10 Comments
Nope they're both different saints, Dydd santes Dwynwen is celebrated on the 25th of January. It's a really good story if you can find a version.
What I mean is: Is Santes Dwynwen a translation of St Valentine, or a Saint herself whose Day happens to fall on the same as St Valentine's?
Two different dates, and San Ffolant is the Welsh name for St Valentine (all two or three of him!).
1457
The story of St. Dwynwen is a romantic one, so I believe there is some connection with romance. Someone might very well have said that St. Dwynwen's Day is the Welsh Valentine's Day, but I would think that is a bit like saying Canada Day is Canada's Fourth of July--two different holidays with different origins, though some similarity in one aspect.
Great answer - thanks for this. But how could someone unfamiliar with Welsh culture - and a welsh language learner - possibly know this? I'm not a fan of it but Google translate says it's Valentines Day. Oh well. Next!
- 16
I'm just amused at someone trying to use "but Google Translate says" as any kind of reasonable argument.
Google Translate says a lot of stuff, much of it wrong, inaccurate, incomplete, or only valid in certain situations.
I don't think we are expected to know about Welsh culture, but maybe our interest will be aroused enough for us to dig deeper. Try this for starters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dydd_Santes_Dwynwen There is nothing wrong with not giving a correct answer. Apparently, we are more likely to remember a sentence/phrase if we get it wrong first time.
- 1457
Well, just from my point of view as someone who doesn't know Welsh or very much about Welsh culture (though a certain amount about saints' lives), it was pretty straightforward to translate Dydd Santes Dwynwen word for word as St. Dwynwen's Day, while there's no way I would have recognized it as Valentine's Day, if it were that. There are a lot of these that seem utterly capricious to me, but this one seemed comparatively fair.
