I have found a family in the parish of Alvediston with the name Gawen. Could they have been the same family as Gawain, the Knight of the Round Table?
I am afraid that this is one of those questions to which there is no answer as the information we need does not exist. Geoffrey Ashe believes that Gawain is more likely to have been a real person than many of the knights. He appears in a 13th century French romance and is one of the knights in Geoffrey of Monmouths History of the Kings of Britain (1135-1140). More reliably, in 1125 William of Malmesbury mentions the finding of his tomb in Pembrokeshire. The name Gawain was a common Christian name, particularly in Brittany, and there is a Scottish form, Gavin, and an Anglo-Norman form, Walwain. Surnames started to appear in the 13th century and the Gawens must have been descended from someone with the name of Gawen or Gawain. Whether this was the person on whom the Arthurian knight was based we cannot tell. Bibliography: A Dictionary of English Surnames, by P.H. Reaney, revised by R.M. Wilson. O.U.P., 1997, 0 19 860092 5.
