ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 871 http://www.s-gabriel.org/871 *********************************** ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Some of the Academy's early reports * * contain errors that we haven't yet * * corrected. Please use it with caution. * * * ************************************************* ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 6 Apr 1998 From: (Josh Mittleman) Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for help choosing a 15th Scottish Gaelic name using the given name or , and with your father's name being or . Here is what we have found. Your request is difficult to answer: You asked for a Gaelic name, but the names you want to use are not Gaelic names. We'll give some information about each of the names you asked about and then we'll discuss Gaelic women's names from your period. If we've misunderstood your interest, please write us again and explain what sort of name you're looking for, and we'll try to help. is a Frankish name, used by a saint [1]. We found examples of the masculine form the 7th century and of , a nickname for the feminine form, in the 8th [2]. The masculine name survived in use throughout our period in the short forms and [3, 5]; the feminine could also have persisted, but we haven't found an example. In general, fewer Frankish feminine names than masculine names continued in use through the late Middle Ages. While some form of may have been in use in France in your period, it is far less likely that any version of the name was in use in Scotland and essentially impossible that it could have been used in Scottish Gaelic culture. Some French names were carried to Scotland by Norman settlers in the 12th and 13th centuries, and some were no doubt transferred through other cultural contacts, but only a very few French-derived women's names have been found in use in Scottish Gaelic in our period. We strongly recommend that you choose some other name if you want a Scottish Gaelic persona. The name derives from , the name of two early saints. It was not uncommon in France, and was probably brought to England in the 17th century by Hugenot refugees. It didn't become common until the 1940s [4]. Unfortunately, we find no evidence that it was used in Scotland or in Gaelic, so we also recommend that you avoid this name. and are Scots spellings of names that were also used in Gaelic. Both names were carried to Scotland from abroad and were used in Scots before they were adopted into Gaelic. Scots and Gaelic are different languages, both of which were spoken in Scotland your period. In rough terms, Scots was spoken in the Lowlands and Gaelic in the Highlands. Scottish Gaelic was identical to Irish Gaelic. Scots was closely related to contemporary English. Names in the two languages were constructed quite differently, and the two languages weren't mixed, although forms of some given names were found in both languages. and are two examples: They appear in various forms in Scots, including and [6], and also in Gaelic as and , , or [7, 8]. Since none of the names you asked about is Gaelic, we're not quite sure what you want to do. If you want a 15th century Scottish Gaelic name, then you need to pick a Gaelic given name, which you can then combine with your father's name to form a complete name. For example, if your name were , you might be called "Aifric daughter of William", pronounced \AHF-rick NEE-yen WILL-yahm\. Because Gaelic was rarely written in Scotland, the same name would generally have been written in a Scots form like or . Here are two lists of given names that you may want to consider. The first includes women's names that we believe were used in Scottish Gaelic. There are very few examples of Gaelics women's names in surviving Scottish records, so we don't know many names from that culture. None of the ones we do know begin with the sounds \f\ or \ch\ that interest you. However, we can look to Irish records for other possibilities: Many names were shared between the Gaelic cultures of the two countries. So the second list gives a few Irish women's names beginning with \f\. We couldn't find any names beginning \ch\. In the names, a slash represents an accent on the preceding vowel. In the pronunciations (shown in the second column), \kh\ represents the hard, rasping sound in German or Scottish . Aifric \AHF-rick\ or \EHF-rick\ [8,10] Allasan \AHL-a-sahn\ [11] Beathag \BAY-ahk\ [8,11] Caitri/ona or Caitrina \KAHT-ree-nah\ (Gaelic borrowing of Katherine) [8] Cairistiona \ka-ris-CHEE-na\ [8] (Gaelic borrowing of Cristiana) Ealusaid \EHL-uhs-ahtch\ [9,10] (Gaelic borrowing of Elizabeth or Elisot) E/va \AY-vah\ [8, 9] Greudach \GREE-a-takh\ or \GREH-takh\ [11] Maol-Mhuire \M#L VUR-reh\ [8] ("servant of [Saint] Mary") Marsaili \MAR-se-lee\ [8] (a form of ) Muirgheal \MYOOR-yeel\ [8] (a form of ) Sitheag \SHEE-ahk\ [8] Tyock \TEE-ahk\ [8] (non-Gaelic spelling of an unidentified Gaelic name) Raghnailt \RU-niltch\, \U\ as in [8] The second list, all from reference [7]: Faoileann \FEE-lyahn\ Fainnear \FAHN-yar\ Fann \FOWN\, rhyming with Feidhelm \FYAY-yelm\ Fe/thnait \FYAY-nitch\ Fiadhnait \FEE-ahn-itch\ Fionnabhair \FYUN-oor\ Finneacht \FEEN-yakht\ Fionnghuala \FYUN-oo-a-la\ Fionnait \FYUN-nitch\ Finnseach \FEEN-shahkh\ Flannait \FLAH-nitch\ 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 Alan Fairfax, Talan Gwynek, and Walraven van Nijmegen. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] _Butler's Lives of the Saints_, Herbert J. Thurston and Donald Attwater eds. (New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1958). [2] Morlet, Marie-Therese, _Les Noms de Personne sur le Territoire de l'Ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe Siecle_, three volumes (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1972). [3] Dauzat, Albert, _Dictionnaire Etymologique des Noms de Famille et Prenoms de France_ (Paris: Libraire Larousse, 1987). [4] Withycombe, E.G., _The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names_, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). [5] Morlet, Marie-Therese, _Etude d'anthroponymie picarde, les noms de personne en Haute Picardie aux XIIIe, XIVe, XVe siecles_ (Amiens, Musee de Picardie, 1967). [6] Symon Freser of Lovat, "13th & 14th Century Scottish Names" (WWW: J. Mittleman, 1996). http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/scottish14/. [7] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990). [8] Black, George F., The Surnames of Scotland, (New York: The New York Public Library, 1986). [9] A photograph of the "1467 MS", a Gaelic genealogical manuscript, which is shelf-marked 72.1.1 in the Scottish National Library. Colm O'Boyle has kindly helped with our transcriptions from this manuscript. [10] Woulfe, Patrick, Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall: Irish Names and Surnames (Kansas City: Irish Genealogical Foundation). [11] Morgan, Peadar, Ainmean Chloinne: Scottish Gaelic Names for Children (Scotland: Taigh na Teud Music Publishers, 1989). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Correction, 26 Mar 2002, Arval: Removed , a modern spelling we've not yet found in period sources. See Scottish Gaelic Given Names, http://www.medievalscotland.org/scotnames/gaelicgiven.