ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2103 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2103 ************************************ 2 Jul 2000 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked us to review the Oghamic Irish name , which you chose based on our previous letter [1]. Here is what we have found. The patronymic byname combines elements that appear in Ogham inscriptions [1]. is our hypothetical back-formation to Ogham from the Old Irish feminine name (with an accent on the 'e') [2]. We must stress that this is a very speculative construction. If it existed, it could reasonably have evolved into the Old Irish name [3]; but we have no etymological basis for because we have no information on the etymology of . Indeed, on reconsideration we feel that is at least as likely [4]. It also requires some speculation to choose a pronunciation for this name in your period. As we wrote in our previous report, Oghamic spelling remained fairly constant while the spoken language was undergoing profound changes. Your period, the 5th century, is late enough in the Oghamic period that we believe the pronunciation would have evolved partway toward the Old Irish version. Judging from later forms of each of the three elements of your name, we recommend the pronunciation \IN-DAYKH-t@ IN-@-GHEN-@ LU-gh@-(H)EKH-@\ for the name . The equally likely form would have been pronounced \IN-@-DHAYKH-t@\ [5]. \KH\ represents the rasping sound of the in the Scottish word or the German . \GH\ represents the voiced version of the same sound. \DH\ represents the sound of the in . \@\ is a schwa, the sound of the 'a' in or . (H) represents a lightly voiced \H\. 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 Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Talan Gwynek, Amant le Marinier, AElfwyn aet Gyrwum, and Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 3 Jul 2000 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Academy of S. Gabriel report 1776 http://www.panix.com/~gabriel/public-bin/showfinal.cgi?1776 [2] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Early Irish Feminine Names from the Index to O'Brien's 'Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae'" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1999; WWW: Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1996). This article lists . http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/obrien/ [3] We constructed based on a variety of evidence. The Ogham name became in Old Irish; the shift from Ogham to Old Irish was common [6]. The name also appears as in the genitive; this is the form expected of an <-i(a):>-stem, which is what is. The name is further recorded in the nominative as and [7]. This alternation between and is expected for a vowel derived from from Indo-European */ei/; that vowel was already being written in Ogham [6]. This evidence suggests that an Ogham name in <-de:ctt(i)a> could be expected to have produced an Old Irish <-(i)a:>-stem name in <-de/cht>. Our postulation of as the Oghamic form of the prototheme is less well-founded, essentially just an educated guess. [4] The Old Irish word is etymologically a compound + <-gen>. Its Ogham precursor was , i.e. + <-gena>. If is a similar compound, then the Ogham might have been . [5] We have assumed that the syllables that disappeared in the Old Irish form of each element would have been pronounced as schwas in the 5th century, and that the various sound-changes that were reflected in the Old Irish written forms will have started to develop in that period. The <-vv-> in appears (from the later form of the name) to be an early stage of of lenited \f\. In Old Irish this is completely silent, but judging from the progression of other lenited consonants that eventually became silent and from reflexes of the sound where it remains inter-vocalic in Old Irish, we might expect something like an \h\ at an early stage. We have chosen to stress the first two syllables of based on the Old Irish form and the assumption that is an intensive prefix, and thus less likely to entirely shift the accent from the root. [6] Thurneysen, Rudolf, _A Grammar of Old Irish_, trans. by D.A. Binchy & Osborn Bergin (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), pp. 36, 135, 188, 452. [7] O'Brien, M. A., ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976), 143 a 53, 157 26-7.