ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1025 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1025 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 12 Jun 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for help constructing a 5th or 6th century Irish name which implies that you are an orphan, adopted into a clan, or a foster child. Here is what we have found. Before I start, I want to note that we know very little about 5th and 6th century Irish names. The earliest Old Irish texts date from the 8th and 9th centuries, but many of them discuss people who were supposed to live in your period. So we can make reasonable guesses as to what names were used and how they were used, but since all our knowledge is filtered through a perspective two or three hundred years after the fact, we can only make very uncertain guesses as to how they were spelled or pronounced. Our suggestions in these areas are probably correct for Old Irish around the year 800; the information just doesn't exist to be more precise. Unfortunately, I was over-optimistic in our previous letter to you. We need to stress that in almost every circumstance, an Irishwoman of your period would have been known as her father's daughter, e.g. "Echrad daughter of A/eda/n". (The slash represents an accent on the preceding letter.) The family connection was your legal identity; without it, you would effectively have been a non-person without legal standing. Thus, it is not an identity that you would willingly have abandoned. Orphan or not, you still had a father. Fostered or not, you still had a father. And in the extreme case, if you were disowned by your father, that's the last thing you'd want to advertise in early medieval Irish culture. The image of the lone, independent stranger is popular in modern American culture and literature, but in tribal culture the concept was entirely negative, implying danger and evil rather than romantic mystery. In any formal situation, you would identify yourself primarily as your father's daughter. Irish law of the 7th century describes adoption into a clan and its legal consequences [2], but that information was not incorporated into people's names in the early Middle Ages. It was not until at least the 10th century that clan membership was indicated in names. Even then, no distinction was made in names between those born into a clan and those adopted into it. We did find one example of a person being described as a foster-son: "Duach foster-son of Dedad" [1]. The word was apparently used for both genders [3, 4, 5]. Irish law does discuss the fostering of girls, so it is a possibility [6]. [See report 2807 for more research on this topic, http://www.s-gabriel.org/2807 .] One Old Irish word for "orphan" is [3]. We didn't find examples of this word used as a personal nickname, but it seems a reasonable possibility. When used as part of a woman's name, e.g. , it would be pronounced \DHEE-lech-ta\, where \dh\ represents the in , and \ch\ represents the in the German word . We turned up one other possibility that might interest you. The word means "stranger, outlander, foreign settler, exile, outlaw, wanderer, pilgrim". It was used as a nickname and, in at least one case, as a given name. Patronymic bynames were formed from it: , , [3]. In Scottish Gaelic, by the 13th century, we find "son of the sojourner". Here are the feminine forms appropriate for your period, with their pronunciations. In the pronunciations, \dh\ represents the sound of the in , and \y\ is a somewhat raspy version of the in . ingen Deoraid \IN-yen DOR-ridh\ ingen Deorada \IN-yen DOR-adh-a\ ingen in Deoraid \IN-yen in DOR-ridh\ ingen in Deorada \IN-yen in DOR-adh-a\ A name like would be a reasonable choice for your period. I hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if any part of it has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Daniel de Lincolia, Charles O'Connor, Effrick neyn Kenneoch, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 12 June 1998 corrected 22 July 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] O'Brien, M. A., ed., Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976). [2] Kelly, Fergus, _A Guide to Early Irish Law_ (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988). [3] Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983), under headings deorad, dalta, daltae. Under , it discusses the compound "bosom-fosterling", with an example that applies the word to girls. The term implies wet-nursing as well as fostering. [4] Maclennan, Malcolm, _A Pronouncing and Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language_ (Aberdeen: ACAIR and Aberdeen University Press, 1984), s.v. dalta. [5] Dwelly, Edward, _Faclair gaidhlig: A Gaelic Dictionary_ (Herne Bay [Eng.] E. Macdonald & co., 1902-[11]), s.v. dalta. [6] Patterson, Nerys, _Cattle Lords & Clansmen - the Social Structure of Early Ireland_ (University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Correction, 18 Oct 2001, Arval: After a word ending in 'n', like , the letter 'D' does not lenite. Addendum, Jun 2005, Arval: Added a reference to report 2807.