ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1647 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1647 ************************************ 10 Aug 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us to help you with a Celtic name suitable for a woman living in Ireland between 750 and 1100. Specifically, you asked whether or is appropriate for your period, and if so, how to pronounce them. You also inquired about the O'Conaill arms, wanting to know how to appropriately alter them to create a design for your own use. You wrote that you are creating a Celtic persona. We'd like to point out that there was no language or culture called "Celtic" in our period. In fact, the word "Celtic" didn't exist in English until modern times. It is used by modern historians and linguists to describe a family of languages and the cultures which spoke them, including Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish, Manx, and Breton. These languages were distinct in our period, and they had very different naming practices which did not mix any more than any other two neighboring languages. The cultures which spoke them were separate, and had no sense of pan-Celtic identity. We have assumed therefore that you are interested in an Irish Gaelic name. Your choice is a fine name for your period [1,3]. The slash (/) represents an accent over the previous letter. However, there's a bit of a problem with : It is the genitive (possessive) form of the name, and the nominative (standard subject form) isn't known. The nominative is the form you would need for your name, and we really don't know what that form would be. Additionally, we aren't even sure that is a correct spelling of the name, since the genitive appears as in another manuscript [1]. We recommend that you avoid this name. Your choice of surname, , is also fine, though it would have been spelled [2]. The change from to reflects a softening of the sound that is required by Gaelic grammar. We should stress that means "daughter of Conall". It is exactly the byname that would have been used to identify a woman whose father's name was . In particular, it does not mean "member of the O/ Conaill clan". Clan names like came into use in the 10th century, the tail end of your period. If you want your name to mean "Ne/m of the O/ Conaill clan", write us again and we'll explain the correct form for your period. Or you can read about it yourself in "Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames", on the web at: www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/ We recommend as the better choice for your name. It is pronounced \N~AYV EEN~-@n KHOHN-ahl~\. Here \N~\ represents the sound of in Italian or n-tilde in Spanish; \@\ represents the schwa, as in the 'a' in ; \KH\ represents the sound of in Scottish or German ; and \l~\ is the sound of the Spanish \ll\, as in , or of the French \lli\ in . You expressed interested in using a variant of the O/ Conaill arms. That approach presents a couple problems, given the period you want to re-create. As we explained above, the O/ Conaill clan didn't exist in your period. Further, heraldic arms were not invented until the 12th century. They originated in northern France and the custom was carried to the British Isles by the Normans. It didn't spread into the native Irish population until somewhat later. So if you decide to set your persona before 1000, you may not want to use arms at all. You can find some thoughts on this dilemma on the web at: http://www.s-gabriel.org/faq/nonheraldic.html If you decide that you want to design arms appropriate to a later period, we'll be happy to help you. Using the O/ Conaill clan arms as the basis for your own arms may or may not be a good idea. The first problem is that we haven't been able to determine when the modern O/ Conaill arms came into use. Most modern arms were not designed until after our period. The O/ Conaill arms may be an exception, but we simply don't know. Assuming the O/ Conaill arms were used in period, then a variant on them could be good re-creation, depending on the persona you have in mind. In modern Ireland, it is common practice for all members of a clan to share the clan arms. In period, that wasn't done. What we think of as clan arms were really the personal arms of the clan chieftain. His close relatives might have used variants of his arms, but the average clan member would not. You were concerned that the O/ Conaill arms might be too complicated. The arms, "Per fess argent and vert, a stag trippant proper between three trefoils slipped counterchanged" [4], are quite reasonable by late-period heraldic standards (and by Society standards). They would have been unusually complex before the 15th century or so. You also asked whether a wolf might not be a more appropriate charge than a stag, since the name means "strong as a wolf". It's misleading to think of the name as having a meaning. Nearly all names derived from ordinary words in some language, but once they came to be used as a names, the meanings rapidly ceased to be relevent. Indeed, the very thing that distinguishes a name from an ordinary word is that it has no meaning; it's just an identifying label. In most cases, people using a name had no idea where it originated. The fact that the O/ Conaill arms _didn't_ contain a wolf might suggest how little the origin of the name mattered! A wolf was not uncommon in British heraldry from late 12th century onward, so it is a fine choice; but you shouldn't think that it would have been understood to make any reference to the name . We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you. Blaise de Cormeilles, Talan Gwynek, Juliana de Luna, and Aryanhwy merch Catmael contributed to this letter. For the Academy, Walraven van Nijmegen & Arval Benicoeur 10 Aug 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] O'Brien, M. A., ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976). [2] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), s.n. Conall. [3] 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.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/obrien/ [4] MacLysaght, Edward, _Irish Families_ (New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1972).