ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2185 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2185 ************************************ From: Lisa and Ken Theriot 16 Feb 2001 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether is an appropriate name for a man living in Ireland between 600 and 1600. Here is the information we have found. During the period you specified, the Irish language and the related naming practices underwent enormous changes. Old Irish was in use from the late 7th century to the mid-10th century; early medieval Irish was in use until about 1200. After 1200, the language looked much as it does in modern usage. In addition, the forms of the names that you have given are Anglicized; that is, they are written not as a Gaelic speaker would write them, but as they would have been recorded in English or Latin. These forms could not have existed in Ireland until sometime after the Anglo-Norman settlement of Ireland in the late 12th century and may not have appeared until much later. Accordingly, we will look at your name in both Gaelic and Anglicized forms. We do not find recorded in Ireland at all; in fact, we do not find that precise spelling anywhere in Europe. As you have found in your research, there are several modern Irish surnames which sound similar, including and . The origin of both of these surnames is unclear, because they do not seem to arise from common Gaelic given names [1]. probably derives from , whose early form would be ; was a common word which means 'bright white, shining'. is given as the name of a mythical Irish figure [2]; unfortunately, we do not find it recorded as the name of a real person in any of our sources [3]. It is possible that the name was used, but it is unlikely that its use would have continued beyond the 10th century or so. The word was pronounced \GyEL-vahn\, where \Gy\ represents a \G\ sound merged with a slight consonantal \y\ [12], and the name, if it had remained in use, would have had the same pronunciation. may have arisen from the same source as the English given name , or it may reflect some unknown Gaelic name or word. The earliest Irish citation of the surname we find is recorded in 1428 [4]; we have no citations of any related given name in Ireland for your period. itself is not a Gaelic name; it is English, derived from French. You can read about in the following article from our "Problem Names Project": http://www.medievalscotland.org/problem/names/gavin.shtml If you would like to look at some alternatives for an Irish given name, we suggest: 100 Most Popular Men's Names in Early Medieval Ireland http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/irish100/ is a modern Anglicized version of the Gaelic byname which would have been recorded in Gaelic as before about 1200 and after. The byname literally means 'son of the servant of (Saint) Fa/ela/n', but in actual usage, it would mean that your father's name was . (The slash represents an accent over the preceding letter.) It was pronounced \mahk GIL-l@ FY-lahn~\, where \@\ represents the sound of the letter in and , \Y\ is pronounced as in , and \n~\ represents the sound of in and French . This name apparently arose independently in both Ireland and Scotland (for most of our period, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic were the same language). The Irish usage seems to have been quite rare, with the name almost dying out by the 17th century, although we do find recorded in County Sligo in 1600 [5]. The bulk of the modern Irish instances of the name seem to have been imported with the large influx of Scottish Gaels late in the 17th century and after [5, 6]. Given names beginning with the element are not found before the close of the 10th century [7], but we believe that is a possible name for the late 10th century. We're fairly certain that the given name dropped out of use long before the English settlement of Ireland, so it could never have been combined with an anglicized surname like . Since the surname has special importance to you, we investigated some alternatives beyond the persona you described. You might want to consider a Scottish form, as your surname was evidently much more common in Scotland than in Ireland. If you're willing to change your persona accordingly, we can suggest a plausible name quite similar to the one you asked about: . Starting around the late 14th century, Scotland was divided between two major cultures: Highland, where the language was Gaelic, and Lowland, where the language was Scots. Scots was a close relative of contemporary English, and Lowland names looked much like English names. However, there were Gaelic influences of Lowland naming. Some Gaels migrated to the Lowlands, and in some cases, especially in the 16th century, their descendents used family surnames derived from Gaelic patronymic bynames. We don't know if this happened with , but we found some evidence that suggests that it did [8]. We also found several examples of that name recorded in Scots-language documents [9]: McGillolane circa 1360 M'Gillelan, 1372 McGillalane, 1552 The name derives from French and English sources, and we've found no evidence that it was adopted into Gaelic in our period, but it was used by Lowlanders [10, 11]: Gavin, 1477, 1577 Gavann, 1501 Gavane, 1502 Gavine, 1519 Gavinn, 1520, 1521 Gawane, 1519, 1576 Gawan, circa 1550 We therefore believe that is a plausible name for a 16th century Lowlander. We hope 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. I was assisted in researching and preparing this letter by Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja, Arval Benicoeur, Juliana de Luna, Julie Stampnitzky, Mari neyn Bryan, Talan Gwynek, and Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn. For the Academy, Adelaide de Beaumont 16 February 2001 References: [1] MacLysaght, Edward, _The Surnames of Ireland_ (Dublin: Irish Academic Press Ltd., 1985), s.nn. (O) Galvin, (O) Gavan. [2] Coghlan, Ronan, _Irish Myth and Legend_ (Belfast, The Appletree Press Ltd., 1985); the author lists Gelban as "a son of the king of Lochlainn who, at Conor's behest, looked into the House of the Red Branch to see if Deirdre's beauty had faded. Deirdre spotted him and Naoise knocked out one of his eyes with a fidchell piece, but he nonetheless reported to Conor that she was still beautiful." [3] You mentioned using the 'Book of the Taking of Ireland' (also called the Book of Invasions) as a source; unfortunately, most of the figures in this work are mythical rather than historical, so it is an unreliable source of names used by humans. [4] MacLysaght, Edward, _More Irish Families_ (Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1982), s.n. (O) Gavan. [5] Woulfe, Patrick, _Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames_ (Kansas City: Irish Genealogical Foundation), s.n. . [6] MacLysaght, _Surnames_, op. cit., s.nn. (Mac) Gilliland, Mac Lellan. [7] Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983), s.v. gilla. [8] Black, George F., _The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History_, (New York: The New York Public Library, 1986), s.n. Macgillelane, has the following citation: "Ingeram M'Gillelan made an assedation (lease) of land in the barony of Redcastle, near Lunan, 1372." The given name is common among non-Gaelic speakers in Scotland from the 12th century; also, the area in question is one where we would expect Scots, rather than Gaelic, to be spoken. [9] ibid. These are the nearest forms to the spelling you are using. There are many other forms listed under MacClellan and Gilfillan; please write again if you are interested in those. [10] Black, s.n. Auchtercraw, Goudie, Hourie, Langland, Rais, Rait [11] The manuscript Aberdeen Council Registers, Volumes 8 (1501-9) & 10 (1518-21), in the Aberdeen City Archives. [12] The \v\ sound is actually \bh\; this sound occurs in Spanish, and sounds like a combination of and . Position your lips to say \b\, then separate them just a little and buzz through the resulting aperture as if you were gently b*lowing out a candle while running your vocal cords.