Who or what is Kymbrogie? I am led to believe that King Arthur’s knights of the round table were Kymbrogie. I’m also led to believe that the name has a meaning, but I do not know it. Can anyone shed some more light on this subject?
Where have you seen this word?
In many variants of the Arthurian legend, Arthur was Welsh. In Welsh, I believe Cymru means Wales and Cymraeg means Welsh. Substituting C for K gives us cymbrogie. I cannot find that word, either, but if we have more info, we might be able to run it down.
Tom~
Yes, can you give us a context? A pronunciation? I’ve been fiddling around with this, too. (I thought Arthur was a Celt and have been trying to pursue a Scottish connection, thinking “kim-broe-gee” sounded Scots).
That’s the pronuciation… “kim-broe-gee”.
That is all I have myself. I know there are several varying ideas about who Arthur was, but I don’t have any in-depth knowledge of these.
The reason I ask the question may seem silly to you. Some friends and myself have recently formed a band and one of us suggested Kymbrogie as a name for us. She says they were the knights of the round table… the same ones who went in search of the Holy Grail. All I know of the knights of the round table is from the Monty-python movie… further I believe most of the tales about Arthur be of no greater credibility.
Anyway, I thought it would be good to know who they were and what they are known for - incase Kymbrogie is something we would be better not to identify ourselves with.
I’ve looked in the OED under kymb-, kimb, cymb- and cimb- and I can’t find anything that looks like a likely match.
I think that Tom~'s suggestion, that it’s a mispronunciation of cymraeg is pretty plausible.
Your local library is likely to have a copy of Mallory’s Morte Darthur. Some editions have a glossary which might help if it is a word associated only with Arthurian legends.
Well, I’m not willing to swear to what Malory may or may not have written in 800-odd pages, but I’d be really surprised if he used the word “kymbrogie” or any variant thereof. There aren’t many words of Celtic derivation in his vocabulary. As far as I can recall, he usually calls the society of knights a “fellowship.”
You might want to check out a twelfth-century collection of Welsh tales called The Mabinogion, if your library has a copy. (It’s worth a read, anyway.) But honestly, I think it’s much more likely that your friend picked the word up from a modern pseudo-hippie-Celtic account of the Arthur story, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon.
Still fiddling around with this and idly looking things up, I came across this when I looked up Cymry in my little MS dictionary:
[Welsh, pl. of Cymro, the Welsh people, Wales, from British Celtic *kombrogos, fellow countryman.]
According to the dictionary, the asterisk indicates the word is a “reconstructed” form.
The unreconstructed form is combrox or combroges (= compatriot).
It is also the origin of the name of the County of Cumbria, in the North of England.
[Allobrox = men from another country.]
aseymayo, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
I learned something last night regarding the spelling of the word I have spelled ‘Kimbrogie’.
The first sylable is spelled ‘Caem’ so ‘Caembrogie’, I suppose…
I’ve been told that the name means ‘companions of the heart’ which to me sounds like something that supports Fretful Porpentine’s theory about moderm pseudo-hippie-Celtic stories.
Thanks for the encouragement, TomH, but I must apologize for forgetting that the Welsh are Celts. “Celt” always says to me “Scots or Irish” and I never think of the Welsh. But I bet the Welsh don’t think about me either, the selfish bastards, so we’re even.
Haplo, if you go with this for a band name, I hope you’ll also take the motto of the Round Table (according to Python): Adopt, Adapt and Improve!