ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1852 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1852 ************************************ From: "Sara L Friedemann" 14 Dec 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wanted to know if would have been used by an Irishman living on the western coast in the 12th century. You also wanted to know if it would be appropriate to use the descriptive term "of the mountain" as part of your name. Here is the information we have found. In this letter, a slash represents an accent over the previous letter. The name was brought to the British Isles by the Normans, who reached Ireland in the 12th century. The Irish adopted some names from them, but not immediately. made its way into Irish usage as , pronounced almost the same as the English form, but probably not until the late 13th century. [1] We therefore cannot recommend this name for a 12th century native Irishman. If you'd like to choose a different given name, you may be interested in the following articles on Irish names available online: "Dated Names Found in O Corrain & Maguire's _Irish Names_" http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/mari/ocm/ "100 Most Popular Men's Names in Early Medieval Ireland" http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/irish100/ The names in the second article come from a period earlier than yours; however, most of them continued in use throughout the Middle Ages, though often in a different spelling. If you are interested in any of them, please feel free to write again and we can tell you the appropriate spelling and pronunciation for your period. The correct form of a byname meaning "son of Lenna/n" would be ; the addition of the changes the name to the possessive case, similar to the change from to . Our only dated instance of that we found is , who was king from 898 to 915. We aren't sure how long it stayed in use, but because it was found in early genealogies of the Clare dynastic families, we believe that it is a plausible choice for your father's name. [1] You might be interested to know that the main location it was found was in County Clare on the west coast. Irish people were primarily known as their father's children, though we do have evidence of a few descriptive bynames used in Irish names. We have found examples of a byname meaning "of the mountains" in medieval Ireland. Medieval records include two examples of the byname or "of the Mountains." [2] Based on other medieval Irish sources, we believe that the name would most likely have taken the form , pronounced \nah SLAYV-ch@\, where \@\ represents the initial vowel sound in the word . [2,3] However, even if you were known informally as , in formal circumstances you would still be known as your father's son. We hope that this letter has been useful to you, and that you will not hesitate to write again if any part was unclear or if you have further questions. Research and commentary on this letter was provided by Maridonna Benvenuti, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Arval Benicoeur, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, ~Aryanhwy merch Catmael December 14, 1999 --------------------------------------- References: [1] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990). s.n. Uilleam, Lenna/n [2] O'Brien, M. A., ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976). [3] Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983). s.v. sli/ab