By Luke Blaidd
(NB: Please be warned that the following post contains mentions of slurs in both English and Welsh)
When writing my still-in-progress queer Welsh dictionary Llyfr Enfys, I often feel like Iset, the wife of Osiris in Ancient Egyptian myth. In the myth, Osiris was murdered by his brother Set, who then proceeded to break Osiris’ body into 42 pieces, flung across all of Egypt so that Iset would have to search for a long time to find all the pieces. Oftentimes, searching for Welsh LGBTQ+ vocabulary (especially older vocabulary) feels like I am searching for all 42 pieces of Osiris’ body, scattered to the winds of the Cambrians and the Brecon Beacons instead of the Nile Delta and the Red Sea Hills.
One term however was remarkably easy to find (no doubt due to its severity and popularity as a homophobic slur). So much so to the point it became possible to track its way through Welsh history and chart Welsh attitudes to queer people through time. That term is still pointedly upsetting to Welsh speaking queer people to this day- and yet- right up to the modern day this word still appears in both Welsh-English dictionaries and Welsh dictionaries as if it is a perfectly ordinary word to use for a queer person. Moreover, the equivalent in a modern English dictionary would be if one were to search for ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’ and not finding it, instead realising that the only word to be found for people like you is ‘sodomite’ of ‘faggot’. In Welsh that word is ‘gwrywgydiwr’(1).
The term ‘gwrywgydiwr’ first appears in William Salesbury’s New Testament of 1567:
“…Na thwyller chwi: ac nyd godinebwyr, na delw-addolwyr na’r ei doro-priodas, na’r ei drythyll, na gwryw-gydwyr”
– Corinthiaidd 1, 6:9
This is the oldest known record of the term itself, but it is possible the term is actually older. At the time of writing, this edition of the Welsh New Testament is 455 years old. I was lucky enough to see this book in person, during the National Library of Wales’ recent ‘Beibl i Bawb’ exhibition (2). Returning to the term, it is not known at this point if the term ‘gwryw-gydwyr’ already existed and was simply used in Salesbury’s edition- or, if the term was coined especially for this translation. Salesbury wrote in North Welsh, but included notes in the margins in South Welsh so that it could be better understood by people across Wales. The Welsh language has two main dialects- North and South Welsh. The differences between them are generally pronunciations, spellings and dialect words – for example, in North Welsh the word for boy is ‘hogyn’, but in the South it is ‘bachgen’. I live (and learned Welsh) in Aberystwyth and so my dialect can sometimes include bits of both. Borth (a village just North of Aberystwyth) is colloquially known as the borderland between the two dialects.
The usage of margin notes is also due to the fact that Salesbury was mainly writing in academic Welsh, so wanted to provide a translation that both laymen and scholars could read (3). Unfortunately, no such note in the margin exists for ‘gwryw-gydwyr’. Salesbury also published the first Welsh-English dictionary “A dictionary in Englyshe and Welshe” written in 1547 (3)(4), though upon checking the (modern) copy available in my university library Hugh Owen, ‘gwryw-gydwyr’ was nowhere to be seen. This leaves two possibilities as to its origin. Either ‘gwryw-gydwyr’ was a purely academic term and thus didn’t appear in his dictionary for being too specialised (but did in his dictionary as that was a primarily academic venture)- or, that ‘gwryw-gydwyr’ was a term coined specifically for the translation of the New Testament (but this, like other unfamiliar terms, should have surely prompted Salesbury to add a note in the margin explaining the coinage). Salesbury’s proficiency in Latin, Hebrew and Greek would have stood him in good stead for knowing of terms for queer people in other languages (4). Either way, this is the earliest known recorded verbal stigmatization of queerness in Welsh and so began a 450 year-long tradition of using this term against queer Welsh people.
After spending hours trawling through every Welsh-English and Welsh dictionary in Hugh Owen Library that I could find (though there’s still some I have not checked yet!) I compiled a list of dictionaries’ entries for the word ‘homosexual’. The term ‘homosexual’, while a bit formal, is relieving neutral ground for the word-weary scholar (me) encountering the much less acceptable ‘gwrywgydiwr’ ad nauseum for hours at a time. I can only hope my fellow library-goers were not disturbed by the strange man who came to the library to read nothing but dictionaries, scribbling furiously into a notepad and ferrying armfuls of dictionaries from the shelf to his table and back. In addition to the dictionaries I was able to read myself, many generous Facebook Welsh learning group members took a few minutes out of their day to flick to the word homosexual in their dictionaries and report back what was listed there, the publishers and the years they were printed. At the time of writing, I have 67 entries and dates ranging from the 19th Century to the 21st. As well as this is the cache of newspaper reports in my personal notes which use the term throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The oldest dictionary entry I could find is from 1826 (5) – a whole 259 years after the publication of Salesbury’s 1567 New Testament. This, weirdly, is from renowned antiquarian of ill repute Iolo Morganwg. In addition to his disastrous liking for Welsh Manuscripts, he also tried his hand at poetry. His dictionary “Geiriadur y Bardd” was intended to assist poets in thinking of rhymes and synonyms for their compositions. The entry was listed under ‘gwrywgydiwr’ and provided the synonyms “sodomiad” and “bryntyn”. ‘Sodomiaidd’ being the term that was used instead of ‘gwryw-gydwyr’ in the 1588 Welsh translation of the whole Bible. Of note is the fact that the 1588 edition as revised in 1620 became the authorized edition of the Bible in Welsh until 1988- but this edition appears to have eschewed ‘sodomiaidd’ for ‘gwrywgydwyr’. This is confirmed in 19th century newspapers and journals when they invoke Corinthians 1. In 1845 one journal Y Bedyddiwr (6) (The Baptist) ran an article which included the quote from Corinthians 1 as:
“Oni wydd- och chwi, na chaiff y rhai anghyfiawn etifeddu teyrnas Dduw ; na thwyller chwi, ni chaiff na godinebwyr, nag eilunaddolwyr, na thorwyr priodas, na masweddwyr, na gwrywgydwyr, na lladron, na chybuddion, na meddwon etifeddu teyrnas Dduw.”
– Y Beddiwr, December 1845
A similar article in Y Celt in 1885 (7) ran a story about sobriety, again invoking Corinthians 1 in a manner almost identical to the quote from Y Bedyddiwr. It seems the usage of gwrywgydwyr (and derivatives) remained common between the 16th and 19th Centuries in Welsh publications.
By the 20th Century, the term had become standard in Welsh-English and Welsh dictionaries. The second oldest dictionary entry I could find was from 1963 (originally published in 1960), in the Geiriadur Mawr. But here too I came across something strange. The emergence of Welsh-English dictionaries in the entries makes for odd reading, being split in half- one side lists Welsh-English and the other English-Welsh. This is standard for any bilingual dictionary. However, this physical separation of halves of the book has led to a surprising amount of discrepancies between the two sides. In Y Geiriadur Mawr, in the Welsh side, the entry reads “Gwrywgydiwr- cydiwr annaturiol, sodomiad, cyfunrhyw” (8) – in English this translates to “Sodomite- unnatural vice-haver, sodomy-doer, homosexual”. The final synonym listed there, ‘cyfunrhyw’ (and derivatives) is the accepted and neutral way to refer to homosexuality in Welsh. Generally speaking, it’s used today in a similar manner to how homosexual is used neutrally in English. If these dictionaries should be listing any word as a 1:1 to homosexual, it should be ‘cyfunrhywiol’. That aside, returning to the weird and strange discrepancies between English and Welsh sides of the dictionary, the English entry in the same book reads “Homosexual- cyfunrhywiol” (9). That’s it. No mention of unnatural vices or perjorative synonyms like ‘sodomy’ and ‘buggery’- simply ‘cyfunrhywiol’.
This discrepancy isn’t the only one. Many dictionaries seem to have a side in which they list a more acceptable or palatable term- and another in which they list the offensive and abrasive term. It isn’t restricted to any one side either- in some the Welsh side has the unacceptable term and the English has the acceptable term, in others, the Welsh side has the acceptable term and the English has the unacceptable term. In any case, the language in which the dictionary is approached will change the outcome of the translation to be found within it. Simply approaching Y Geiriadur Mawr for its English-Welsh side would give no indication as to the offensive and unacceptable alternatives waiting in the Welsh-English side.
The next dictionary chronologically is from 1973- and oddly, this one is rather tolerant. Geiriadur Termau lists ‘cyfunrhywiol’ and ‘cyfunrhywiolaeth’ in both the Welsh and English sides of the dictionary (10). It does, however, still list ‘gwrywgydiwr’ on both sides. But this perhaps indicates a preference for the former two over the latter.
After that, there is a dictionary from 1985, the Collins Spurrell Welsh Dictionary, which uses ‘cyfunrhywiolaeth’ and ‘cyfunrhywiol’ only (11). A good sight to see. Traveling down the decades of the 20th Century so far, the 1960s seems worrisome, dictionary wise. But the 1970s and 1980s so far (again, only measuring by dictionaries) seem better. The limitations of how many dictionaries I can access does pose a problem for this data- though I’ve never heard of anyone making such an undertaking before. Regardless, my data for the 1990s and 2000s should reflect a steady increase of tolerance right?
Right?
The data I have from the 90s is not, in fact, continuing that hope for less slurs. Several dictionaries between 1992 and 1993 seem packed to the brim with both slurs and confusing side discrepancies for both the Welsh and the English sides. Starting with 1992, the Teach Yourself Welsh Dictionary- A-Z has entries only in the Welsh side (12). ‘Gwrywgydiwr’ (and derivatives) are displayed on the Welsh side but not on the English side. On the English side there is no entry for homosexual at all. While the Hippocrene Standard Dictionary: Welsh-English- English-Welsh from 1993 (by the same lexicographer behind Y Geiriadur Mawr, 1963) does almost the complete opposite. Instead, the word ‘gwrywgydiwr’ (and derivatives) is available exclusively on the English side of the dictionary. While on the Welsh side the preferable term ‘cyfunrhywiol’ is used instead (13).
The next two decades, the 2000s and 2010s gave me some hope. After all, these are periods I’ve been alive for. Alas! The only change is that in a good few of these dictionaries, ‘gwrywgydiwr’ and ‘cyfunrhywiol’ appear to be mentioned in equal measure. In other places, there’s an obscene amount of bigotry on display. Y Geiriadur Cryno: The Concise Welsh Dictionary from 2001 genuinely made my jaw drop on that visit to the library. Its editor is the same editor as the Teach Yourself Welsh Dictionary- A-Z from 1992. On the Welsh side, there are two entries which read thus:
“Gwrywgydiad- Homosexuality, Cyfathrach rywiol annaturiol rhwng gŵr a gŵr”
“Gwrywgydiwr- Homosexual, Un mewn perthynas rywiol annaturiol ag arall o’r rhyw ag yntau”
- Y Geiriadur Cryno: The Concise Welsh Dictionary, 2001 (14)
The text which follows the terms being described translate to “Unnatural sexual intercourse between two men” and “One in an unnatural relationship with someone else of the same sex” respectively. This shocked me when I read it and so I turned to the English side of the dictionary to see if I could find the corresponding entry in English. I found it, but this bigotry was not repeated in English. Simply the entries read as “Homosexual-Gwrywgydiwr” and “Homosexuality- Gwrywgydiad”(15). Plainly, that additional text in the Welsh side seems to have been intended to be read primarily by Welsh speakers looking to translate into English. An English speaker looking to translate into Welsh would usually only approach the other side of the book, unaware of the bigotry on the Welsh side unless they very specifically needed to check that one. Is it so surprising that the editors of earlier dictionaries with discrepancies in the entries for homosexual also edited these later, more contemporary dictionaries which also contain those same discrepancies? There is hope, however, as one dictionary from 2006, Y Terminadur listed ‘cyfunrywiol’ as its sole translation for homosexual (16)- which was refreshing to come across after so many entries with slurs.
The most recent decade I have data for is the 2010s. I have yet to acquire a dictionary published in the 2020s. Though I plan to add as many dictionaries to my data as is humanly possible- to establish a queer Welsh history via dictionary- as a record of how we were/are referred to. Starting with 2010, the editor of Y Geiriadur Cryno from 2001 and Teach Yourself Welsh Dictionary- A-Z from 1992 edited another Welsh-English dictionary. This one being the Teach Yourself Essential Welsh Dictionary. Thankfully the vileness of the entry in Y Geiriadur Cryno isn’t as pronounced in this dictionary, though there are still some discrepancies. The Welsh side has two entries “Gwrywgydiaeth- Homosexuality” and “Gwrywgydiwr- Homosexual” (17). But the English side lacks the latter entry and only has the former “Homosexuality- Gwrywgydiaeth” (18). Perhaps it is a blessing that there are fewer outdated and offensive entries than expected. But for the 2010s, this kind of language is (and was) unacceptable- demonstrably so- as in Geiriadur Newydd, published in 2016, the entries for homosexual include ‘cyfunrhywioldeb’ and ‘gwrywgydiaeth’- the latter of which is noted to be an unacceptable term (19). Oddly, Geiriadur Newydd lists its editor as the same man who edited Y Geiriadur Mawr and the Hippocrene Standard Dictionary: English-Welsh, Welsh-English- but given that he died in 2010, it is fair to say that his influence would have been greatly lessened over this 2016 edition. Two dictionaries from this period also list ‘cyfunrhywiol’ as their sole translation of homosexual- Gomer in 2016 (20) and the Welsh Gem Dictionary in 2017 (21) – which is a welcome change for Welsh dictionaries.
All in all, change is trying to navigate courses through the rough waters of publishing- but some publications cling to the slurs used against queer Welsh people as their primary word for us. From 1567 to 2022, it’s been a long road to prise slurs out of popular usage and encourage more respectful and kinder words instead.
Happily, I can report that after contacting them to make them aware of the outdated translation, Hodder Education have marked it up to be corrected in their next reprints of their Welsh dictionaries! A brilliant thing to hear this Pride Month for all LGBTQ+ Welsh speakers. In addition to this, Hippocrene Books Inc. have promised to ensure future dictionaries do not contain the slur- thankfully all of the dictionaries that did contain it are now out of print. With this news, there is hope that creating awareness of the problem can go a long way to fixing it.
Sources:
- Shopland and Leeworthy, “Queering Glamorgan”, Glamorgan Archives, 2018, p. 12 https://glamarchives.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Queering-Glamorgan-28Aug2018.pdf Accessed: 29/05/2022
- Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru- National Library of Wales, “Beibl i Bawb- A Bible for All”, https://www.library.wales/visit/things-to-do/beibl-i-bawb#:~:text=An%20exciting%20exhibition%20to%20celebrate,by%20visiting%20curator%2C%20Professor%20E. Accessed: 29/05/2022
- Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru- National Library of Wales, “William Salesbury’s New Testament” https://www.library.wales/discover/digital-gallery/printed-material/william-salesburys-new-testament#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-304%2C-205%2C3514%2C4241 , Accessed: 29/05/2022
- Mathias, W. A., (1959). SALESBURY, WILLIAM (1520? – 1584?), scholar and chief translator of the first Welsh New Testament. Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Retrieved 29 May 2022, from https://biography.wales/article/s-SALE-WIL-1520
- Morganwg ,Iolo, “Geiriadur y Bardd”, 1826, p. 243
- Jones, Robert, “Adolygiad, &.c”, Y Bedyddiwr – Rhagfyr 1845, p. 362.
- W.R.J. , “Dirwest”, Y Celt Hydref 23, 1885, p. 8
- Evans, Meurig H. , “Y Geiriadur Mawr”, 1963, p. 135
- Evans, Meurig H. , “Y Geiriadur Mawr”, 1963, p. 273
- Lewis Williams, Jac ,”Geiriadur Termau”, 1973, p.110
- Collins-Spurrell, “Collins Spurrell Welsh Dictionary”, 1985
- Lewis, Edwin C. , “Teach Yourself Welsh Dictionary- A-Z”, 1992, p.67
- Evans, Meurig H. ,“Hippocrene Standard Dictionary – Welsh-English English-Welsh”, 1993
- Lewis, Edwin C. , “Y Geiriadur Cryno: The Concise Welsh Dictionary”, 2001, p. 120
- Lewis, Edwin C. , “Y Geiriadur Cryno: The Concise Welsh Dictionary”, 2001, p. 280
- Prys, Jones, Davies and Prys “Y Terminadur”, 2006, p.200
- Lewis, Edwin C. “Teach Yourself Essential Welsh Dictionary”, 2010, p. 100
- Lewis, Edwin C. “Teach Yourself Essential Welsh Dictionary”, 2010, p. 261
- Evans, Meurig H. , “Geiriadur Newydd”, 2016
- Lewis, Geraint, “Geiriadur Gomer”, 2016
- Collins Gem, “Welsh Gem Dictionary”, 2017