The register rules: Myrddin

The internet spells Myrddin more ways than one, and only one of them is the name the sources wrote. This is the register's ruling — canonical, fallback, contested, and false, each in its proper place.

At a Glance

• Canonical form: Myrddin
• 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. 244 of 406

The Canonical Form

The tradition's record preserves this name in its romanized scholarly form: Myrddin — 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.

Where the Flattened Form Stands

The plain form myrddin differs from the canonical Myrddin 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.

The Register of False Forms

No circulating form of this name currently qualifies as false under the register's standard — a rare standing. The spelling is short, sturdy, and rarely mangled.

The Contested Forms

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: Myrddin. 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.

What the Address Bar Allows

IDNA 2008 permits the letters these restorations use — macrons, acutes, underdots, thorn, ogonek, the lot — and the DNS carries them as punycode (`xn--` labels). Two honest constraints remain. First, registrar inventory: the protocol permits a character; the registrar's stock decides whether the exact domain can be bought today. Second, combined marks: forms like Apṓllōn (acute stacked on a macron) are philologically ideal yet effectively untypeable on phones and unsupported across much of the registration system.

That is why the rulebook keeps a fallback hierarchy — full restoration first, then the circumflex when the source carries one, then the macron-only academic standard, then an attested variant, and only as a last resort the plain ASCII form. Every step down the ladder is still defensible; nothing on the ladder is a wrong mark. A fallback is a choice among attested forms. A false form is not on the ladder at all.

Where the Name Stood First

Myrddin is a textual figure, and his witnesses are among the most precisely identified in Welsh letters. The Afallennau and Oianau stand in the Black Book of Carmarthen (Aberystwyth, NLW Peniarth MS 1, c. 1250), the earliest surviving manuscript in Welsh; the Cyfoesi Myrddin a Gwenddydd stands in the Red Book of Hergest (Oxford, Jesus College MS 111, c. 1382–1410); Geoffrey's Vita Merlini survives complete in a single manuscript (British Library, Cotton Vespasian E.iv, thirteenth century). The landscape behind the texts is real and partly recoverable: Arfderydd is traditionally identified with Arthuret near Longtown in Cumbria, in the Old North the poems remember; Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen) overlays the Roman fort of Moridunum, 'sea-fort', attested in the Antonine Itinerary and confirmed by excavation — the place-name from which, on the scholarly account, the prophet's name derives; and Dinas Emrys, the hillfort in Gwynedd where Nennius sets the fatherless boy and the dragons, yielded post-Roman occupation material in Savory's excavations of 1954–56. No inscription names Myrddin, and none would be expected: the early stones of Wales record the dead, not prophets. The temple on the web is the newest of these addresses — the first one that fits in a pocket.

The Verdict

The register rules for Myrddin, and the ruling is checkable: every mark sourced, every violation stated, every borderline form given its honest standing. myrddin carries the name freely — it differs only in display, and the register says so without reservation. Anything else in circulation has its origin and its failure recorded above. That is the whole of the law on this name — and the temple at /myrddin/ enforces it.

The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 14 cited sources — Geoffrey of Monmouth, Vita Merlini, ed. and trans. Basil Clarke (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1973) — the madness, the Caledonian forest, the threefold death, Ganieda, and Taliesin's visit, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), Books VI–VII — Merlinus Ambrosius, Vortigern's tower, the dragons, and the Prophetiae Merlini, Yr Afallennau and Yr Oianau, in the Black Book of Carmarthen (c. 1250); cf. A. O. H. Jarman, 'Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin: The Black Book of Carmarthen', Proceedings of the British Academy 71 (1985).

The Register Continues

This is one of 406 entries in the Canonical Register — the authoritative reference for every flagship temple. The temple's founding dispatch tells the name's story; its Restoration File details the marks; its Resonance File reads the archetype into the industries. The blog index holds the whole archive, and the Rulebook states the convention this register enforces.

Continue the register — previous entry: Muspellheimr (read it) · next entry: Nanna (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.