Name of the Week: Merryn

Origin:

Merryn is a Cornish name, taken from the village of St Merryn in the north of Cornwall. Like so many other places in Cornwall, St Merryn is named after a founding saint; and also like so many others, it has since been adopted as a given name in modern times. The name is unisex, but has been more commonly used for girls in recent years.  The founder, Saint Merryn, is a mysterious figure we know little about. In the Middle Ages, inhabitants assumed their church had been dedicated to St Marina of Bithynia, but most experts now think that the original Celtic saint was a Welsh monk*, probably the same St Merin to whom churches in Llanferin and Bodferin in Wales and Lanmerin and Plomelin in Brittany are dedicated**. Given that a great many place names in Cornwall dedicated to saints were named for Welsh missionaries, this theory is very likely.  Sometimes St Merryn is attributed to St Mirin (b.c.565), an Irish monk and missionary who travelled to Scotland, but this seems too much of a stretch. There is no evidence (factual or fabled) that this saint ever came to Cornwall, whereas the Welsh St Merin is said to have retired to Cornwall after establishing churches in Brittany. Cornwall, Wales and Brittany also shared a common Brythonic culture and language so links between the three were very strong.  The exact origins of Merryn aren't clear, but it is most likely the Cornish form of the Old Welsh name Morien. Morien survives in early Welsh records as a masculine name, however, the Irish cognate Muirgen was certainly unisex. Both derive from the Proto-Celtic *mori "sea" and *geno "born."  According to Irish legend, Muirgen was the name given to a mermaid who was baptised by St Comgall. She was born Liban, the daughter of Eochaidh, who survived when her family and all the inhabitants of Lough Neagh drowned in a great flood. Legend has it that Liban was trapped under the sea until she was transformed into a mermaid (half woman, half salmon) so she could travel with the fish and not be lonely. Travelling the seas for 300 years, Liban was eventually caught in a net and Christened by St Comgall with the name Muirgen "born of the sea" and canonised as St Muirgen.*

Usage:

As a given name, Merryn came into proper use in the 19th century -- that is, not as a spelling variation of Marion, Meirion etc -- though it was initially very rare.  It became more common in the 20th century as birth records in England and Wales show: The People - Sunday 15 December 1940 (click to enlarge) 1910s: 5 births 1920s: 0 births 1930s: 5 births 1940s: 25 births 1950s: 17 births 1960s: 16 births 1970s: 22 births Some of the rise in use in the 1940s may possibly be thanks to the name featuring in the romantic novel Romance Tilts a Lance by Jan Tempest which was serialised in The People newspaper from June 1940 to February 1941. The novel was set in Cornwall, and the hero, Ruan Treyarnion, is guardian to a little girl named Merryn Winnowe.  The People had a pre-war circulation of about 3 million and therefore reached the homes of more people than any other paper except The News of the World at this time*, and it doesn't seem a coincidence that 17 out of the 25 Merryns born in the 1940s were born between September 1940 and December 1941. This also perhaps explains why Merryn became predominantly used for girls after this point, although it did maintain some usage for boys.  From ranking #1646 (10 births) for girls in 1996 in England and Wales, the name has seen a moderate rise in the intervening years, peaking at #893 (45 births) in 2013.  For boys, Merryn has only ranked once in the official data since 1996: #3864 (4 births) in 2010. However, as the official data only records names given to three or more babies per year, this may not be the only time Merryn has been registered for boys during this period if the number was less than three.  In 2015, Merryn ranked #909 with 40 births in England and Wales. However, of those 40 girls, 21 were born in the South West meaning that in and around Cornwall it ranked #210.

Famous Bearers:

Contemporary: * Merryn Somerset Webb (b.1970), finance expert and author. Literature and Other Media: * Merryn Winnowe, a character in the serialised novel Romance Tilts a Lance (1940-41). * Merryn, a 12 year old girl (the controllable character) in the video game Song of the Deep (2016).

Variants:

Meryn

Pronunciation:

ME-rin [key]

Possible  diminutives:

Merry, Ren

Sibling Names:

Kerensa     Ailla     Cora     Fleur     Bryher     Tamsin  Fletcher     Rhys    Flynn     Jago     Rafe     Lachlan

Name Lists:

Cornish Names  Saintly and Stylish

  

If you like Merryn you may also like:   Elowen, Sennen, Ffion, Mirren, Steren, Lowen, Eseld, Elestren, Cerys, Seren

Thanks to Merryn for requesting this name.