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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for our opinion of "Juliana O'Drennan" as a 12th century Irish name. Here is what we have found.
As you found in your own research, "Juliana" is a Latin name which was introduced into English and Ireland by the Normans. It is not a Celtic name in any sense. Some Latin names were adopted into Gaelic, Welsh, and other Celtic languages and were modified into forms appropriate to those languages. For example, the Latin "Caecilia" was transformed to the Irish "Síle", pronounced \SHEE-la\ [1]. ("í" represents an 'i' with a sharp accent.) Some names were adopted in this manner both before and after the Norman arrival in Ireland in 1170; some names were adopted twice, once directly from Latin and one indirectly through Norman French.
According to our sources, "Juliana" did not arrive in Ireland until quite late in our period. The earliest example we've found, is in a 14th century document [2]. The woman who bore that name was an Englishwoman living in Ireland, so we can't say this citation is evidence of "Juliana" used as an Irish name. Since the Normans arrived in Ireland in 1170, it is very unlikely that Anglo-Norman and Irish names mixed until some time in the 13th century.
If you want to use the name "Juliana" in Ireland, then you will need to set your persona in the late 14th century or later. If you want a similar-sounding Irish name, then you might be interested in one of the following [1]:
Sillán /SHUL-ahn/
Síle /SHEE-lá (an Irish form of Cecilia)
Sibán /SHIV-ahn/ (an Irish form of Jehanne, Jeanne)
The modern surname "O Drennan" derives from "O Drenan" or "O Drinane", which are late 16th or early 17th century anglicizations of the Irish name "O/ Draighneáin". That name derived in turn from the old Irish "ua Draignén", which means "male descendent of Draignén" [3, 4]. Neither anglicization existed as early as the 12th century. The equivalent 12th century feminine Irish name is "ingen uí Draignén", pronounced /IN-yen ee DREN-enn/ [5]. If you want a 12th century Irish name, then you could call yourself something like "Sillán ingen uí Draignén". If you want a slightly simpler name, you might use "Sillán ingen Draignén", which means "Sillán, daughter of Draignén".
By the early 14th century, English records used the masculine "mac" and "O" in women's names [3]. From that point onward, it is quite plausible that an Anglo-Irish woman could have been called "Juliana O Drenan".
In closing, I'd like to clarify the meaning of the word "Celtic". There were ancient European tribes which the Romans called "Celtii". Those tribes did not call themselves that. In modern usage, "Celtic" refers to a group of languages (Welsh, Irish, Scots Gaelic, etc.) just as "Romance" refers to French, Spanish, Romanian, etc. In the medieval period, the word was probably not used at all. There was certainly no group of people who thought of themselves as "Celtic". The Irish, Welsh, Bretons, etc. were separate nations with their own languages and cultures. There was some cultural interchange among them, just as there was interchange among any neighboring nations, but there was no collective "Celtic" identity.
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 Tangwystyl ferch Morgant Glasfryn, Talan Gwynek, Effric neyn Kenneoch, and AElfwyn aet Gyrwum
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] Donnchadh O'Corrain and Fidelma Maguire, Irish Names (Dublin: The
Lilliput Press, 1990).
[2] Newport B. White, ed., The Red Book of Ormond (From the
Fourteenth-Century Original preserved at Kilkenny Castle, with missing portions supplied from the Fifteenth-Century Transcript in the Bodleian Library)" (Dublin: The Stationery Office, 1932).
[3] Patrick Woulfe, "Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames"
(Kansas City: Irish Genealogical Foundation).
[4] M. A. O'Brien, Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae, Vol 1 (Dublin: The
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976).
[5] Sharon L. Krossa, "Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames" (WWW: Privately
published, 1997).