The Welsh John
Sir: Sian is merely a Welsh form of the pop- ular Christian name John (Shared opinion, 7 February). There is no T in the Welsh alphabet. `Si' is its substitute and is pro- nounced `Sh'. So Mr Simon's first name is pronounced as if it was Shaun in English.
If your contributor's first name had been Sian, he would have been a woman. Sian is the Welsh for Jane, and there are many jin- gles in Welsh referring to 'Sian and Sian', being roughly equivalent to either `Jack and Jill' or 'Darby and Joan' in English nursery rhymes and folklore.
To confuse you further, there are other variants of John in Welsh. For instance, the Baptist and the Evangelist are always referred to as Joan, never as Si6n (cf. Ian in Scotland).
My own Christian name, Jenkin, is written in Welsh `Siencyn' and means `little John'. Oddly the `kin' part is not Celtic, but is said to have been introduced into west Wales by Flemings settled there by Henry I and his Norman barons. The surname Jenkins derives (as do most Welsh surnames) from the Christian name and not vice versa. The same applies to Watkins and Hopkins.
Jenkin Thomas
43 Charleville Mansions, Charleville Road, London W14
Previous page
