ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 2574 http://www.s-gabriel.org/2574 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 5 Sep 2002 From: Josh Mittleman Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked our help choosing an Oghamic Irish name appropriate for a non-Christian woman living between 400 and 700. In particular, you asked whether we could provide Oghamic precursors to the Old Irish names , , , and . Here is what we have found. Before we start, we'd like to apologize for the time it has taken us to finish this report. As we explained earlier, Oghamic Irish is a language known to modern scholarship from stone inscriptions from the 4th century to the early 7th that are written in an alphabet called Ogham. While this writing system was in use, its users tended to write a conservative form of the language corresponding to what was spoken when the system was originally developed. The spoken language, however, was undergoing considerable change, with the result that the written form of a name often did not correspond very well to the spoken form. When a new writing system using Roman letters was developed in the 6th century, its users broke with tradition and wrote a language much closer to what was actually being spoken. This stage of the language, as recorded from the late 7th century to the mid-10th century, is called Old Irish. The four names you've chosen were taken from documents using Old Irish spellings [1]. The one individual identified with each of these names lived in the period you want to re-create: Ta/ethen: 6th century [but see the addendum below] E/riu: 6th century [but see the addendum below] Ci/ar: 7th century Cai/rech: 6th century However, in their lifetimes, their names would have been written in Ogham forms quite different from the Old Irish spellings. As we noted in our previous responses, there is only one feminine name in surviving Ogham inscriptions, [5]. To suggest any other feminine name, we must re-construct a plausible etymological precursor to an Old Irish names. This is only possible for some names, and requires a good deal of specialized knowledge even then. Our re-constructions are based on the etymologies of the elements of a name. Almost all names in all languages ultimately derived from common words; so if we know the Oghamic precursors of the common words that were the roots of a particular name, then we can use that knowledge to construct a good guess at the early form of the name itself. Unfortunately, we only know the etymologies of two of the names on your list [2]. is the Gaelic name for Ireland, and we can postulate an Ogham form , pronounced \ee-WEHR-yoo\ [3]. [But see the addendum below.] The name is identical to an Old Irish word. We have enough information about that word to hazard a guess that the equivalent Oghamic name would have been , pronounced \KAY-rah\ [4]. To form a complete name, we recommend you identify yourself as your father's child: That is the most common form of byname in Oghamic inscriptions, and the only one we find used for a woman. Cera daughter of Rodagnas could have been identified as . is the genitive (possessive) form of . You can find a list of Oghamic masculine names in genitive forms on the web, in the article that we've cited as reference [5]. 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 Raquel Buenaventura, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Adelaide de Beaumont, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Effrick neyn Kenneoch, Talan Gwynek, and Mari neyn Bryan. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 5 Sept 2002 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] Mari Elspeth nic Bryan, "Index of Names in Irish Annals: Feminine Names" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2001). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mari/AnnalsIndex/Feminine/ [2] We cannot determine a certain etyomology for . There is a word , attested only as a given name, that may mean "a groan" and may be related to the word "silent"; but this is not enough information on which to base an Ogham reconstruction. Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983), s.vv. taethen, to/ethenach. Similarly, we are unsure of the derivation of . It looks like a form of "sheep", perhaps an adjective meaning "having sheep". However, this is too speculative to take any further. Macbain, Alexander, _Etymological Dictionary of Scottish-Gaelic_, 2nd ed. (Orig. publ 1907(?); reprint New York: Hippocrene, 1998), s.v. cai/ra. [3] One scholar reconstructs the Common Celtic ancestor of the word as (where the colons indicate long vowels). Common Celtic is the ancient ancestral language of all Celtic languages. Another scholar suggests as a likely early British form of the word. Attested Ogham names still show intervocalic \w\ (using the letter ). Watkins, Calvert, The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European roots, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000); s.v. . Jackson, Kenneth, _Language and history in early Britain; a chronological survey of the Brittonic languages, first to twelfth century A.D._ (Edinburgh, University Press, 1953); p.385. [4] The word derives from an unattested Common Celtic . The would appear in Ogham as and the as . The diphthong doesn't appear in Ogham names in our experience; we believe it would have developed to (and hence the pronunciation \AY\). If so, that suggests an Ogham form . This is grammatically masculine. It might also have been used as a feminine name, but it's also possible that the feminine form of the adjective would have been used as a feminine name; that would have been , since nominative singular masculine <-os> corresponds to feminine <-a:>. Macbain, s.v. ciar. Thurneysen, Rudolf, _A Grammar of Old Irish_, trans. by D.A. Binchy & Osborn Bergin (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), p.36. [5] Heather Rose Jones (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Some Masculine Ogham Names" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2001). http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/tangwystyl/ogham/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Addendum, 29 Jul 2004, Arval: Further research by Mari neyn Bryan shows that the of the Annals is a mythical figure, a mermaid. is one of several names of an allegorical figure; the word means "fire" and the same character is also called Sin "storm", "wind", "rough", "wintry", "a groan", and "lamentation". We therefore recommend against using either of these names in the context of medieval re-creation. http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mari/AnnalsIndex/Feminine/Sin.shtml http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mari/AnnalsIndex/Feminine/LiBan.shtml