Urian is a Celtic noble male given name (also Urien, Uryen, Uren, presumably derived from

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English ...

''Urbgen''). It is recorded in 1273 in the

Hundred Rolls The Hundred Rolls are a census of England and parts of what is now Wales taken in the late thirteenth century. Often considered an attempt to produce a second Domesday Book, they are named after the hundreds by which most returns were recorded. Th ...

of Huntingdonshire in a reference to a "John, son of Urian". In the twelfth century

Geoffrey of Monmouth Geoffrey of Monmouth ( la, Galfridus Monemutensis, Galfridus Arturus, cy, Gruffudd ap Arthur, Sieffre o Fynwy; 1095 – 1155) was a British cleric from Monmouth, Wales and one of the major figures in the development of British historiograph ...

used the latinized form ''Urbianus'' for the semi-legendary British king

Urien Urien (; ), often referred to as Urien Rheged or Uriens, was a late 6th-century king of Rheged, an early British kingdom of the Hen Ogledd (today's northern England and southern Scotland) of the House of Rheged. His power and his victories, ...

. In the modern period, it also occurs as a surname, as ''Urian''.

In German literature

In early modern Germany the expression ''Herr Urian'' or ''Meister Urian'' denotes a proverbial unwanted guest and figures in works of fiction such as

Matthias Claudius Matthias Claudius (15 August 1740 – 21 January 1815) was a German poet and journalist, otherwise known by the pen name of “Asmus”. Life Claudius was born at Reinfeld, near Lübeck, and studied at Jena. He spent the greater part of his li ...

' ''Urians Reise um die Welt'' (set by

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

as Opus 52, No. 1, 1805, and later by

Carl Loewe Johann Carl Gottfried Loewe (; 30 November 1796 – 20 April 1869), usually called Carl Loewe (sometimes seen as Karl Loewe), was a German composer, tenor singer and conductor. In his lifetime, his songs ("Balladen") were well enough known for s ...

as Opus 84, 1843), in the ''Walpurgisnacht'' scene of Goethe's ''Faust, eine Tragödie'' (1808), where it refers to the

devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...

, and

E.T.A. Hoffmann Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann (born Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann; 24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822) was a German Romantic author of fantasy and Gothic horror, a jurist, composer, music critic and artist.Penrith Goff, "E.T.A. Hoffmann" in E. ...

's ''

The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr ''The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr together with a fragmentary Biography of Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler on Random Sheets of Waste Paper'' is a complex satirical novel by Prussian Romantic-era author E. T. A. Hoffmann. It was first ...

''Chapter 21 (1819 -1821).

In German literature

References

See also