name
Percival
PUR-sih-vuhl
name
1
A male given name from the Celtic languages.
"Lancelot Fortescue! What a name! And what was the other son - Percival? He wondered what the first Mrs Fortescue had been like? She had a curious taste in Christian names..."
— Agatha Christie (1953)
2
A surname originating as a patronymic.
3
An unincorporated community and census-designated place in Fremont County, Iowa, United States.
4
A former hamlet in Saskatchewan, Canada.
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Lancelot Fortescue! What a name! And what was the other son - _____? He wondered what the first Mrs Fortescue had been like? She had a curious taste in Christian names...
Etymology
From Old French Perceval, name of a knight in a twelfth century Arthurian romance by the French poet Chrétien de Troyes. Shaped like Old French percier (“pierce”) + val (“valley”), but probably representing some Gaulish or Old Welsh name, possibly related to Welsh Peredur, from ber (“spear, lance”) (from Middle Welsh ber, from Proto-Brythonic *ber, from Proto-Celtic *beru (“spit”)) + dur (“hard metal, steel”) (see Latin durus). Cognate with German Parzival and Parsifal.