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Percival.

A male given name from the Celtic languages.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

name/ˈpɜː(ɹ)sɪvəl/
  1. A male given name from the Celtic languages.

  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.

Where this word comes from

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.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.