ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1309 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1309 ************************************ 23 Oct 1998 From: Braddon Giles Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if is appropriate for a 12th century Gaelic Scot. We hope that our response will be as swift as your reply to our previous report. Here is what we found. You are on the right track about how the name is constructed. As you will have read in "A Simple Guide to Constructing 12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names", Scottish Gaelic men of your period were generally known as their fathers' sons. The Gaelic word for is pronounced \mahk\. To show that you are your father's son, his name changes into the possessive form, just as is the possessive of in English. was a given name well known in 12th century Gaelic Scotland [1,3]. The slashes indicate an accent over the previous letter. It was pronounced \mell DOON~\, where the \N~\ is like the in or the Spanish . Your father's name is also a good choice for your period. In your name, you need the genitive form of his name, which appears as and in your period. Either spelling of the genitive (possessive) form of your father's name would be pronounced \KIN-edh-@\, where the @ is schwa the first vowel sound in \about\, and \dh\ is the sound of the in [2,3]. or would be fine names for your period. Either spelling is pronounced \mell DOON~ mahk KIN-edh-@\. In your period Latin was the dominant written language of Scotland. Gaelic name is recorded in a Latin document from 1055 as [3]. We don't have a Latin example of ; we think it might have been . Thus, your name might have been written "Maldunus son of Cinaidus". I hope this letter has been useful. Please write to us again if any part of the letter has been unclear or if you have other questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Arval Benicoeur and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Giles Leabrook 23 Oct. 98 ------------------------------------------------------------------- References [1] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "100 Most Popular Men's Names in Early Medieval Ireland" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1998). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/irish100/ [2] Krossa, Sharon L. (Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte), "A Simple Guide to Constructing 12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names" (WWW: Privately published, June 19, 1997). http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/simplescotgaelicnames12.html [3] Black, George F., _The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History_, (New York: The New York Public Library, 1986), s.n. Maeldun, Kennedy. We found 1034, where has been mistakenly read as when it is really .