Perhaps the first Welsh word I ever taught fy ngwraig (my wife) was just that – gwraig (wife or woman), the subject of this article. She had a lot of fun trying to pronounce it; it can be difficult condensing the first part, gwr, into one syllable. Here’s my rendition below, along with the plural, gwragedd (wives).
gwraig
wife / woman
gwragedd
wives / women
That gwr syllable on its own sounds very much like gŵr, the male equivalent of gwraig, which means husband or man. Gŵr is a masculine noun while gwraig is feminine, and they both follow the same mutation pattern due to starting with the same letter.
Soft mutation
wraig
Nasal mutation
ngwraig
Aspirate mutation
N/A
The similarity in the words later led fy ngwraig to come up with her own theory as to the etymology of gwraig. She’s been telling people it comes from combining gŵr and draig (dragon)!
Loathe as I am to contradict her, this is unfortunately not the case. Gwraig is much older than that and it’s been a Welsh word since Welsh was indistinguishable from the other Brittonic languages, Cornish and Breton. All those years ago, the word for wife or indeed any older, married woman was *gruag.
Before this, things get less clear. But interestingly, there is a strong likelihood that these older versions of *gruag had a relationship to the contemporary words for hair – take the Middle Irish gruac for example. It’s very similar!
This would be because, in the social structure of the Brittonic and Gaelic peoples all those years ago, gwallt (hair) was a way of distinguishing between the two categories of women, merched (girls, maidens, or young women) and gwragedd (older / adult women and wives). The root of it is that gwragedd covered their hair and merched did not.
Mae ei wraig wedi blino, felly mae hi’n mynd adre.
His wife is tired, so she’s going home.
In Britain today, most women who cover their hair do so for rhesymau crefyddol (religious reasons), rather than to show their marital status. But while that traddodiad (tradition) is gone, the linguistic distinction remains in modern Welsh.
And to be fair, that’s not unique to the Celtic languages. We’ve all heard older men using the phrase the little woman or the old girl to describe their gwragedd (wives), which would be rendered yr hen wraig (the old wife), y wraig acw (the wife back home), or perhaps just y misus (the missus) in Welsh.
In older English, too, you’ll have come across wife being used to refer to older women. A good example would be the phrase old wives’ tales; it refers to folk beliefs thought to be generally held by women.
And of course we have expressions like this in Welsh too – the most famous has got to be bwrw hen wragedd a ffyn (raining old wives and sticks) which is how we say raining cats and dogs. But the metaphorical hen wragedd (old wives / old women) falling from the sky don’t necessarily have to be married!
Dyna’r math o beth mae hen wragedd yn hel clecs amdano.
That’s the sort of thing old women gossip about.
So gwraig, as well as meaning wife as in a woman married to a specific person, can just refer to any mature, adult woman. Or it can even cross over between these two meanings, as in terms like gwraig tŷ (housewife).
Plus, many occupations can be ‘feminised’ by adding –wraig (the soft-mutated form) to the end of the word, usually though not always replacing –wr. For example:
- rhedwr (runner) becomes rhedwraig (runner, specifically female)
- adeiladwr (builder) becomes adeiladwraig (builder, specifically female)
- myfyrwyr (student) becomes myfyrwraig (student, specifically female)
- ffermwr (farmer) becomes ffermwraig (farmer, specifically female, or farmer’s wife)
- arlunydd (artist) becomes arlunwraig (artist, specifically female)
Though there are also plenty of professions that are feminised in other ways, like athro (teacher) becoming athrawes (teacher, specifically female), and it’s also common to just use the masculine version to refer to members of a profession regardless of gender.
As we discussed, the word merch, which means a girl as in a female child, and also means a daughter, is another one of Welsh’s four words for a woman.
So there are two left – and these two are much closer semantically to the English word woman as they don’t carry connotations about oed (age) or marital status. There’s dynes, which is a feminisation of dyn (a man) common in North Wales, and menyw, which is favoured in the South.
Ers ysgaru, dim gŵr a gwraig ydyn nhw bellach.
Since divorcing, they are no longer husband and wife.
Another synonym in the ‘opposite direction’ is priod. This means spouse. Sometimes people get a bit more gender specific and say gwraig briod or gŵr priod. (Notice here how priod has mutated after gwraig but not after gŵr, since the former is a feminine noun and the latter is masculine.
But in general, priod is a good option to refer to a cymar (partner) in a gender-neutral way. Bear in mind that it does need to be a cymar you are married to – priod, which is also an adjective meaning married, is the root of priodi (to marry), priodferch (a bride), priodfab (a groom), and priodas (wedding or marriage).
If you are not priod, I think the best option is usually the simple cariad (lover), a very common term throughout Wales. Then of course there’s the in-between stage of dyweddïad (engagement), when you have a darpar wraig (fiancée) or darpar ŵr (fiancé).
Do you have a cariad, priod or darpar briod who’s learning Welsh alongside you? Or perhaps, like me and fy ngwraig, they’re dysgu (teaching) you!
