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Greetings from the Academy of S. Gabriel!
You asked whether <Talon> would be a viable name for a Scottish woman from the Western Highlands in the period 1200-1350. You also indicated that you want to be a member of Clan MacLeod and use a Gaelic spelling of <MacLeod>.
In that time and place your persona would have had a Gaelic name, or possibly a Scandinavian name that had been borrowed into Gaelic during the Viking Age. <Talon>, however, is neither Gaelic nor Scandinavian. It comes from an old Continental Germanic man's name, <Talo>. [5, 9] In Old French this name had two forms, <Talo> and <Talon>. Originally these were used in different grammatical contexts (something like <he> and <him> in English), but it's possible that <Talon> developed into an independent name. [10] Even if it did, however, it was an Old French man's name and therefore of the wrong gender and language for your persona.
The very similar (but completely unrelated) Welsh and Cornish name <Talan> is unsuitable for much the same reasons: it's a man's name, and it's the wrong language for your persona's time and place. [1, 2] Finally, there is an early Irish name <Talán> that may be related to the Welsh name. (The slash stands for an acute accent over the preceding vowel.) It's the right language, but it's definitely a man's name. [8]
We were unable to find any Gaelic feminine name very similar to <Talon>. The closest we found are <Tuileach>, <Tuilefhlaith>, and <Taillte>, pronounced roughly \TAHL-yahkh\, \TILL-ye-lah\, and \TAHL-cheh\. The first of these is the name of a very early Irish saint; we don't know how long it continued in use. <Tuilefhlaith> was the name of a 9th century Irish abbess and seems to have continued in use in medieval Ireland. Finally, <Taillte> was in use in Ireland as late as 1127. [7]
However, these are all Irish names. The Gaelic of Ireland and Scotland was a single language at the time, but there were some differences in naming practices, and we don't know whether any of these names were ever used in Scotland. They may have been, but we have no evidence that they were. It would be better recreation to choose a name known to have been used in Scotland in your period.
Unfortunately, there are very few period Scottish records of Gaelic feminine names, and most of the handful that we've found are from the 15th and 16th centuries. Two of the few exceptions are <Afraig> and <Beathag>, both of which were in use in Scotland in the 13th century. [3] (These are pronounced roughly \AH-frick\ and \BAY-ahk\.)
Some clans did exist in your period, and it appears that Clan MacLeod was one of them. [6] It would be perfectly appropriate for your persona to be a member of the clan, but she would not have indicated that fact in her name (unless possibly she were the daughter of the clan-chief himself).
In our period Scottish Gaelic names did not include clan affiliations. A <mac Leoid> was the son of a man named <Leod>. (Exceptionally, the chief of Clan MacLeod might also have used the chiefly title <Mac Leoid> irrespective of his father's name). This name, which was a Gaelic borrowing of Old Norse <Ljótr>, was in use by 1200. [3] The feminine version is <inghean Leoid>, meaning 'Leod's daughter' and pronounced \IN-yen LYOATCH\. Thus, <Afraig inghean Leoid> 'Afraig the daughter of Leod' would be a fine 13th century Gaelic woman's name, and of course any Gaelic feminine name used in your period could be substituted for <Afraig>. (Irish feminine names from the same century and a half could also be substituted, but only at the risk of picking a name that wasn't used in Scotland.)
In a written record your name would have taken a rather different form. In your period the documentary language in Scotland was Latin, and names were generally recorded in Latinized forms. To continue with the same example, the Gaelic name <Afraig inghean Leoid> would have appeared in a written record as <Affrica filia Leodi> or the like, with exactly the same meaning as the Gaelic version.
Arval Benicoeur and Afraig inghean Choinnich also contributed to this letter. We hope that it is of use; if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to write.
For the Academy,
Talan Gwynek
[1] Bartrum, P.C., _Early Welsh Genealogical Tracts_ (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966).
[2] Bice, Christopher, _Names for the Cornish_ (Padstow, Cornwall: Lodenek Press, 1975).
[3] Black, George F., _The Surnames of Scotland: Their Origin, Meaning and History_ (New York: The New York Public Library, 1989).
[4] Colm Dubh, "An Index to Given Names in the 1292 Census of Paris", published in KWHS proceedings, Meridies, 1996.
[5] Dauzat, Albert, _Dictionnaire Etymologique des Noms de Famille et Prenoms de France_ (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1989).
[6] Grimble, Ian, _Scottish Clans & Tartans_ (New York: Leon Amiel Publisher, 1977).
[7] O/ Corráin, Donnchadh & Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990).
[8] O/ Riain, Pádraig, ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1985).
[9] Reaney, P.H. & R.M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (London: Routledge, 1991).
[10] In Old French the form <Talo>, the nominative case, was used for the subject of a sentence; <Talon>, the oblique case, was used in most other grammatical contexts, e.g., for direct objects and objects of prepositions. There are other Old French names of similar origin whose oblique cases became given names in their own right. For instance, both <Yves> (nominative case) and <Yvon> (oblique case) are found as given names in the 1292 Paris Tax Roll. [4] It's possible that <Talon> also became an independent given name in this way. If so, however, it must have been quite rare, since there are apparently no extant citations for it as a given name.