Ceridwen — the one true spelling, and the forms that fail it
Court is in session. In the matter of Ceridwen, the register hears the evidence — the attestation, the marks, and the forms that stand accused.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Ceridwen
- Original script: —
- Pantheon: Celtic
- Convention: the tradition’s own scholarly transliteration standard
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 77 of 397
The Charge
That the name Ceridwen is routinely written in forms that move, drop, or invent its marks — and that each such form teaches the reader a different, lesser name. The register's task is to separate the honest fallback from the outright false.
The Defense of the Canonical Form
The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Ceridwen — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.
No diacritics are required here: the canonical form is the exactness of the spelling itself, the form the tradition’s convention demands.
The Character Witness
The plain form ceridwen differs from the canonical Ceridwen only by convention of display — case, not content. It is acceptable everywhere: in legacy systems, in plain-text citation, in the DNS itself. What is not acceptable is what follows in the register: respellings that change the letters, not just their case.
Mitigating Circumstances
No alternate form of this name carries documented scholarly support in the lexicon's record. The convention here — the tradition’s standard — produces exactly one defensible transliteration: Ceridwen. Forms that differ from it are not contested; they are simply wrong.
The Convention's Own History
Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: the tradition’s own standard. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.
Registration, Honestly
Three facts govern every domain this project registers. One: IDNA 2008 welcomes the marks — punycode encodes them legally and browsers show them faithfully. Two: welcome is not availability — registrars hold partial inventory, so the ideal form of a name may exist in the protocol yet not in the shop window today. Three: typeability is a separate virtue — a form no one can type on a phone is a form no one will visit, however canonical.
Hence the hierarchy the rulebook enforces: take the most complete form that is both attested and actually registrable, and never accept a wrong mark for the sake of availability. The wrong accent is not a rung on that ladder; it is off the ladder entirely.
The Verdict
So the register finds: Ceridwen, canonical; ceridwen, equally canonical; the contested forms, recorded with their support; the false forms, ruled against with their violations named. Every line of that finding cites its evidence, and the evidence is open to any reader — the register asks to be checked, not trusted. The temple keeps the canonical form at /sites/ceridwen/.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 13 cited sources — Hanes Taliesin (The Tale of Taliesin) — ed. Patrick K. Ford, Ystoria Taliesin (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1992); trans. Ford, The Mabinogi and Other Medieval Welsh Tales (Berkeley, 1977), The Mabinogion, trans. Lady Charlotte Guest (1838–49; the Tale of Taliesin appended in later editions), Bromwich, Rachel, ed., Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Triads of the Island of Britain, 3rd ed. (Cardiff, 2006), p. 309 — 'the early sources concur in presenting Ceridwen as the owner of a cauldron which was the source of poetic inspiration (awen)'; Ifor Williams' proposed Cyridfen, 'crooked woman'.
The Register Continues
Entry 77 of 397 in the Canonical Register. Around it: the temple's founding dispatch, the Restoration File on the marks themselves, the Resonance File on the archetype at work, and the Rulebook behind all of it.
Continue the register — previous entry: Cerēs (read it) · next entry: Cernunnos (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.