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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel!
You asked for suggestions for an Irish name from the 4th to 9th centuries, using <Quinn> as your given name and <Gresham> as your father's given name. You also asked for our opinion of your heraldic design. Here is what we have found.
The period you've chosen straddles a major change in the Irish language, from what linguists call proto-Irish to Old Irish. Much more is known about Old Irish, so we're going to answer your question in that context. If you do want to set your persona before the 6th century, then your name would need to be significantly different in form. If that is your goal, please write us again.
<Quinn> is not a medieval given name. It was an Irish surname, an anglicized spelling of <mac Coinn> or <mac Cuinn> "son of Conn". <Quinn> was not used as a given name until the 19th or 20th century in America [1]. On the other hand, <Conn> was a very common name in the latter part of your period [2]. It was pronounced \KUN\ or \KONE\.
<Gresham> is also not a given name. It isn't Irish as far as we can tell. It is an English surname derived from the name of a place in Norfolk. It is recorded in 1199 as <de Gresham> [3]. The place name itself derives from Old English words meaning "grazing-farm" [4].
As you can see, neither of these names is appropriate to your persona. If you want a name that fits your persona, you'll need to consider other choices. I'll give some alternatives below. On the other hand, if you move your persona to England between the 11th and 13th centuries, then there is a name similar to <Quinn Gresham> that would be entirely appropriate. The given name <Quintin> was used in England in this period [5], and we've already seen that <de Gresham> fits perfectly. <Quintin de Gresham> is an excellent medieval English name.
To build a name for early medieval Ireland, you'll want to choose an appropriate given name and a name for your father. In your period, an Irish man would almost always have been known by his given name and a patronymic byname, which identified him as his father's son. There were no inherited surnames, as there are in modern usage.
You asked us to suggest Irish given names beginning with M or T. Here are some common possibilities with their pronunciations, in spellings appropriate to the later part of your period [2]. Pronunciations are shown between backslashes; the capitalized syllables are accented. In a pronunciation, \dh\ represents the "th" in <this>, while \th\ represents the "th" in <thin>. \kh\ represents the hard, rasping "ch" sound in Scottish <loch> or German <Bach>. A vowel followed by a slash (like "á")n represents that vowel with a sharp accent.
Quite a number of Gaelic men bore names formed from <Mael> or <Maol> and the name of a saint. <Mael> means "tonsured one", and the combination meant "devotee of Saint X". Some examples are given below. Although they are written as two words, they are single names which would always have been used in their complete forms.
Tadgán \TAHDH-gahn\ Taithlech \TAHTH-lyahkh\ Tomaltach \TOME-ahlt-ahkh\ Tairdelbach \TAR-dhel-vahkh\ Tipraite \CHIB-reed-jeh\ Tressach \TRAHS-ahkh\ Mael Muire \MEL VUR-yeh\ (servant of Saint Mary) Mael Bride \MEL VREE-djeh\ (servant of Saint Bridget) Muiredach \MUR-yeh-dhahkh\
You also asked us to suggest Irish names beginning with G that you can use for your father's name. Here are a few [2, 6, 7]. We've written them here in two forms: The normal, nominative case (which is the form used in the subject of a sentence) and the genitive case (which is the form used to express possession, like <Peter's> as opposed to <Peter>). The genitive case is the form needed in a patronymic byname.
form form
Gillucán \GYUL-la-gahn\ Gillucáin Glassán \GLAHS-sahn\ Glassáin
To put these elements together into a complete name, you would combine your given name, the word <mac> (which means "son") and the genitive form of your father's name. For example, <Math mac Gormáin> means "Math, Gormán's son".
The arms you described in your letter would be blazoned "Per fess argent and azure, a harp and a tower counterchanged". Before we comment on it directly, we should point out that arms are not appropriate to your early medieval Irish persona. Arms didn't exist in Ireland at that time. Heraldry was invented in northern France in the late 12th century and was imported to Ireland by the Normans in the 13th century.
Many people in the Society face the same problem of choosing a persona from a culture that did not use arms, but still wanting to follow the Society tradition of using arms. There are various solutions to this problem, though none is perfect. We've written a short article on the subject, that you can find on-line at
http://www.itd.umich.edu/~ximenez/s.gabriel/faq/nonheraldic.html
You'll need to decide for yourself how to deal with this problem; in the mean time, we have a couple comments on your design.
We wonder if you chose the harp in order to say "I am Irish". That kind of national symbolism wasn't used in medieval heraldry; it is a very modern idea. In fact, we're not even sure that the harp was associated with Ireland in your period -- or at any time before 1600.
Your basic design, a divided field with a pair of dissimilar charges in the two halves, is very common in Society heraldry but almost unknown in medieval heraldry. Medieval heraldic design stressed balance and unity of design. When a set of charges was placed in a balancing arrangement, the charges were almost always identical and they were arranged to fill up the space on the field. With a division "Per fess", like your design, the most common ways to arrange the charges were two and one (two in the upper field and one in the middle of the lower field), three in a horizontal row in chief (the upper field), or two in chief. Some designs you might consider
Per fess argent and azure, three towers counterchanged (Two blue towers on the white field, one white tower on the blue field)
Azure, a tower and a chief argent.
(A single large white tower on a blue field, with the upper quarter of
the field white.)
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 Effric neyn Kenneoch, Talan Gwynek, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, and Margaret Makafee.
For the Academy,
Arval Benicoeur
References
[1] Dunkling, Leslie and William Gosling, _The New American Dictionary of
First Names_ (Signet Books, 1983).
[2] O/ Corráin, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The
Lilliput Press, 1990).
[3] Reaney, P. H., & R. M. Wilson, _A Dictionary of English Surnames_
(London: Routledge, 1991; Oxford University Press, 1995).
[4] Ekwall, Eilert, _The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names_,
4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
[5] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_,
3rd ed. (Oxford University Press).
[6] O'Brien, M. A., ed., Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae (Dublin: The Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies, 1976).
[7] Woulfe, Patrick, Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames
(Kansas City: Irish Genealogical Foundation).