Evidence dossier: Gronw Pebr
Evidence dossier 193 — Gronw Pebr. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: Gronw Pebr
- 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. 193 of 597
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Gronw Pebr — no older script survives to transcribe, so the canonical content is the exactness of the spelling itself.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form gronwpebr is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.
What the fallback status forbids is promotion: gronwpebr may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.
Exhibit 3 — the physical record. Gronw leaves the spear-stone of the Cynfael valley — a tradition-landmark, not an excavation. The Mabinogi’s manuscripts (White Book, Red Book) are his monument, as they are for the whole Welsh myth-cycle.
Exhibit 4 — the continuing record. The Fourth Branch is the most retold of the Mabinogi — Saunders Lewis’s drama Blodeuwedd and a hundred retellings keep the triangle current. The spear-stone tradition fed the Welsh habit of reading the landscape as document; and Gronw’s name, though minor, anchors the Mabinogi’s most exportable story in its most Welsh particulars.
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.
The Protocol's Position
Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.
The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.
The Verdict
Case closed on Gronw Pebr: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form gronwpebr rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /gronwpebr/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 3 cited sources — Math fab Mathonwy (the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi), White Book of Rhydderch / Red Book of Hergest manuscripts, Saunders Lewis, Blodeuwedd (modern dramatic retelling).
The Register Continues
The register holds 597 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.
Continue the register — previous entry: Gravitas (read it) · next entry: Guāndì (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.