Deciphering Welsh Writing

Transcribers may have noticed the recent influx of Welsh headstones. When BillionGraves first started to get a lot of photos from Sweden, one of our users provided information to help us transcribe Swedish stones. Luckily one of the individuals uploading photos from Wales has supplied a similar primer that explains phrases and words that commonly appear on Welsh headstones. Below are list of months, weekdays, family relations, feminine and masculine possessive forms, plural possessive forms, notes of affection (usually found in the epitaph), preliminary statements (also common in epitaphs), and  other key words and phrases.

You’ll notice that some words appear in more than one form. For example, son appears as both mab and fab. This is because in Welsh, certain letters undergo a sound mutation when combined with other sounds. Thus mab means son when the word stands alone, but in a phrase like her beloved son it appears as fab (ei hannwyl fab) because the M sound mutates to an F (which, in Welsh, sounds like the English V—are you confused yet?).

(Note: Even though this post will give you translations for some Welsh words, please transcribe the stone in the original language; you can add the English translation in the description box if you so choose. Most of these are listed to help you determine which words on the stone are names and how to determine the birth and death dates.)

Months of the Year

Welsh: English

Ionawr: January

Chwefror: February

Mawrth: March

Ebrill: April

Mai: May

Mehefin: June

Gorffennaf/Gorphenaf: July

Awst: August

Medi: September

Hydref: October

Tachwedd: November

Rhagfyr: December

Days of the Week

Dydd Llun: Monday

Dydd Mawrth: Tuesday

Dydd Mercher: Wednesday

Dydd Iau: Thursday

Dydd Gwener: Friday

Dydd Sadwrn: Saturday

Dydd Sul: Sunday

Family Relations

Baban: Baby

Brawd: Brother

Cefnder: Cousin (Male)

Chwaer: Sister

Cyfnither: Cousin (Female)

Gwraig: Wife

Gwr: Husband

Mab: Son

Mam: Mother

Mam-gu: Grandmother

Merch: Daughter

Nai: Nephew

Nain: Grandmother

Nith: Niece

Plant: Children

Plentyn: Child

Priod: Spouse

Tad: Father

Tad-cu: Grandfather

Taid: Grandfather

Wyr: Grandson

Wyres: Granddaughter

Feminine Possessive Forms

Ei gwr: Her husband

Ei mab: Her son

Ei merch: Her daughter

Ei mherch: Her daughter

Ei phlentyn: Her spouse

Ei phriod: Her spouse

Ei hannwyl blentyn: Her beloved child

Ei hannwyl briod: Her beloved spouse

Ei hannwyl fab: Her beloved son

Ei hannwyl ferch: Her beloved daughter

Ei hannwyl wr: Her beloved husband

Masculine Possessive Forms

Ei blentyn - His child

Ei briod - His Spouse

Ei fab - His son

Ei ferch - His daughter

Ei Wraig - His wife

Ei annwyl blentyn - His beloved child

Ei annwyl briod - His beloved spouse

Ei annwyl fab - His beloved Son

Ei annwyl ferch - His beloved daughter

Ei annwyl wraig - His beloved wife

Plural Possessive Forms

Eu mab: Their son

Eu baban: Their baby

Eu merch: Their daughter

Eu plenty: Their child

Eu hannwyl blentyn: Their beloved child

Eu hannwyl fab: Their beloved son

Eu hannwyl faban: Their beloved baby

Eu hannwyl ferch: Their beloved daughter

Notes of Affection

Anwyl Blant: the beloved children

Annwyl blentyn: the beloved child

Annwyl briod: the beloved spouse

Annwyl dad: the beloved father

Annwyl fab: the beloved son

Annwyl faban: the beloved baby

Annwyl fam: the beloved mother

Annwyl ferch: the beloved daughter

Annwyl wr: the beloved husband

Annwyl wraig: the beloved wife

Preliminary Statements

Bedd: Grave

Er cof am: In memory of

Er cof tyner am: In tender memory of

Er serchog gof am: In loving memory of

Er serchus gof am: In loving memory of

Gorweddle: The resting place

I gofio’n dyner am: In tender memory of

O dan y garreg hon: Underneath this stone

Yma y claddwyd: Here was buried

Yma y gorwedd: Here lieth

Other Key Words and Phrases for Headstones

Blwyddyn: Year

Corff/Corph: Body

Diwrnod: Day

Dydd: Day

Ganwyd: Born

Gynt o: Formally of

Hefyd: Also

Hunodd yn yr Iesu: Fell asleep in Jesus

Isod: Underneath/Below

Mis: Month

Oed: Age

O’r plwyf hwn: Of this parish

Y dywededig uchod: The above named (Male)

Y Ddywededig uchod: The above named (Female)

Yn 7 mlwydd oed: 7 years old

Yr hwn a fu farw: Who died (Male)

Yr Hon a fu farw: Who died (Female)

Uchod: Above

If you’re looking up Welsh words in a dictionary, remember that CH, FF, LL, RH, TH, and DD are all distinct alphabet letters with their own sounds, so words that start with CH will be found in the CH section of a dictionary, not the C section, etc.

If you think transcribers could use some tips for transcribing headstones from your area, send some notes to me at kristy.stewart @ billiongraves.com and I’ll share them here for everyone to use.

Understanding Name Discrepancies on Headstones

This Wednesday I had the pleasure of chatting with the sexton of the largest municipal cemetery in the United States: Salt Lake City Cemetery. With over 120,000 graves inside, it’s quite the area of responsibility to look after and care for. The sexton was very open to sharing some of his experiences with me, and there was one aspect of his work that I found interesting: sometimes the name on someone’s headstone is not the name they went by, or even their official name.

This name discrepancy can even exist within cemetery records—sometimes the sexton has the official name recorded, but the “unofficial” name gets put on the headstone. Most of the time this isn’t the case, but the SLC sexton has known it to happen often enough that it’s worth mentioning.

The reason behind these discrepancies is that what goes on the headstone is 100% the surviving family members’ decision. What the family puts on the headstone is what makes the most sense to them, and sometimes that means using a personal, in-the-family name on the grave monument.

This makes sense. However, if you’re looking for hard facts to put into your family tree, it can cause you a bit of a hiccup if the headstone record doesn’t match the other sources you already have (or other sources you find further down the research road). Even so, having these not-so-official names (or official names that defy what the deceased individual was called in life) can give you an interesting peek into the family relations or traditions of your ancestors. You can learn about a nickname, understand a personal quirk, or uncover a family dispute (the sexton said that sometimes, sadly, he’ll see mourning families divided over what to put on the headstone because everyone feels so close to the deceased).

Knowing what’s on someone’s headstone gives you a glimpse at his or her circumstances in the last times of their life. It can help you see them as a person instead of a name on a chart, or understand family dynamics from the past. This is part of the reason why photos are such an integral part of BillionGraves. Abbreviated records (or official records) may not capture the same character and personality that many headstones can portray. When you can see the actual stone, just as though you were in the cemetery yourself, you can gather information and impressions you couldn’t get from just a name and a pair of dates.

Name discrepancies in old records can be frustrating, but even when your sources don’t completely support one another, each one can add to the past-filled family portrait you try to paint with your family research. When it comes to getting to know your family, every little bit helps.

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The headstone photo was taken in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. Turning the headstone into a sort of mountain sculpture adds character, don’t you think?

Filling a Gap

Since our launch last week we’ve received feedback that some feel we’re duplicating the efforts of Find a Grave, or that we should be collaborating with them. However, we feel that the way things have evolved is a good one: the mission of Find a Grave and the mission of BillionGraves.com are different, so it makes sense that we ended up being separate.

When our team first decided we wanted to work on a project to make gathering cemetery information more efficient and accessible, we attempted to contact Find a Grave to create a partnership: we’d provide a mobile app and they’d provide the website it integrated with. We never did hear back from the folks at Find a Grave, but that’s completely understandable. It makes a lot of sense. Our goals are different than their goals.

Find a Grave creates a sort of online memorial for deceased persons. Genealogical information can be gleaned from these memorials, but that isn’t the primary purpose (Find a Grave lists “grave registration” as its primary purpose; genealogical information is a tertiary purpose). At BillionGraves.com, we wanted to build a fast, easy way to accurately collect and search the genealogical information on headstones. This goal materialized more and more during our years of development, and it meant we needed a fairly complex website structure to support a mobile app. Find a Grave does what it does wonderfully, and it would have been a shame to make its primary purpose harder to achieve with the restructuring it would have taken to integrate the app we envisioned.

At BillionGraves.com we also wanted to make it very simple to capture complete cemeteries full of records that may not exist in any other place. Many people who research family history have heard of the valuable information a researcher can find by stumbling upon a small family cemetery that isn’t on any map or in any database. The mobile BillionGraves app makes it easy to add those sorts of cemeteries to our database and map out all the headstones in them instead of just a select few. Then these previously undocumented and inaccessible sorts of records are easy to find, easy to search, and thus, easy to add to your research and share with others.

Another tool that is already available online is Names In Stone. The site is dedicated to carefully mapping out cemeteries. Names In Stone has worked well with the resources it has; BillionGraves.com can take it one step further. Names In Stone relies on hand-recorded data that is then added to the site. We’ve taken a similar process and automated it using the iPhone app and our servers to map out the cemetery as you’re collecting photos and then making the transcription of those photos quick and simple (it’s fairly easy to collect one photo every 15 seconds or so—much faster than a by-hand system). Interment.net is also a great resource, but also requires a more complicated recording and transcription process.

All the grave-recording services have their own value, and we hope you stay connected to them. Especially while the BillionGraves.com database is in its infancy, these sites will help you further your research. However, we’ll continue to provide our services because hard-working researchers deserve to have tools that fit their needs. These other tools fill some needs, but not others. BillionGraves.com fills the gap.