ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3352 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3352 ************************************ 19 Nov 2008 From: Ursula Whitcher Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked whether was a reasonable name for an Irish man living between 1550 and 1600, and mentioned that you intended as a patronymic byname, that is, a byname describing you as your father's child. (The slash '/' represents an acute accent over the preceding letter.) The name was used occasionally in medieval Ireland, but it had dropped out of fashion by your period: the latest example of the name in our data belongs to a man who lived in 1061. Gaelic men were usually identified as their fathers' sons. Their names were most often constructed in the following form: . The word means 'son'. The genitive case shows possession; just as the English becomes to show possession, a Gaelic name will change in ways determined by Gaelic grammar. The word , which you asked about, was used in bynames which indicated affiliation with a clan, not patronymic bynames; may be translated as 'male descendant'. [1] We found an Irish record of an eleventh-century Scottish man whose grandfather was named . An eleventh-century man whose father was named would have been called or . [2] or is a plausible name for an Irish man living in the eleventh century. In that period, we believe the names would have been pronounced approximately \K^EE-@-rahn m@k KAHN^-n^ee\ and \K^EE-@-rahn m@k KAHN^-n^ich\, respectively. We've used some special notation to describe these pronunciations: * In technical terms, \K^\ represents a palatalized \K\ sound. When you say , only the very back of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth. When you say , the part of your tongue that touches the roof of your mouth stretches much further forward; it's quite likely that most of your palate is in contact with your tongue. To get \K^\, just exaggerate this a bit, almost as if you were trying to say \k\ and \y\ (as in ) at the same time. * The symbol \@\ represents the sound of in and . (This sound is called schwa.) * The symbol \n^\ represents the sound of in French 'mountain' and Italian . * The final \ch\ describes the soft sound in German 'I', and German 'not' or Scots 'night'. If you would prefer to have a sixteenth-century name, we recommend that you choose a different given name. You can find a list of sixteenth-century masculine Irish given names here: http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/AnnalsIndex/Masculine/1501-1600.shtml We hope this letter has been useful to you. If you have any questions or would like further information, please don't hesitate to write to us again. Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Maridonna Benvenuti, Brian Dorcha ua Connail, Talan Gwynek, Mari neyn Brian, and Bronwyn ferch Gwyn ap Rhys assisted in researching and writing this report. For the Academy, Ursula Georges 19 November 2008 [1] Krossa, Sharon L. (Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte), "Quick and Easy Gaelic Names (Draft 3rd Edition)", (WWW: Medieval Scotland, 27 Aug 2000). http://www.medievalscotland.org/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/ [2] Mari Elspeth nic Bryan, "Index of Names in Irish Annals" (WWW: Medieval Scotland, 2003) s.nn. , . http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/AnnalsIndex/index.shtml