn."

---

Hi Jack, this is just an observation bearing in mind I'm  not an expert in Welsh or in the inner workings of WikiTree.

I think the problem is both Llywelyn (leader) and Llewelyn (lion like) are homophones and would sound the same when spoken and could lose the subtly of the derivation when written.

All of the known Welsh language texts are 13-14th Century or later, so any early documentary evidence will be from Latin, so any difference of name meaning may have been lost through time or misunderstanding. There is also the problem with the obsession in the Middle Ages of 'latinising' everything to give the subject more gravitas. (whoops!)   

To maintain the links across the generations, I think the context is the most important factor and I would follow the spelling of the father and note the spelling variants in the comments.

While rummaging around the net I did come across Bloodlines I don't know how accurate it is though.

Steve J

---

The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia (I have the Welsh language version) has Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, and indeed all medieval individuals called Llywelyn have their name spelled like that. This would appear to be the modern standardized spelling (obviously medieval spellings were not fixed).

PS: “Ll” is sorted after “L”, not before.

---

That sounds good enough for me!

---

Sorry, my fault entirely - don't try and have an on-line chat and cook dinner at the same time!

Sorry

---

That made two of us cooking dinner.  Mine turned out great, hope yours did, too!