Mervyn
Mervyn is a masculine given name and occasionally a surname which is of Old Welsh origin, with elements mer, probably meaning "marrow", and myn, meaning "eminent".
Despite the misconception of the letter 'V' being an English spelling, through Roman occupation of Britain, the Welsh language was Latinised and through centuries of evolution of the Welsh language, the modern Welsh spelling for Mervyn is Merfyn.
People with the given name
- Mervyn or Merfyn Frych, king of Gwynedd
- Mervyn Archdall (disambiguation), various persons
- Mervyn S. Bennion, US Navy captain killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor, posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor
- Mervyn Bishop, professional photographer, the first Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper
- Mervyn Carrick, Northern Ireland politician
- Mervyn Davies, Baron Davies of Abersoch, former banker and UK government minister
- Mervyn Davies, Welsh former rugby union player
- Mervyn Twynam Davis, Australian landscape architect
- Mervyn Day, English former football goalkeeper
- Mervyn de Silva, Sri Lankan Sinhala journalist
- Mervyn Dillon, West Indian cricketer
- Mervyn M. Dymally, American politician, first Trinidadian Lieutenant Governor of California
- Mervyn Fernandez, former National Football League and Canadian Football League wide receiver
- Mervyn Fonseka, Solicitor General of Sri Lanka from 1943 to 1945
- Merv Griffin, American singer, television host and media mogul
- Merv Harvey, Australian cricketer
- Mervyn Hill, Welsh cricketer
- Merv Hughes, Australian cricketer
- Mervyn Jayasuriya, Sri Lankan Sinhala radio announcer
- Mervyn Johns, Welsh film and television actor
- Mervyn King (economist), British economist, Governor of the Bank of England
- Mervyn King (judge), former judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa and chairman of the King Committee on Corporate Governance
- Mervyn King (darts player), British darts player
- Mervyn King (bowls), English bowls player
- Mervyn Kitchen, English former first-class cricketer and international umpire
- Mervyn LeRoy, American film director, producer and sometime actor
- Mervyn Maynard, Aboriginal Australian jockey
- Mervyn Middlecoat, Pakistan Air Force wing commander
- Mervyn Peake, English modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator, best known for his Gormenghast series
- Mervyn Pike, Baroness Pike, British politician
- Mervyn Rose, Australian tennis player
- Mervyn Silva, controversial Sri Lankan politician
- Mervyn Spence, Northern Irish musician
- Mervyn Stockwood, Anglican Bishop of Southwark
- Mervyn Taylor, Irish former politician
- Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, English nobleman convicted of rape and sodomy
- Mervyn Warren, American film composer, record producer, songwriter, pianist and vocalist
- Muff Winwood, English songwriter and record producer
- Mervyn Wood, Australian rower
People with the surname
- Audley Mervyn, lawyer and politician in Ireland
- Audley Mervyn (died 1717), Irish MP for Strabane and County Tyrone - see County Tyrone (Parliament of Ireland constituency)
- Audley Mervyn (died 1746), Irish MP for County Tyrone - see County Tyrone (Parliament of Ireland constituency)
- William Mervyn, English actor
Fictional characters
- Mervyn Bunter, a butler in Dorothy Sayers' stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey
- Mervyn Pumpkinhead, in The Sandman comic book
- Mervyn, Sheriff of Rottingham, in the Mel Brooks film Robin Hood: Men in Tights
- Sir Mervyn, an elderly paladin in the video game Dragon Quest VII
- the title character of Arthur Mervyn, a 1799 novel written by Charles Brockden Brown