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Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel.
You asked if <Morag Caél the Wolfkeeper> would pass as an Irish feminine
name
in the SCA, by which we understand you to ask if the name would be
registerable
with the College of Arms.
Before we begin, we would like to clarify the purpose of the Academy. We offer
advice on historical accuracy to people who want to select names
appropriate to
the period and culture they are re-creating. Registering names with the
College
of Arms is not our focus, although our research can often be used to support
a submission. Our standards are different from the College's: The College will
register many names which are not historically correct, but will also return
many names which are historically correct but which violate some other rule.
If your goal is registering your name, you may want to consult with the
heralds
in your area after you read this letter.
<Morag> is a Gaelic-derived feminine name in use in modern Scotland [1],
but we
have found no evidence that it was used in our period or in Ireland. It is
related to the feminine name <Mór>, pronounced \MORE\, which was the most
popular woman's name in later medieval Ireland. [2] (The slash represents an
acute accent over the preceding vowel.)
<Cáel>, pronounced \KALE\, is a masculine name used in early period Ireland. [2] In your letter, you spelled it <Caél>, which is incorrect; the accent is on the "a", not the "e".
We aren't sure whether you intended <Cáel> as a second given name or
something
else. Double given names were not used in period Ireland. The typical Irish
feminine name was a single given name plus a patronymic byname, which
identified the woman as her father's daughter. The standard feminine name
followed the pattern <given name> ingen (meaning "daughter") <father's given
name>. The father's name must be in the genitive, or possessive, form
(<John's>
rather than <John>), and must be "lenited", a softening of the initial
consonant
of the name that is required by Irish grammar after a feminine noun like
<ingen>. Some women may have used descriptive bynames instead of patronymics,
like <Cáelfind Ruad>, "Cáelfind [the] Red". If you would like more
information
on the contruction and grammar of Irish women's names, you might want to read
these articles on the web.
Cateline de la Mor la souriete. "Choosing an Irish Name". WWW : SCA, 1997.
Krossa, Sharon L. "Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames". WWW : Sharon L. Krossa, 1997.
Since a masculine name would not be appropriate and since double given names
were not used, we can offer three possible alternatives for including
something
similar in a feminine name.
<Cáel> is also an adjective, meaning "slender, thin". It was used as a
descriptive byname by Irish men [3] and could possibly have been used by
women,
for example, <Mór Cháel>, pronounced \MORE KHALE\, "Mór [the] Slender".
(The
\kh\ is pronounced like the hard, rasping \ch\ sound in the Scottish "loch"
or the German "Bach".)
<Cáel> could also be used as a patronymic, identifying you as your father Cáel's daughter, <Mór ingen Chail>, pronounced \MORE IN-yen KHEEL\. A later (after 1200) version of the name is <Mór inghean Chaiol>, with roughly the same pronunciation.
Finally, there are a few feminine names that contain the element <Cáel->.
The byname <the Wolfkeeper> is not historically appropriate for a period Irish woman's name. English was not used in Gaelic names, and even in English we can find no evidence that <-keeper> was used in this way. The closest English byname we can find is <le Kepere> in 1279, but it means "someone who lives or works in a castle (i.e. keep)" or perhaps "jailer". [4] We can also find no evidence that anyone kept wolves and was named for it. And finally, we have no examples of Irish women using occupational bynames. Basically this just isn't the sort of name that people used in period Irish or English names.
We hope this letter has been helpful. Please write us again if you have any
more
questions or if any of this letter has been unclear. Talan Gwynek, Arval
Benicoeur, and Lindorm Eriksson contributed research and commentary for this
letter.
For the Academy,
Livia Montgomery
[1] Dunkling, Leslie and William Gosling. _The New American Dictionary of First Names_. New York : Signet Books, 1983.
[2] O/ Corráin, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire. _Irish Names_. Dublin : The Lilliput Press, 1990.
[3] Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasfryn. "Feminine Names in the Index to
O'Brien's
'Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae'". WWW : The Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1996.
[4] Reaney, P.H. and R.M. Wilson. _A Dictionary of English Surnames_, 3rd ed. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1995.