Percival

Percival is an Arthurian name associated with a knight in the quest for the Holy Grail. It appears as Perceval in the work of the medieval French writer Chrétien de Troyes. The traditional explanation connects French elements for piercing and a valley, but the literary history is firmer than treating that phrase as a straightforward everyday description.

Later writers reshaped the knight’s story, including Tennyson in Idylls of the King, while Wagner used Parsifal for his opera. Percy can function as a familiar form, although Percy also has its own Norman surname origin. That independent history means a person named Percy does not necessarily have Percival as a formal name.