Agronā facts for kids

The name *Agronā is a very old, made-up name for the River Ayr in Scotland. It's called "hypothetical" because no one knows for sure if it was ever truly used. Later, this same name was also linked to the River Aeron in Wales.

This idea about the name came from a language expert named William J. Watson in his 1926 book, Celtic Placenames of Scotland. Watson thought the River Ayr's name might have come from a very old language called Proto-Celtic. He suggested it was named after a "river goddess of slaughter and carnage," and he called this goddess *Agronā. At that time, some people in Scotland were trying to connect old battle poems to Scotland, and Watson's idea seemed to support their claims. This idea also helped support the belief that an ancient kingdom called Aeron was located in modern-day Ayrshire.

Just two years after Watson's book, another language expert, Eilert Ekwall, wrote English River-Names (1928). He had a simpler idea for the River Ayr's name. He thought it just came from a basic word, *Ara.

However, the earlier idea that the river's name meant "carnage" stuck around. The supposed goddess even appeared in some encyclopedias. Over time, this idea of "carnage" became mixed up with the Welsh River Aeron, which has a similar name. But in Wales, the River Aeron had a very different meaning. An old dictionary, Pughe's Dictionary of the Welsh Language, says that the name Aeron for rivers in Wales meant "Queen of Brightness." This shows how the same-sounding names can have very different histories and meanings.