ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1622
http://www.s-gabriel.org/1622
************************************

25 Apr 1999
From:  (Josh Mittleman)


Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked whether <Cailean, cat ruadh coilleach> "Colin, red-haired cat
from the forest", is an appropriate name for a Scottish Gael in our period.
Here is what we have found.

<Cailean> is probably a modern Gaelic spelling of a name that appears in a
Scottish Gaelic document in 1467 as <Cailin> [1].  That spelling is
appropriate for the last three centuries of our period.  The name was
pronounced roughly \KAHL-in\.

Unfortunately, the rest of the name you asked about isn't the type of name
that was used in Gaelic in our period.  The Gaels did use descriptive
nicknames, but they tended to be fairly simple and straightforward: small,
big, red, black.  A red-haired man named <Cailean> might have been called
<Cailean Ruadh>.  We found no example of the name of an animal used as a
nickname in period Gaelic.

Gaelic names very rarely include surnames based on the name where a man
lived.  While a surname like "of the forest" would have been unremarkable
in English or French, it is not a name that the average Gael would have
used in our period.  Chieftains and their close relatives and some clerics
used locative surnames, but they were undoubtedly special cases.  A
Highland man of our period was almost always identified as his father's
son.  For example, Cailean son of Domhnall mac Aodha would have been called
<Cailean mac Domhnaill> "Cailean Domhnall's son".

You can find more information about the construction of Scottish Gaelic
names on the web.  If you haven't read it yet, you could start with

 Scottish Names 101
  http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/scotnames101.html

Other useful articles are:

 Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames
  http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/

 A Simple Guide to Constructing 12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names
  http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/simplescotgaelicnames12.html

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. 

For the Academy,


  Arval Benicoeur
  25 Apr 1999


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References

[1] Skene, William F., "Genealogies of the Highland Clans, Extracted from
Ancient Gaelic MSS.: 1. Gaelic MS. Written circa A.D. 1450, with a
Translation,", pp 50-62, and "Genealogies of the Highland Clans, Extracted
from Ancient Gaelic MSS.: 2. Gaelic MS. Written circa A.D. 1450,
continued," pp. 357-60, _Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis consisting of
Original Papers and Documents Relating to the History of the Highlands and
Islands of Scotland_, ed. The Iona Club (Edinburgh: Thomas G. Stevenson,
1847)