[ANSTHRLD] name pronunciation and other questions

[Kathleen O'Brien]

I'm waaaaay behind on reading my email (my company got bought this month
and I've had work deadlines), but here's some info - hope it's still of help.


At 01:46 PM 2/23/2006 -0600, you wrote:
>Referring to St Gabriel again, the section they have on Masculine
>Descriptive Bynames at
>http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mari/AnnalsIndex/DescriptiveBynames/Alpha.sh
tml
>gives a number of examples of descriptive characteristics such as
>Ainsheasccar (the Unquiet/Restless) and Balbh (the Stammerer).  And surely
>"the Loud" is no less an accurate descriptive than either of these or of
>many other examples given.  I think a case could be made for using
>"Braomadh" or some other (perhaps more accurate) Irish word meaning loud
>or noisy as a descriptive byname.
>
>Padraig


There are two issues here:
	1) does "loud" match a period naming pattern
	2) if so, what word to use for loud and how to conjugate it

1) Since we're looking for patterns, you'll want to look a the Topic page
not the Alpha page in the Index of Names in Irish Annals article:
http://www.s-gabriel.org/names/mari/AnnalsIndex/DescriptiveBynames/Topic.shtml
That page groups by type (physical characteristics, locative bynames, etc.).

This page shows that personality characteristics were occasionally used in
a descriptive byname in Irish Gaelic.  However, it is important to note
that they seem to generally be a bit more specific than 'loud'.  Based on
this, I searched the translations of the annals for the word "loud" and
found that loud is almost never used to describe a person and is almost
never used as a standalone description - for example, 'loud' is sometimes
used to describe the sound a gun makes ("loud report of the ordinance"),
but it is not used to describe the physical thing itself - you don't see
"loud ordinance".  So, I'd be leery of expecting "loud" on it's own to be a
plausible descriptive byname in period in Irish Gaelic.  I could see a
byname that refers to a particular noise the person makes that's loud
(hence, you see 'merry' and 'quarrelsome'), but not really "loud" on it's
own without examples of "loud" as a standalone description.  This is the
subtle difference between "Sean = loud" and "something Sean does = loud".
In modern English, "Sean the Loud" is understood to mean that something
Sean does is loud, 

2) McBain is a modern Gaelic dictionary.  While many of the words in it are
period (sometimes with spelling changes), many of the words are not period.
 So, it should be used with care for period name construction.
Additionally, I've hit a number of problems over the years where going from
English to period Gaelic doesn't grab the right period Gaelic word.
Usually, what I end up doing is figuring out what words were used in period
Gaelic that may be in the general area of that meaning, then going from the
period Gaelic to the modern English.  That direction seems to work better
for constructing a plausible name.  I just searched on <braom*> in the
annals and had no hits.  We'd need someone who has the DIL (Dictionary of
the Irish Language) to see if the word "Braomadh" was in use in period.
That it doesn't show up in the annals is not a good sign.

If the meaning "John the Loud" is most important to him, he may prefer
sound over Irish Gaelic.  If so, something like "John Loud" might appeal to
him more than "Sean [whatever we come up with for 'loud']".  The docs for
"Loud" as an English byname are:

Reaney & Wilson _A Dictionary of English Surnames_ (p. 285 s.n. Loud) date
"William Loud" to 1242.

And, at this point, my train of thought just headed to bed.  I think I'll
follow along.  If there's any other questions I can answer on this, please
let me know.  (I'm still trying to get caught up on email and, so, may have
missed some messages in this thread.)

Mari