ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1989 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1989 ************************************ 10 Mar 2000 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You wrote on behalf of your own client. We prefer to work directly with the client in order to minimize the chances of any mis-interpretation when information is passed through a second party. If this request is for a client who has e-mail or web access, we can provide further help to the client if s/he asks us directly. If not, we thank you for helping your client contact us. Unfortunately, we're not sure we'll be able to help. There are some pretty fundamental problems with your client's name, and we can't tell from your letter whether she'll be interested in changing her name enough to make it authentic. The first and most basic problem is that the range of time your client asked about is too broad. The Gaelic language changed tremendously between the 6th and 13th centuries, at least as much as modern French changed from classical Latin. There simply is no way to pick a name that would be appropriate for that entire span of time: We need to focus more narrowly. If your client can give us a better idea of what period she wants to re-create, we'll be better able to help her. is a modern French name derived from Germanic roots. It was used in 13th century France in the forms and , and was adopted into English after the Norman Conquest. It has cognate forms in some other continental languages, but we have found no evidence that it was ever adopted into Gaelic [1, 2]. The Normans carried their names with them to Ireland in the 13th century, and Gaelic forms of some of the more popular Norman names appear by the end of that century; but again, we haven't found any evidence of a Gaelic form of . (not quite the spelling you asked about) is a modern Scottish Gaelic word which means "star-gazing, astrology", among other things. Your client may have confused it with the word , which means "star-gazer, astrologer". The former is a feminine word and the latter masculine, but they are not simply different genders of the same word [3]. In any case, neither appears to be an Old Irish word. More fundamentally, we have never seen a medieval Gaelic name formed like "Adele the Stargazer". In our experience, this simply isn't the kind of descriptive surname that people used in medieval Ireland. Women in Gaelic culture were almost always identified as their father's daughters. A 10th century Irishwoman named whose father was would have been known as "Affraic daughter of Cormac". If your client would like to know more about medieval Gaelic naming, she could consult this article on the web: Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/ If she'd like to consider other Gaelic names for herself and for her father, she can find several lists linked from: Medieval Names Archive: Scottish, Irish, and Manx Names http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/qceltic.shtml We can suggest one other possibility that might interest your client. Since was used by Normans in England, it is a plausible name for an Anglo-Norman woman who settled in Ireland in the 13th or 14th century. We can't recommend "the Stargazer" as a surname for an Anglo-Norman woman, either, but if your client wants to combine the name with a persona living in Ireland, this is the most authentic way to do it. Of course, an Anglo-Norman would have had an Anglo-Norman byname, not a Gaelic one. If you or your client would like some information about Anglo-Norman name construction, we'll be happy to help. 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. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Walraven van Nijmegen, Adelaide de Beaumont, Mari Elspeth nic Bryan, Talan Gwynek, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Effrick neyn Kenneoch, and Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 10 Mar 2000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), s.n. Adela. [2] Colm Dubh, "An Index to the Given Names in the 1292 Census of Paris", Proceedings of the Known World Heraldic Symposium 1996 (SCA: Montgomery, Alabama; WWW: SCA, Inc., 1997). http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/names/paris.html [3] Dwelly, Edward, _Faclair gaidhlig: A Gaelic Dictionary_ (Herne Bay [Eng.] E. Macdonald & co., 1902-[11]), s.vv. speuradair, speuradaireachd.