Today’s word of the day is one of my favourites, and I hope by the end of this article you’ll love it too! I’m talking about daioni, an abstract noun meaning goodness.
daioni
goodness
Daioni of course comes from da, the beautifully simple Welsh adjective meaning good. It has been used since the 1300s, although it was often spelt differently: daeoni, daoni and dayoni are all recorded. Plus, it was sometimes also used to mean dewrder (bravery).
You may not have come across the word ending –ioni before, but it’s not unique to this word. It’s used in a small number of similar words. Another example is haelioni (generosity), which of course comes from hael (generous). And the other very well-known example is daioni’s antonym drygioni, which comes from drwg and which means badness, evil, mischief, or vice.
As for da itself, it’s from the proto-Celtic *dagos (good). It’s related to the Irish prefix dea, which appears in a range of words including dea-ghníomh (a good deed) and dea-labhartha (well spoken). Let us know if you’d like an article all about da!
Daioni is subject to two kinds of Welsh mutation:
Soft mutation
ddaioni
Nasal mutation
naioni
Aspirate mutation
N/A
It is a masculine noun, and due to being abstract, it is uncountable; it has no plural. And personally I think we should all be grateful for that – it’s already got enough vowels to put the myth of all-consonant Welsh words to bed once and for all, without having to add –au or –ion on the end!
Although da can sometimes function as a noun itself, this is usually (not exclusively) in a more material sense, meaning goods. That means using daioni is often best when we are talking about moral goodness, simply to avoid confusion. But there are other words with similar meanings, like haelioni which we mentioned earlier, as well as caredigrwydd (kindness), sancteiddrwydd (holiness / sanctity), rhinwedd (virtue), and rhadlonrwydd (graciousness / generosity).
It doesn’t just mean goodness as in kindness though. It can be used to talk about something – like bwyd (food) – being good for you, as in the slightly old-fashioned, but very comforting phrase, gwneud daioni iti (to do you a goodness).
Doethineb a daioni; dwy olwyn, un cart.
Wisdom and goodness; two wheels on the same cart.
As you can imagine, the word daioni has been used a lot in religious contexts: there are hundreds of uses in Welsh translations of y Beibl (the Bible).
Let’s briefly look at one of these passages. In Job 7:7, Job says mine eyes will no more see good. In Welsh this is ni wêl fy llygaid ddaioni eto. Because it’s from y Beibl this is literary Welsh, so the first couple of words in particular may seem unfamiliar. Still, it’s important to understand this kind of Welsh because elements of it are still used in many formal contexts.
- ni = goes before verbs in literary Welsh to negate them
- wêl = literary way of mutating gweld (to see) for the third person future tense
- fy = my
- llygaid = eyes, plural of llygad (an eye)
- ddaoni = daoini itself, but soft mutated since it’s the object of a conjugated verb
- eto = again
The most famous usage of daioni – and one of the main reasons I like this word so much – also builds off its religious context. This is in the much-loved Welsh hymn Calon Lân (A Pure Heart), the lyrics of which speak of devoting oneself to being a good person with a pure calon (heart), rather than seeking fame or fortune. Here is its chorus:
Calon lân yn llawn daioni
Tecach yw na’r lili dlos
Dim ond calon lân all ganu
Canu’r dydd a chanu’r nos
A pure heart full of goodness
Is fairer than the pretty lily
Only a pure heart can sing
Sing the day & sing the night
You can read more about this wonderful cân (song) in our article on the word calon (a heart).
Dw i’n mynd ar wyliau. Dw i’n credu ‘neith o ddaioni imi.
I’m going on holiday. I think it’ll do me good.
In English we often use goodness for swears and exclamations. Think of For goodness’ sake!, Thank goodness! or Goodness knows!
There are some examples of this in Welsh historically, though they are mostly now archaic, and were perhaps always less common. For example, we don’t really say goodness knows – it is more likely that someone would go for Duw a ŵyr (God knows), which to be fair we do have in English too.
The phrase yn eno’r daioni (in goodness’ name) is listed in Geiriadur yr Academi (the Welsh Academy Dictionary) but I’ve personally never heard it used aloud. Let us know below if you have – these sorts of things always vary wildly across the country!
But if you’re not a Welsh speaker (yet!) and you have come across daioni before, I think I can guess where. This word is famous not only because of Calon Lân but because it appears in the name of Daioni Organic, an organic dairy farming company based in Pembrokeshire, whose llaeth (milk) I always looked forward to being given a carton of mid-morning at ysgol gynradd (primary school)!
