Pendragon

For other uses, see Pendragon (disambiguation).

Pendragon, composed of Welsh pen, 'head, chief, top' and dragon, 'dragon; warriors'; borrowed from the Greco-Latin plural dracōnēs, 'dragons', is a Middle Welsh epithet meaning 'chief of warriors'. It is the epithet of Uther, father of King Arthur in the Matter of Britain in medieval and modern era and occasionally applied to historical Welsh heroes in medieval Welsh literature such as Rhodri ab Owain Gwynedd.

In the Historia Regum Britanniae, one of the earliest texts of the Matter of Britain, only Uther is given the surname Pendragon, which is explained by the author Geoffrey of Monmouth as literally meaning dragon's head.

In the prose version of Robert de Boron's Merlin, the name of Uther's elder brother Ambrosius Aurelianus is given as Pendragon, while Uter (Uther) changes his name after his brother's death to Uterpendragon.

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