ACADEMY OF SAINT GABRIEL REPORT 1567 http://www.s-gabriel.org/1567 ************************************ ************************************************* * * * NOTE: Later research turned up additional * * information relevant to this report. * * See the end of the letter for details. * * * ************************************************* 27 Feb 1999 Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You asked for information about , which you believed to be a Celtic name meaning "wolf lady". This letter is a brief answer to your question. The Academy tries to help people to choose names to suit a particular time and place in history. Since you didn't tell us anything about the persona that goes with the name, we can't do that for you. We can give you some general information about the name and when and where it was used, and point you to some sources where you can learn more about names from that period. There is no language or culture called "Celtic". Celtic is a modern English word that describes a family of languages (including Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton) and the cultures that spoke them. In our period, there was no pan-Celtic identity: The Irish were Irish, the Welsh were Welsh. Some of the languages were closely related -- Irish and Scottish Gaelic were the same language well past the end of our period, and Manx diverged from Gaelic only late in our period. But others were very different and all these cultures had different naming practices. You indicated you want an Irish name, so we'll focus on Irish Gaelic names. None of our references includes . It appears to be a garbled spelling of the name , possibly confused with the Gaelic masculine name . is one of several spellings of a somewhat mysterious name. It is an alternate spelling of the _masculine_ or , the name of an early Irish saint. (The slash in the name represents an accent on the preceding letter.) We believe that it was misread as a feminine name because it ends in <-a>. Names ending in <-a> are almost always feminine in English and in Romance languages, but can be either masculine or feminine in Irish. The underlying root word or is masculine; but we have also found it in the feminine name [1, 2, 3]. Therefore we cannot say for certain that could not also have been used as a feminine name, but we have found no evidence that it was. We do not recommend this name as good re-creation of a feminine name. There are several good articles on period Irish names available on the web at our medieval names website. If you go to this page: http://www.panix.com/~mittle/names/qceltic.html you'll see a list of them. "Early Irish Feminine Names..." contains a good list of women's names. "Quick and Easy Gaelic Bynames" is a good general introduction to the structure of period Gaelic names. The details varied over time, so if you want your name to fit a particular part of our period, or if you'd like help with Gaelic grammar and pronunciation, please write again. 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 Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn, Teceangl Bach, and Talan Gwynek. For the Academy, Arval Benicoeur 23 Feb 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - References [1] O/ Corra/in, Donnchadh and Fidelma Maguire, _Irish Names_ (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1990), s.n. Fai/ltigern. [2] O/ Riain, Pa/draig, ed., _Corpus Genealogiarum Sanctorum Hiberniae_ (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1985). [3] Royal Irish Academy, _Dictionary of the Irish Language: based mainly on Old and Middle Irish materials_ (Dublin : Royal Irish Academy, 1983). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Annotated June 2012 in response to an inquiry from a client. Greetings from the Academy of Saint Gabriel! You mentioned a couple of martyrologies, which you believe give evidence for a female saint named (in some spelling), with a feast day of March 17. We are afraid that our assessment of the evidence differs from yours. We checked the original Gaelic texts of the Martyrology of Gorman and the Martyrology of Tallaght. The Martyrology of Gorman lists simply . The Martyrology of Tallaght lists ; we believe that is an abbreviation for the Latin word for "virgin". [1,2] We see no reason to assume that either of these saints were female virgins: both sources list other male virgin saints. You referenced some modern authors who reported a female saint of this name. Our best explanation is that they misinterpretted "virgin" to mean female. [1] The Martyrology of Gorman (early 17th C) http://books.google.com/books?id=KGbQY9K9-WoC The entry for Mar. 17th lists a but the entry gives no implication of gender. The footnote says but the translation says "a virgin". [2] The Martyrology of Tallaght http://books.google.com/books?id=wbUCAAAAQAAJ Page xviii (the Gaelic section) has: Failtigern, Vir.