ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1573 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1573 ************************************ 8 Mar 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for information about the name , which you found as the name of the granddaughter of Noah. You also asked for clarification of the pronunciation of the Gaelic feminine name . Here's what we've found. or is a name from Irish legend, but we found no evidence that it was used by real people in our period. We found the name , which appeared in an early Irish genealogy [1]. (The slash in the name represents an accent on the preceding letter.) These genealogies contain a mixture of historical people and legendary characters. This woman is described as the daughter of the king of the Franks and the wife of U/gaine Mo/r mac Echach, who another source describes as the "ancestor in prehistory of the Irish aristocracy" [2]. In other sources, we found references to the legend of , the granddaughter of Noah who settled Ireland and was the ancestress of the Irish people [3]. This is clearly the same mentioned in our other source, obviously a legendary figure. We found no other example of the name, not even in the Old Testament [4]. Some names in some Irish legends were used by real people in period, but many were not. We cannot recommend this name as good re-creation. In period, was pronounced roughly \KyAIR-@\. The modern Gaelic pronunciation is \KyAR-@\. The symbol \Ky\ represents a palatalized \K\, like the first sound of the word . \@\ is a schwa, the last sound in . The name is often pronounced \kee-AR-@\ in modern usage, but this is an error that results from trying to interpret Gaelic spelling as if it were English spelling. The two system are very different, encoding sounds in different ways. Just as the modern French word cannot be interpreted as if it were English (\EE-ooks\?), neither can a medieval Gaelic name. So although looks like \kee-AR-@\ to a modern English speaker, the correct period pronunciation is \KyAIR-@\. We hope this letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Walraven van Nijmegen, Effrick neyn Kenneoch, Talan Gwynek, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 9 Mar 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] O'Brien, M. A., ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976), 135 b 33. [2] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), s.n. Augaine. [3] We found the legend on a couple websites: The Five Invasions of Ireland http://www.dalriada.co.uk/Archives/invasns.htm Cessair, Her Name http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/name.html#[1] Both referred to a collection of Irish legend called the "Lebor Gabala Erenn", but we could find no further information about that book. [4] Bible Gateway, http://bible.gospelcom.net