Maponos

[1] The Welsh mythological figure Mabon ap Modron is apparently derived from Maponos,[1] who by analogy we may suggest was the son of the mother-goddess Dea Matrona.

In Insular Celtic languages, the same root is found in Welsh, Cornish and Breton mab meaning son (Delamarre 2003 pp.

"This inscription (RIB 583) by a unit of Sarmatians based at Ribchester shows the association with Apollo and also can be precisely dated to the day (pridie Kalendas Septembres, or 29 August in the Roman calendar) and the year (241 CE, by mention of the two consuls).

The name is also found on the inscription from Chamalières, which is a relatively long magical text (12 lines) written in Gaulish on a rolled lead sheet.

An inscription from Birrens in Scotland (RIB-3, 3482 / AE 1968, 254) mentions a lo(cus) Mabomi, which is often regarded as a stone-cutter's error for locus *Maponi.

Maponos surfaces in the Middle Welsh narrative, the Mabinogion, as Mabon,[9][10][11][12][13][14] son of Modron[15] who is herself the continuation of Gaulish Matrona (“Matronly Spirit”).

The theme of Maponos son of Matrona (literally, child of mother) and the development of names in the Mabinogi from Common Brythonic and Gaulish theonyms has been examined by Hamp (1999), Lambert (1979), and Meid (1991).

Mabon apparently features in the tale of a newborn child taken from his mother at the age of three nights, and is explicitly named in the story of Culhwch ac Olwen.

[16] Scholars Proinsias Mac Cana and Roger Sherman Loomis suggested that Maponos survived in Arthurian mythology as Mabon, Mabuz and Mabonagrain.