View Message

Arwen - and Awen
Hi there! I was interested to see that there's a member of the Wales ladies' rugby team (yes, I know ...) called Awen - can't recall the surname.Is this the same as Arwen, does anyone know, or is it something completely different? Pronunciation ... ?By the way, they beat South Africa twice. Oh well.Just on a happier note - SA male rugby players have been the Springboks or the Boks for about a hundred years, and in Afrikaans they are the Bokke. And when we won the World Cup in 1995 there was suddenly a need for an African nickname, and they became the Amabokoboko, ama- being a plural prefix. OK. Then along came the ladies, and a radio commentator is suggesting they be known as the Mamabokoboko. Not too sure about that, but it's fun!
vote up1vote down

Replies

My daughter plays rugby! How could she not - Grandfather is a coach, dad was a winger and with all these brothers?! She's good too - much braver than her mommy!Awen isn't related to Arwen I'm afraid. It means 'muse' and another form is Awena. It's also a stream in Pembrokeshire and derived from the Old Breton anaw meaning 'wealth'. Say what you see with that one - AH-wehn (a as in 'palm', e as in 'self')HTH!Devon
vote up1vote down
Wow! Delighted to hear that! How old is she? Does she do cricket as well??Thanks for the info - I wonder if good old JRRT used Awen as the basis for Arwen; I mean, it's all very well saying he invented it, but he could well have just tweaked reality a bit.All the best
vote up1vote down
Arwen is a real name!Actually a lot of his 'created' words are more 'lifted' straight from the textbooks he taught out of. Orc is an Anglo Saxon word for 'demon', Ent was the same - 'giant'. Arwen and Arwenna are the feminine forms of Arwyn which meant 'fair, fine'. Even in Legolas - the Welsh for 'green' is 'glas'. Tolkien's genius was in pulling from his rich knowledge of all these ancient languages and legends and seamlessly weaving them together like that. I've never actually managed to read through the books all the way (pathetic, I know, but I have the attention span of a tsetse fly) but the appendixes are well thumbed!You might also like Awel/Awela, Welsh, means 'breeze' and if you're into subtle but cool the Welsh for 'leaf' is Dalen.Devon
vote up1vote down