Nicholas Williams

Nicholas Jonathan Anselm Williams (born October 1942 in Walthamstow, Essex, now London, UK), writing as Nicholas Williams or sometimes N.J.A. Williams, is a leading expert on the Cornish language.

While a pupil at Chigwell School, Essex, Williams taught himself Cornish and became a bard of the Cornish Gorseth while still in his teens, taking the bardic name Golvan ('Sparrow'). He read classical languages, English language and Celtic in Oxford. After short periods in the universities of Belfast (where he received his PhD) and Liverpool, he was appointed lecturer in Irish in University College Dublin in 1977. In 2006, he was appointed Associate Professor in Celtic Languages there. He married Patricia Smyth from Portadown, County Armagh in 1976. They have three children, Benedict, Jerome, and Dominica who are bilingual in English and Irish.

Williams has written widely on the Celtic languages and their literatures. His works on Irish include the editions The Poems of Giolla Brighde Mac Con Midhe (1980) and Pairlement Chloinne Tomáis (1981); I bPrionta i Leabhar (1986), an account of Protestant writing in Irish during the 17th century; Díolaim Luibheanna (1993) a discussion of Irish plant names and plant lore; and Armas, a handbook of Irish heraldry in Irish, which he illustrated himself. He also was joint editor of Stair na Gaeilge (‘the History of Irish', Maynooth, 1994) for which he contributed chapters on the Irish dialects of Leinster and on Manx.

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