Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 207

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 207

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/207

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings,

Here's the information we found on "Sean" as a Scottish name.

We have no examples of "Sean" used in Scotland during the SCA period. "Sean" is a form of "John," which was introduced to both Scotland and Ireland by the Anglo-Normans after Irish and Scots dialects of Gaelic had emerged. The Irish adopted "Sean" as the usual form of "John," while the Scottish adopted "Eoin," (pronounced roughly "oan.")

We are fairly sure that the Scottish name which sounded most like "Sean" in period was "John." Although we can't be totally certain about Scoto-Norman pronunciation, we are fairly confident that Scoto-Normans pronounced "J" with an "sh" or "zh" sound. Gaelic transliterations of names starting with "J" often use the "sh" sound (i.e. "Seamus," "Seosaidh," "Sean.") Further, Scoto-Normans were familiar with French pronunciation, in which "J" is pronounced with a "zh" sound ("Jacques," "Jehan.") It's reasonable to hypothesize that "John" would have been pronounced similarly to "Sean" by an early Scoto-Norman. Given that, we would recommend that he use "John" as his byname.

We hope this has been helpful. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel