Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 668

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 668

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/668

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 for information about the use of "Arthuan" as a name. Here is what we have found.

Before I start, I'd like to clarify the purpose of the Academy. We offer assistance to people who want to choose and use names and arms appropriate to the period cultures that they are re-creating. If you want a historically-accurate 10th or 11th century Irish name, we can help you pick one. Any other goals are beyond our service.

We can find no evidence that <Arthuan> is a name. Names formed a special class of words in most period languages, and it was unusual for common words to be used as names. That isn't true in modern America, but ours is an unusual time in the history of personal names. In fact, we couldn't even find evidence that "arthuan" is an Irish word. We did find several references in neo-pagan literature to "Alban Arthuan" as a name for the winter solstice, but the evidence suggests that this phrase was not used in our period. That conclusion isn't entirely surprising: A great deal of modern pagan tradition is based only on modern sources.

We did find a few similar-sounding given names that might interest you. <Art> was a fairly common name in medieval Ireland. It had two diminutive (pet name) forms: <Artán>, pronounced \ART-ahn\, and <Artucán> \ART-ag-ahn\. "á" represents an 'a' with a sharp accent. <Artúr> \ART-oor\ is an Irish form of <Arthur>. All of these names were in use in your period [1].

You mentioned your mundane surname <Callen>. That Irish surname may derive from <MacCallan>, which itself derives from <mac Caillín> "son of Caillín". It may also derive from <O/ Cathaláin> "male descedent of Cathlán" [2]. Either of the original Irish surnames would be a good match for one of the given names we suggested above. For example, <Artán mac Caillín> would be a typical Irish name from your period.

If you are interested in using arms in the Society, you should be aware that heraldic arms were not invented until the 12th century and probably were not used by the native Irish population until much later. Your persona would not have used arms. You may still choose to use arms in the Society; our article on pre-heraldic personas may be helpful. It is available on the web at:

http://www.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/faq/nonheraldic.html

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 and Zenobia Naphtali.

For the Academy,

Arval Benicoeur


References

[1] O'Corrain, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, Irish Names (Dublin: The

Lilliput Press, 1990).

[2] MacLysaght, Edward, The Surnames of Ireland (Dublin: Irish Academic

Press Ltd., 1985, ISBN 0-7165-2366-3).