ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1872 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1872 ************************************ 2 Jan 2000 From: Alan Terlep Greetings, Here's the information we found on the name , which you wanted to use as a name for an Irish monk living in Northumbria sometime around 804. You also asked what the city of York was called before the Danish invasion. This question is more complicated than it might seem because it involves several different languages. The name of an Irish man who became a monk and travelled to England could be recorded in Gaelic, Old English, and Latin. A complete answer to your question has to look at all three of these. The name was relatively common among Irish monks during your period; we found examples from 837 and 869. (1) Our sources imply that it was generally used only by monks, who normally took a new name upon entering monastic life. The Latin word isn't really a title. It most commonly means "pilgrim;" the citation you give suggests that it was also used as a term for a travelling monk during your period. (2) We know that the Gaelic and the Latin would not have been combined in a single name--instead, your persona would have a name that could be rendered in Latin or Gaelic. We know that the Latin form of your name would be , using the standard Latin form of . The Gaelic word was used as an equivalent to the Latin in the following names from your period: (3) Cairpre ailithir mac Brachain Co/ema/n ailithir mac Brachain Ma/ela/n ailithir Mato/cc ailithir mac Canto/in There are a couple notable aspects of these names. First, appears by itself, without an article (articles are words like and in English). The word that you mentioned means in Gaelic. However, it wasn't used in names--so you would use and not . A second point is that most of these examples include a patronymic--that is, a name meaning "son of..." , for example, could be translated "Co/ema/n the pilgrim, Brachan's son." would be a historically accurate name, but you might also want to add a patronymic based on an Irish man's name from your period. If you want to see some early Irish man's names, we suggest the following article: 100 Most Popular Men's Names in Early Medieval Ireland http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/irish100/ Surnames based on place names (called "locative bynames") were extremely rare in medieval Gaelic. That sort of name would not be historically appropriate for you to use in Gaelic. An Irish monk living in Northumbria might well have been addressed in Old English, and so it might be appropriate for you to have an Old English form for your name as well. However, we didn't attempt to figure out what your name might be in Old English; if you would like us to look into that, let us know. The original Latin name of York was , sometimes found as . This was brought into Old English as or . (4) Raquel Buenaventura, Amant le Marinier, AElfwyn aet Gyrwum, Maridonna Benvenuti, Juliana de Luna, Arval Benicoeur, Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn, and Talan Gwynek have contributed to this letter. We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you. Your servant, Alan Fairfax Academy of S. Gabriel (1) O/ Corrain, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), s.n. Martan. (2) Fletcher, Richard. "Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity." (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1998), 169. (3) O/ Riain, Pa/draig, ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1985), s.v. ailithir. See also Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983), passim. References can be found using the index. (4) Ekwall, , Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), s.n. York.