ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1496 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1496 ************************************ From: 28 Mar 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us about the name . You wanted to know whether this name could have been used by a 12th century Irish woman. Your choice of name is very good. The name and the descriptive byname , meaning "beautiful hair", are both found in Irish records of the early 12th century [1]. The '/' in represents an accent on the preceding letter 'e'; the '.' in represents a dot over the 'F'. The byname means "daughter of Bran", and is correctly constructed [2,3]. One of our members has already given you the pronunciation of your name via the Rialto. For your convenience, here is the relevant part of that reply: It's a bit tricky to work out the pronunciation of an early spelling; later spellings contain more information. However, in this case it's a good bet that both the and the are lenited, meaning that the former sounds like \v\ and the latter like the in and . I'll use \dh\ to represent this sound. The and are palatalized; the first is like the in Spanish and and the in French , and the second is like the in Spanish . Roughly speaking, the sounds are what you get if you try to say \n\ and \l\ with the entire blade (front part) of the tongue flattened against the roof of your mouth rather than just the tip of the tongue. I'll use \n~\ and \l~\ to represent these two sounds. Finally, I'll use \@\ for the schwa sound of in and . With these conventions, the name is roughly \N~AYV DHAHL~-@\, with stress on the first two syllables. The \AYV\ should rhyme with English or . As for the rest of your name, is pronounced \OHLT-khehv\, where the 'kh' represents the rasping found in Scottich or German . The last bit, , is \IN~-en VROYN~\ where the \OY\ is as in "oil" and \n~\ is the same sound explained above. Putting it all together, your name would be pronounced: \N~AYV DHAHL~-@ OHLT-khehv IN~-en VROYN\ and means "Ne/mdaille, beautiful-haired daughter of Bran". Since the above pronunciation includes a lot of technical sounds, we included the following simplified version as an approximate guide: \NyAVE DHAHL-y@ OHLT-khehv IN-yen VROYN\ The first \y\ is consonantal (not a vowel), so it merely "colors" the \N\. Also, since originated as two words we have given its pronunciation as if it were two separate words. We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you. Talan Gwynek, Arval Benicoeur, Effrick neyn Kenneoch, Aryanhwy Prytydes merch Catmael Caermyrdin, and Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn contributed to this letter. In service, --Walraven van Nijmegen Academy of S. Gabriel [1] Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasfryn, _Feminine Names from the Index to O'Brien's "Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae" (WWW:1997) http://www.us.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/docs/irish-obrien.html [2] M.A. O'Brien (ed.), _Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976) [3] Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language_ (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1983)