ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1848 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1848 ************************************ 6 Dec 1999 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked our help building an Irish woman's name appropriate to any part of the Society's period, with as your given name. You asked whether women used surnames like , , or . This letter is a brief answer to your question. is recorded as a woman's name in the 7th century, when we believe it was pronounced roughly \FILE-y@n\ [1, 2]. The slash in the name represents an accent on the previous letter. The first syllable is pronounced like the English word , and the second like the second syllable of ; \@\ represents a schwa, the sound of the in . The spelling is typical of this early period; it would not have been used after the 8th century. The name was spelled later in period, but we have no evidence that it was used by any person living any later. If you want to use this name, we recommend you set your persona in 7th or 8th century Ireland. The rest of this letter will discuss names from that period; if you are interested in another period, please write us again. In the early Middle Ages, an Irish woman was most often identified as her father's daughter. Fai/lend, daughter of Fergus mac Conaill, would usually have been known as . The word means "daughter", just as means "son". In this period (and, indeed, until well after the end of the Society's period) surnames were only used literally in Gaelic. That is to say, a man was called only if his father's given name was . is the possessive form of , so the phrase means "Fergus' daughter". The symbol represents an with a dot over it, a convention used in early medieval Gaelic writing to indicate a softening of the \F\ sound: Because of requirements of Gaelic grammar, the initial in silent when the word is used this way in a woman's name. The dot indicates that pronunciation change. Thus, in the 7th or 8th century, the surname was pronounced \EEN-yen AIR-ghoos-@\. That grammatical rule doesn't apply to men's names: Her brother Finn would have been called \FIN mahk FAIR-ghoos-@\. \gh\ represents a sound that doesn't exist in English; it's the voiced version of the harsh sound in the Scottish word or the German . Medieval Gaels did not generally use surnames based on place names, like . We strongly recommend you avoid that type of surname. If you want to consider other types of surname, there's one possibility we can suggest: Gaelic women were sometimes also known by descriptive nicknames with meanings like "red", "bold", "fair", etc. You can find some examples and discussion of how to include one in your name in reference [2], on the web. is an English translation of the Gaelic surname "son of Gilla Pa/draic" [3]. It did not exist until sometime after the English settlement of Ireland in the 12th century. We hope this brief letter has been useful. Please write us again if you have any questions. I was assisted in researching and writing this letter by Talan Gwynek, Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Adelaide de Beaumont, and Antonio Miguel Santos de Borja. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 6 Dec 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), s.n. Fai/lenn. [2] Jones, Heather Rose (aka Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn), "Feminine Names from the Index to O'Brien's 'Corpus Genealogiarum Hiberniae'" (WWW, Academy of Saint Gabriel, 1996). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/tangwystyl/obrien/ [3] MacLysaght, Edward, _The Surnames of Ireland_ (Dublin: Irish Academic Press Ltd., 1985, ISBN 0-7165-2366-3), s.n. FitzPatrick. [4] Krossa, Sharon L. (Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte), "Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames (2nd Edition)", (WWW: Privately published, 20 Aug 1998). http://www.stanford.edu/~skrossa/medievalscotland/scotnames/quickgaelicbynames/