[ANSTHRLD] Inquiring the validity of this source site

[tmcd at panix.com]

On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 francis.schalles at ttuhsc.edu <heralds at ansteorra.org> wrote:
> This site has been presented as a reference for a name submission.
>
> Does anyone have any comments, good or bad?
>
> http://www.daire.org/names/ <http://www.daire.org/names/>

Hedwig von Luneborg already pointed out

    * This site should *not* be relied upon for information regarding
      SCA personas. I do not know where to find documentation of name
      usage you need.

The September 2004 LoAR Cover Letter (you can find it via
http://sca.org/heraldry) has a section
    **** From Pelican: On Summarizing Name Documentation ****
It includes

    First, what is the purpose of documentation and what should a
    summarization of documentation include? The purpose of
    documentation is to show the following:

        * that all elements of a name and all spellings used are found
          before 1650 (or are specifically allowed by the Rules for
          Submission or Laurel precedent)

        * the specific language or culture where each name
          element/spelling is found

        * Demonstrate that the entire name, as well as each name
          phrase, is constructed properly and that the grammar of each
          element is correct.

So I'll take an example.  Clicking on Male - Scottish gets to
    Celtic Male Names of Scotland
The first five entries are

    Abhainn - "river." Aibne.
    Acair - variant of the word meaning "anchor". Acaiseid.
    Achaius - "friend of horses".
    Adair - (Gael) place name meaning "from the oak tree ford" or "oak
        tree settlement". From a surname, maybe derived from an early
        Scottish pronunciation of English Edgar. Adaire, Athdar,
        Edgar.
    Adhamh - Scots-Gaelic spelling of Adam, "of the earth".

There's nothing there about what spellings were found in records
(those might be purely modern spellings), few entries have anything
about dates, and almost nothing about construction or use of the
elements.

Normally I'd warn that "Celtic", like "Teutonic", is a danger signal
in a citation: it's way too broad a term to be useful and it's usually
a sign that the author is ignorant of languages, or oversimplifying.
HOWEVER, on the main page, he writes

    For clarification, Celtic is the culture; Gaelic is the language,
    of which there are various branches. The name of the site has not
    changed because it has become listed at various places. I realize
    Celtic and Gaelic are NOT the same thing. I simply haven't had
    time to change the name or change it everywhere it is
    listed. Since the various Gaelic languages [can] fall under the
    Celtic culture, that is the reason for the Celtic Names of the
    British Isles title.

and the FAQ shows at least some more cluefulness.

The information it does give, the meaning, is usually irrelevant to
SCA heralds.  What distinguishes a name from a simple description is
that the name is *divorced* from its original meaning: we don't expect
someone named Heather to be green and leafy, or Margaret to be a
product of the irritation of an oyster.  The only times I can think of
when a meaning is important is to the extent that it's being used as
words rather than names (e.g., "son of the smith" can't go with a
female given name; claiming powers that the submitter doesn't have).

The only information I see useful in the above extract is that Adair
is a surname, and other entries refer to specific people:

    Alasdair - (ALL-us-tir) "defender of mankind"; Gaelic evolution of
    Greek name Alexander. Scottish royal name in 12th C. when
    Alexander I took the throne. MacAlisters claim descent from
    Alasdair Mor (d. 1299), son of Donald of Islay, Lord of the
    Isles.

But those facts you can probably find in other well-known sources like
encyclopedias.  And the only source information I see is a
bibliography of dozens of books from Black to Dunkling, and "I have
also been given information on names by helpful web surfers", and no
indication of what info came from where.

So I have no conidence in the information at that site.

(The search function is utterly broken for me (Opera Web browser,
everything turned on).  I can search for "William" and see lots of
interesting hits, but if I click on the first, the main page shows up
embedded in itself (the menu at the left is duplicated).  But you can
see the article title and click on it yourself on the left.)

Daniel Lincoln
-- 
"Me, I love the USA; I never miss an episode." -- Paul "Fruitbat" Sleigh
Tim McDaniel; Reply-To: tmcd at panix.com