'The Mabinogion, Volume 1' Summary

The name first appears in 1795 in William Owen Pughe's translation of Pwyll in the journal Cambrian Register under the title "The Mabinogion, or Juvenile Amusements, being Ancient Welsh Romances." The name appears to have been current among Welsh scholars of the London-Welsh Societies and the regional eisteddfodau in Wales. It was inherited as the title by the first publisher of the complete collection, Lady Charlotte Guest. The form mabynnogyon occurs once at the end of the first of the Four Branches of the Mabinogi in one manuscript. It is now generally agreed that this one instance was a mediaeval scribal error which assumed 'mabinogion' was the plural of 'mabinogi,' which is already a Welsh plural occurring correctly at the end of the remaining three branches.

The word mabinogi itself is something of a puzzle, although clearly derived from the Welsh mab, which means "son, boy, young person". Eric P. Hamp of the earlier school traditions in mythology, found a suggestive connection with Maponos "the Divine Son", a Gaulish deity. Mabinogi properly applies only to the Four Branches, which is a tightly organised quartet very likely by one author, where the other seven are so very diverse (see below). Each of these four tales ends with the colophon "thus ends this branch of the Mabinogi" (in various spellings), hence the name.