Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 640

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 640

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/640

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 S. Gabriel!

You asked whether the name <Iain MacAllen>, possibly with a different spelling, would be period, preferably for the 15th or 16th century.

At that time the principal languages of Scotland were Scots, a close relative of English, and Gaelic. Scots was the language of the Lowlands, especially the royal court and burghs (towns), while Gaelic was spoken in the Highlands. Owing to this distribution, nearly all of the non-Latin records from this period are in Scots. Many Gaelic names do appear in these records, but they appear in Scots forms. <Iain MacAllen> is an attempt at such a form.

In many cases the Gaelic name was simply written as it sounded to the Scots-speaking clerk, and the recorded form is more or less a phonetic representation of the Gaelic. Certain Gaelic names, however, were usually replaced by Scots names that were felt to be equivalent to them in some sense.

Here the underlying period Gaelic name is <Eoin mac Ailin>. [1] <Eoin> was an early Gaelic borrowing of Latin <Johannes>, the source of English <John>. [2] It appears that this relationship was still recognized in 15th and 16th century Scotland, since <Eoin> is almost invariably replaced by a Scots form of <John>; the most common seem to have been <Johnne> and <Jhone>. The patronymic is found in Scots records as <M'Allan> 1477 and <McCallane> 1504. [1] Thus, <Johnne M'Allan>, <Johnne McCallane>, <Jhone M'Allan>, and <Jhone McCallane> would all be authentic 15th and 16th century Scots forms of the Gaelic name <Eoin mac Ailin>.

The name <Iain> is something of a problem. It is a modern Gaelic name that is closely related to <Eoin> and <John>, but we have no record of it as a Gaelic name in period. We have found exactly one instance of it in a period Scottish record: <Iain Mc nocerdych> 1525, which appears to be a Scots spelling of Gaelic <Eoin mac na

cearda> 'Johnne son of the smith or tinker'. [1] <Iain M'Allan> is
therefore a possible Scots spelling of <Eoin mac Ailin>, but it's not at all characteristic of period usage, so we cannot recommend it.

Finally, we thought that we should mention that hereditary surnames and clan names did not exist in Highland culture in the 15th century. At that time the patronymic <mac Ailin> would have been named <Ailin>. If your son's persona is supposed to have a father with a different given name, we can try to help you form a correct patronymic from that name

Affrica neyn Ken3ocht and Arval Benicoeur also contributed to this letter. We hope that it has been of use; please write us again if you have any other questions.

For the Academy,

Talan Gwynek


[1] Black, George F., _The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History_ (New York: The New York Public Library, 1989).

[2] O/ Corráin, Donnchadh & Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990). (The slash denotes an acute accent over the preceding vowel.)