ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1428 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1428 ************************************ 18 Jan 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for information about the name , which you want to use for an early medieval Scotsman. Here is what we have found. During the Middle Ages, several languages were spoken in the area that is Scotland today. The major ones were: Norse, spoken in the far north and the western isles. English, spoken mainly in the southeast. Gaelic, spoken through much of the country. Norman French, spoken by Norman settlers and their Scoto-Norman descendents, mostly in the south. The languages were very different and had different naming customs. There was some mixing of names from the different cultures, but most names were not adopted into all of the cultures. Therefore, the culture you want your name to fit will determine how that name should be constructed. Unfortunately, isn't appropriate for any of Scotland's cultures. It is a modern English form of , the name of a Visigothic king who sacked Rome in 410 AD. The name was revived in England at the beginning of the 19th century; we find no evidence that it was used in the British Isles in the Middle Ages [1]. We therefore recommend that you avoid this name. There is an unrelated Middle English name which we've found in 12th century records [4]. We haven't seen it in Scotland, but it is not impossible that it could have been used by an English speaker in early medieval Scotland. is a name of Brythonic origin; it is found in Scotland in both Gaelic and Latin documents in the 12th and 13th centuries. In 12th century Gaelic, it could have been spelled , , and . Thirteenth century Latin documents record it as and [2, 3]. is an English spelling, recorded as early as 1227, of the Gaelic patronymic [3]. The slash represents an accent on the preceding letter. A patronymic is a surname which identifies a person as his father's child. In period Gaelic, patronymic surnames were used literally: A man would only have been called if his father's name was . The practice of using surnames to indicate clan membership is a modern development. Clans existed in medieval Scottish Gaelic culture, but clan membership was not reflected in peoples' names. The extra in is a grammatical requirement in Gaelic; it puts the name into its possessive form, like in English. Middle names or double given names like were not used in period Scotland. A man in Gaelic culture in your period had one given name and was otherwise known simply as his father's son. Morgann the son of Leo/d mac Donncad would have been called , and that would be a fine name for a Gael in your period. Gaelic was rarely used as a written language in our period. If your name had been written down in the 13th century, it almost always would have been written in Latin. might have been recorded as . In closing, we'd like to note that is the name of the central character in several of Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels. The combination will be instantly recognized by a large fraction of the Society. While that fact has no bearing on the historical accuracy of the name and although the addition of the surname avoids a name conflict under the rules of the SCA College of Arms, the combination will still raise some eyebrows at events. We thought you ought to be aware of the potential problem. We 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 Lindorm Eriksson, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Talan Gwynek, and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 18 Jan 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), s.n. Alaric. [2] Krossa, Sharon L. (Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte), "A Simple Guide to Constructing 12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names", (WWW: Privately published, 18 June 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.nn., Morgan, Morgund, MacLeod. [4] Selten, Bo, _The Anglo-Saxon Heritage in Middle English Personal Names_, Volumes 1 & 2. (Lund, Sweden: Royal Society of Letters at Lund, 1979).