ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1524 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1524 ************************************ 5 Feb 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for an Irish or Scottish Gaelic woman in the 8th to 11th century. This letter is a brief answer to your question. You're very close. is a later-period spelling of the word for "daughter", not used until the 13th century. In your period, it was written . Note that this word simply means "daughter", not "daughter of". The "of" is implicit in the possessive form of your father's name: "Cuan's daughter" and "daughter of Cuan" have exactly the same translation in Gaelic. The correct form of your patronymic is , with accents on the 'u' and the 'a'. The added 'h' is required by Gaelic grammar. It represents a softening of the initial consonant called "lenition" which occurs in Gaelic in some circumstances, notably in a woman's surname. In this case, the \K\ sound softens to \KH\, which is the sound of the in such words as Scottish or German . Your name would have been pronounced \SKEE-ath IN-yen KHOO-ahn~\. The symbol \n~\ represents the sound of n-tilde in Spanish words like or of in French words like . This name is definitely a good choice for Ireland in your period, and probably also a good choice for the Gaelic-speaking regions of Scotland [1, 2]. We hope this brief letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek, Effrick neyn Kenneoch. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 5 Feb 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Feminine Names from the Index to O'Brien's 'Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae'" (WWW, Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1996) http://www.us.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/docs/irish-obrien.html [2] 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