Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 272

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 272

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/272

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 the name "Samaire," which you would like to use as an Irish name.

Unfortunately, we don't have any reason to believe that "Samaire" is a medieval Irish name. We found the same listing you did in a book by Coghlan, but Coghlan's books include a significant proportion of inaccurate information. Even if his citation is accurate, the story of Finn MacCool is a legend and not all the names in it were used by real people. Since we can't find any examples of "Samaire" used by actual people, we can't say that it's a historical name.

One of the best sources for Irish names is "Irish Names" by O'Corrain and Maguire. You could also look at a page on Irish women's names in our library at

http://www.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/docs/irish-obrien.html

Elsbeth Anne Ross and Tangwystl verch Morgant Glasvryn contributed to this letter.

We hope this has been helpful, and that we can continue to assist you.

In service,
Alan Fairfax
Academy of S. Gabriel