Other Names

In 1282 Wales was taken as the first English colony. It wasn’t called that by the residents of course. They called their home Cymru (pronounced Kum-ree) and they were the Cymry—fellow countrymen.

The English name comes from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning “Place of the Others" or “Place of the Romanized Foreigners” So, in their own land, the Cymry are called foreigners.

Britain in AD 500

This is similar to how the indigenous people of the Americas were renamed. Fer instance:

• Schitsu'umsh ("the people found here”) are now known as Coeur d'Alene. This is French for "awl heart.” It’s unclear why the Schitsu'umsh were called this. Easier for Frenchman to pronounce?
• Dine'e ("the people") were called Navajo, which is the Tewa word for “planted fields.”
• Lenape ("the people") became known as the Delaware after the English name for the Delaware (a Brit nobleman) River.
• Lakota ("the allies") were renamed Sioux. This comes from an Ojibwe word meaning “snakes." Huh. I guess the Ojibwe (AKA Anishinaabe ("original people”) weren’t too keen on the Lakota.
• Aniyunwiya ("principal people”) who’ve been dubbed Cherokee (Cherokee is from a Muskogee (the Muskogee came to be known as Creek), word for "speakers of another language.")
• Tsitsistas ("the people”) became the Cheyenne. This is from a Lakota word for the tribe, possibly meaning "relatives of the Cree.”
  

Back to the Cymry (AKA Welsh) though. I came across a really cool word—Hiraeth. It’s pronounced “here-eyeth” (roll the “r”) or, mebbe hir-ith.

A blend of homesickness, nostalgia and longing, “hiraeth” is a pull on the heart that conveys a distinct feeling of missing something irretrievably lost. 
A longing for a home to which you cannot return, a home that maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost places in your past.

I cannot begin to put into words the hiraeth that I feel for music—going to shows, concerts and just hearing a trio doing ambient music in a pub.