View source for *Agronā

'''[[Asterisk#Historical linguistics|*]]Agronā''' was a hypothetical reconstructed [[Proto-Celtic]] name for the [[River Ayr]] in Scotland, later applied to the [[River Aeron]] in [[Wales]]. The claim is linguistic and first appeared in William J. Watson's ''Celtic Placenames of Scotland'' (1926).<ref name="Watson">Watson, William J: ''The Celtic Placenames of Scotland''. Birlinn (1926, reprinted 2004). {{ISBN|978-1-84158-323-5}}</ref> Watson suggested the River Ayr in Scotland could be worked back to a hypothetical Proto-Celtic "river goddess of slaughter and carnage" and that the deity name was ''*Agronā''.<ref name="Matson">Matson, Gienna. ''Celtic Mythology A to Z''; p. 1. Chelsea House (2004). {{ISBN|978-1-60413-413-1}}</ref> At that time there were many questionable Scottish nationalist attempts to use the River Ayr place-name to claim [[Taliesin]]'s battle poems for Scotland and Watson's derivation strongly and implicitly supported such claims. This hypothesis has also been used to support locating the ancient [[Aeron (kingdom)|kingdom of Aeron]] in modern-day [[Ayrshire]].

Two years after Watson, [[Eilert Ekwall]] in his ''English River-Names'' (1928)<ref>{{Cite book| author= Eilert Ekwall | title=English River-Names| date=September 1968| orig-date=1928| publisher=Oxford University Press| location=Oxford| isbn=978-0-19-869119-8| page=306}}</ref> instead derived the River Ayr simply from the root ''*Ara'' (but see his discussion of the Aeron under the entry for the Yorkshire River Aire).  However, the earlier claim that the river's name literally means "carnage" persisted. The derivation from "carnage" has become casually conflated with the similarly named Welsh river Aeron.  Pughe's 1803 ''Dictionary of the Welsh Language'' states that the ''Aeron'' name for rivers in living Welsh meant "Queen of Brightness".<ref>Pughe, William Owen, ''A Dictionary of the Welsh Language: Explained in English'', Volume 1; p. 23 (1803).</ref>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
*Berresford Ellis, Peter. ''Dictionary of Celtic Mythology'' (Oxford Paperback Reference), [[Oxford University Press]] (1994). {{ISBN|0-19-508961-8}}
*MacKillop, James. ''Dictionary of Celtic Mythology''. Oxford University Press (1998). {{ISBN|0-19-280120-1}}.
*Wood, Juliette, ''The Celts: Life, Myth, and Art'', Thorsons Publishers (2002). {{ISBN|0-00-764059-5}}

{{Celtic mythology (ancient)}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:*Agrona}}
[[Category:Goddesses of the ancient Britons]]
[[Category:Sea and river goddesses]]