ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 3361 http://www.s-gabriel.org/3361 ************************************ From: Coblaith Mhuimhneach 23 Oct 2008 23 October 2008 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You indicated you want to use as the given name of an Irish woman of the 13th century or later. You gave us a list of possible bynames and asked us to evaluate their plausibility. They included (which you indicated means 'tall red-haired'), (which you indicated means 'of the sea'), , , and . You specified you do not want to include the term 'daughter' in your name. Throughout this letter, a slash represents an acute accent on the letter it follows. The phrase does not fit any recorded pattern for an Irish Gaelic byname. It also doesn't mean 'of the sea' or, in fact, make any sense at all as it is written. The closest intelligible Early Medieval Irish phrase we could devise is , which would read something like 'friend of the dark sea'. This is also not consistent with any known type of Irish Gaelic byname. and are partially Anglicized versions of the Irish bynames and , which are appropriate for your period, but only for a man. The feminine forms are and ; however, they necessarily incorporate and therefore don't meet your requirements. ('tall') appears in the Irish annals at least once, as the byname of a man who lived around the dawn of the 15th century. Almost 80 men known by some form of ('red') are mentioned, with dates ranging from the 11th through the 16th century. is the correct form for your period. [1] We consider either or to be a plausible choice. We have, however, no evidence that the Irish Gaels ever "stacked" descriptives together to create compounds like . Furthermore, the most obvious interpretation of the phrase is 'red(dish) height, red(dish) hill'. There is at least one place by this name in Scotland. is found in the Irish annals as the descriptive byname of ten people, dated to the late 14th, the 15th, and the early 16th century. One of the ten was a woman, who died in 1465. [1] is therefore a reasonable choice. (The change in spelling from to reflects a change in pronunciation known as lenition that is required by Irish grammar.) I 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 Talan Gwynek, Bronwyn ferch Gwyn ap Rhys, Aryanhwy merch Catmael, Mari neyn Brian, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Ursula Georges. For the Academy, Coblaith Mhuimhneach ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----- References [1] Mari Elspeth nic Bryan, "Index of Names in Irish Annals" (WWW: Academy of S. Gabriel, 2001-2006). http://www.medievalscotland.org/kmo/AnnalsIndex/