(Anglo-French-Latin) the French Perceval = lit. Valley-Piercer, evid. a nickname for a stalwart [French fierce, 3rd pers. pres. sing. indic. of percer, Old French percier, to pierce, penetrate; prob. from Latin pertusus, pp. of pertundere, to pierce + French val, Latin vall-is, a valley] This name is one of a series of similar ones: thus we find in French perce-bois, ‘wood-borer’; perce-roche, ‘rock-piercer’; percc-forêt, ‘forest-piercer,’ a nickname for a keen hunter. But the matter is complicated by the existence of Perceval or Perseval as a place-name: two hamlets called Perceval are given in the Calvados section of the ‘Dict. Topog. de la France.’ If the name were really local (although, of course, a duplicate origin is quite feasible) then we might consider the Old French pers(e, ‘blue,’ ‘bluish,’ as the etymon of the first element rather than the Norm. French perce, ‘a hole,’ ‘opening.’ In the prose version of ‘Perceval le Gallois’ (ed. Potvin, 1865 etc.), the hero’s name is variously (sometimes strangely) written. Thus we find the forms Pellesvaux, Perlevax, Peslevaux (perhaps an error), Percevaux, Per- cevax, as Welsh as the most frequent Perceval in the nominative. In Chrestien deTroyes’ lengthy poem, Percevaus seems to be the commonest form, with variations like Perchevaus, Percheval, Pierceval, in addition to Perceval; e.g.— ‘J’ai nom Percevaus li Galois.’ ‘Ha, Pierceval, biaus dos amis’ [beau doux ami]—Perceval le Gallois, 5940-1.

In line 30935 we have ‘Percheval li Galois.’ Potvin took it for granted that the French romance was based on the Welsh ‘Peredur,’ and remarks (I.356) that it is not known when or how the Welsh name Peredur or the Breton Peronik was translated into Perceval; whereas a later school thinks that ‘Peredur’ and others of the ‘Mabinogion’ were more likely adaptations of Old French romances. The Breton Peronik is evid. the French Péron,‘Little Peter,’ with the common Breton diminutive suff. -ik; and if Peredur is not Welsh (the name is not convincingly explainable in that language) one might have concluded that it, too, contained the French form of Peter (Old French Pere, mod. Pierre), with a second element dur (Latindur-us), ‘hard,’ ‘stern,’ but for the fact that the name occurs in the ‘Annales Cambriae,’ A.D. 580, not to mention Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Hist. Brit.’ (iii. 18, ‘Vigenius et Peredurus’); and Peredur not improbably represents a Latin Peredur-us [per-, intens. prefix + edur-us, hard, severe]: cp. the Roman name Per-tinax.

Wolfram von Eschenbach’s ‘Parzival’ (early 13th cent.) was based on the French romance. In this German version we have a couple of lines referring to the name showing that the French Perceval was interpreted as we have given it above— ‘Deiswár [truly] du heizest Parzivál: Der name ist rente enmitten durch.’ Parzival, 140: 16-17. Malory (as usual with him) has much diversity of form; e.g.— . . . And her [their] names shal be Persyval of walys and Lamerak of walis.— Morte d’Arthur, I. xxiv. Sir Percyvale de galis.—do. do. VII. xiii.