Welsh Word of the Day: Enfys (rainbow)

There’s perhaps no view as universally beloved as that of the enfys (rainbow), a pattern of colours in the sky caused by the movement of light through airborne water. Often seen as symbolising hope, luck, and prosperity, enfysau / enfysoedd (rainbows) inspire artists and dreamers everywhere.

Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (The University of Wales Dictionary) theorises that enfys may come from the word bys (finger), combined with the affirmative prefix en-. Another example of en– is in the word enfawr (enormous), modifying mawr (big).

It’s not clear quite how finger became rainbow – but one clue may lie in the closely related language Breton, in which the similar word envez means circle or ring.

Because it begins with a vowel, enfys itself is not susceptible to mutation, but it can mutate other words. An adjective used to describe enfys takes a soft mutation, as in enfys fawr (a big rainbow). This is because enfys is generally considered feminine (and it’s also used as a girl’s name). However, many native speakers instead treat enfys as masculine; it’s one of many Welsh nouns where there isn’t really a consistent gender.

Technically, enfys could sometimes become henfys, after the possessive pronouns ein (our), eu (their), and ei (his or her) when it’s used to mean her. I’m not sure that anyone actually owns a rainbow though, so this variant likely won’t come up very often!

In English, we sometimes use rainbow as an adjective to describe something that is rainbow-coloured. This is becoming a bit more common in modern spoken Welsh, but traditionally, the equivalent term would be seithliw (seven-coloured).

However you choose to describe them, let’s look at the Welsh words for the seven iconic lliwiau’r enfys (colours of the rainbow). These are:

• coch = red
• oren = orange
• melyn (m) / melen (f) = yellow
• gwyrdd (m) / gwerdd (f) = green
• glas = blue (sometimes green when describing green things in nature)
• indigo = indigo
• fioled = violet

Interestingly, oren as a colour rather than just as a fruit is a fairly modern innovation in Welsh, likely copying the English use of the same word orange for both meanings. Historically, melyngoch (yellow-red) would have been the go-to descriptor instead.

The word enfys will be understood across the country. However, as is the case with many words in the Welsh language, there are also numerous dialectal variants that are still in use today! One of the most widespread is the term bwa’r arch (literally: the bow of the arch). It can be heard in spoken Welsh across most of southwest Wales including Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.

The word even appears in the old Welsh saying:

You might hear today the modern equivalent enfys y bore, aml gawodau (rainbow in the morning, frequent showers).

Welsh folk beliefs about enfysau (rainbows) don’t end there. One old tale claims that passing under a rainbow could cause a person to change from a man to a woman, or vice versa. Another belief holds that the disappearance of enfysau will be the ultimate sign that the world is nearing its end.

Two more bow-related terms for the enfys are bwa’r enfys (literally: the bow of the rainbow), used in Ceredigion, and bwa’r drindod (literally: the bow of the trinity), which is common in some parts of Carmarthenshire and Swansea. Bwa’r hin is an older term only encountered in literary Welsh.

Travel up to the north to certain parts of Merionethshire and Denbighshire and you may hear the term pont y glaw (literally: the rain bridge) or the abbreviated pont law, whereas near the Severn and Wye rivers, you might just encounter the term y wenwisg (the white robe). The Welsh even have a specific word for a partial enfys, which is ci drycin.

The appearance of an enfys is caused by golau’r haul (sunlight) encountering a dafn (water droplet). Part of the golau (light) is reflected, and part of it enters the dafn, where it continues to reflect and refract, creating many rays of light with different wavelengths, which appears to us as colours.

There’s a lot of scientific vocabulary there – so let’s have a look at some of these terms in Welsh.

• adlewyrchu = to reflect
• gwrthdorri = to refract
• pelydr = ray (of light)
• tonfedd = wavelength
• cylchran = arc
• sbectrwm = spectrum
• caleidosgop = kaleidoscope
• amryliw = multi-coloured

Yr enfys (the rainbow) has a huge number of different symbolic meanings and associations. Likely the oldest is its prominence in y Beibl (the Bible) in the story of arch Noa (Noah’s ark), where the enfys is a sign of the promise from Duw (God) to never destroy the world with a flood again. This is almost certainly the origin of the term bwa’r arch.

In Irish mythology, the pot of aur (gold) attributed to the coblyn (leprechaun) is generally thought to be kept at the end of the enfys. Which, of course, is somewhere no human can reach! Similar folk beliefs could also be found in pre-Christian Wales.

More recently, the baner enfys (rainbow flag) has become associated with y gymuned LHDTC+ (the LGBTQ+ community), as the bright colours represent balchder (pride) and amrywiaeth (diversity). Another modern symbolic use of the enfys in the UK was to express support for the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Let’s finish off with a fun fact. Did you know that in Welsh, the iris of the llygad (eye) was historically referred to as enfys y llygad?

Today, the much more boring iris is the go-to word – but I vote we bring back enfys y llygad, so that we can all have rainbows in our eyes once again!