Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 456

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 456

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/456

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!

You asked about <Seoinin mac Meic Raith> as a 13th century Irish name.

First we'd like to congratulate you on your own research: this is an excellent name.

O/ Corráin & Maguire s.n. Seaan specifically mention the diminutive <Seóinín> as a form used in the Middle Ages. The slashes represent acute accents over the prededing vowels. They were very often omitted in period, so <Seoinin> is fine.

As you found, O'Brien has several different examples of <MacRaith> as a given name. O/ Corráin & Maguire add that the name was most common in Munster and Leinster. O'Brien also confirms that the genitive case of the name was <Meic-Raith>, so <mac Meic-Raith> is a correctly formed patronymic. It is very likely, however, that the hyphen and the upper-case <R> were inserted by the modern editor. In period Irish manuscripts names of this sort are normally run together with no internal capitalization, so we recommend writing the name as <Seoinin mac Meicraith>.

This letter, printed out complete with headers, will serve as documentation for the SCA College of Arms.

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn also contributed to this letter.

We hope that this is helpful and that we can continue to assist you.

For the Academy,

Talan Gwynek


O'Brien, M. A., ed. Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae. Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976.

O/ Corráin, Donnchadh, & Fidelma Maguire. Irish Names. Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990.