ERBIN FATHER OF GEREINT: A PROPOSED ETYMOLOGY

Geraint and Enid by Gustave Dore

When I began looking around for an etymology for the early Cornish name Erbin, I found that there were none to be had!  Attempts had been made to derive it from the Celtic, and also from the Classical languages.  All have been dismissed as deficient.

Part of the problem, undoubtedly, is that the form Erbin, as we have it, derives from Welsh sources.  Thus we have a Cornish name that has been taken into Welsh and quite possibly "Cymracized" to one degree or another over a considerable period of time.  

As the Welsh linguists proved unhelpful, I decided to write to Professor Jurgen Uhlich, one of the premiere experts in the early Irish language.  He had often been able to provide me with a less restrictive view of etymological problems that had led to new place and personal name derivations. 

I had asked the professor about a word similar to the Middle Welsh arbenn proposed by Professor Ranko Matasovic in his AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF PROTO-CELTIC.  While arbenn is not directly attested in Welsh, a word that could only have developed from it - arbennig - does exist.  The cognate of arbennig in Irish is airchinnech and it is regarding this last word that Uhlich was most interested in:

"Both the composite ‘preposition’ ar chiunn (literally ‘before the head/endpoint’) and the proper compounds archinnech involve ar ‘before’ and cenn ‘head < ‘endpoint’, so airchinnech = ‘before-head’ = ‘superior’. The equivalent of ar chiunn in Welsh is erbyn such as in the more composite phrase yn erbyn, with a historically secondary stress now on er-, and this is where I think offhand that your Cornish name comes in (which I had never come across). But neither ar chiunn nor erbyn can be described as ‘derivatives’ of airchinnech etc., they merely share the same two elements in different usages."

For arbennig in the GPC:

arbennig 

[H. Wydd. airchinnech: < *are-ku̯enn-īko-, cf. ar-, pen1, -ig2; petrus yw dosbarthiad rhai o’r enghrau. isod] 

a. ll. arbenigion, a hefyd fel eg. ll. arbenigion.

a  Prif, pennaf, pwysicaf, blaenaf, goruchaf, dihafal, rhagorol, gwych, rhyfeddol, ysblennydd:

principal, chief, main, foremost, supreme, matchless, excellent, wonderful, marvellous, splendid. 

And for airchinnech in the eDIL:

airchinnech

Forms: oirchinneach

n o, m. (airchinn?). oirchinneach m. IGT Decl. § 22 . head, leader, superior

If Erbin is, then, for Arben(n), the meaning would be something like "supreme leader."