ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1412 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1412 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 30 Nov 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether would be an appropriate name for a 13th century Irishwoman who moved to Scotland. This letter is a brief answer to your question. As we wrote earlier [1], is a Scottish form of which we believe might have been used as the equivalent of Irish . is a name attested in Irish in your period. is a Gaelic family name, the precursor of modern English . was used only in Scotland. We do not have an example of in Scotland, but it could perhaps have been used there, too. In any case, it would have been recognizable to Gaelic speakers in Scotland, so there is no reason to expect that they would have had trouble using it as part of your name. A woman in Scottish Gaelic culturednamed , the daughter of , would have been called . In the 13th century, this name would have been pronounced roughly \ISS-@-bel EEN-yen DOO-vahn\. The last word might also be pronounced \DOO-vahn\. Note that the word was pronounced differently in the 13th century than at the end of our period; happily, the pronunciation is more intuitive. \@\ is a schwa, like the last sound in [2]. As we explained in our previous letter, family names like were not a normal part of Scottish Gaelic naming practice. The examples we've found in Scotland seem to have been used for men who were either from Ireland themselves or else who had strong, known paternal links to Ireland. We have no examples of women in Scotland known by this sort of family name. (Since we have very few examples of Gaelic women's names in Scotland, this is not surprising.) Since we know that Gaelic women in Ireland as well as in Scotland were known by simple patronymics like , we are confident that is an authentic choice for an Irishwoman in Gaelic Scotland. Although it is a reasonable speculation, we simply can't be as sure about a name like We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in preparing this letter by Talan Gwynek and Effrick neyn Kenneoch. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 30 Nov 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi?1311 [2] Thurneysen, Rudolf, _A Grammar of Old Irish_, trans. by D.A. Binchy & Osborn Bergin (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Correction, 18 Oct 2001, Arval: After a word ending in 'n', like , the letters 'D' and 'T' do not lenite.