[ANSTHRLD] Name question: Joe the <color>

Lisa Theriot lisatheriot at ravenboymusic.com
Tue Aug 16 12:24:06 PDT 2011


I've had this discussion with Fiacha...  the Irish thought of natural
colors in shades rather than absolutes on a color wheel like we do
today.  There's almost zero chance that an Irishman in period would have
had an epithet meaning "blue" in the sense that we mean it today.
Consider the following from OCM:

Glas 'green, grey, grey-blue'
Gorma/n 'dark, swarthy (of complexion)'
Gormgilla "from gorm 'green, grey'
Gormlaith "from gorm meaning 'illustrious, splendid'
Uaine  "this word means 'green, verdant', but Stokes felt that in this
case it was an old word for 'a lady, a queen'."

>From the reading I have done in the annals, I've seen glas used for
light blue and light green and gorm used for dark blue, dark green, and
generally dark anything.  Notwithstanding Mari's gloss in her article, I
see no evidence that 'blue' is a correct gloss for the byname Gorm
versus OCM's assertions (i.e., it is more likely either 'dark' or
'splendid').  It is perfectly true that <gorm> is the synonym for "blue"
in a modern Irish-English dictionary (as <uaine> is given for "green"),
but I have not seen any evidence that this association is period.

Antoine, my advice is to document the byname in England and take the hit
for combining with an Irish name.  Bardsley, s.n. Blew, Blue has:

Walter le Bleu  (1204-1227)
Robert le Bleu  (1204-1227)
Henry Blewe     1581-2
Thomas Blue  1808

The OED, s.v. Blue says that the spelling B-L-U-E only became common
after 1700, so submitting either <le Bleu> or <the Blewe> is a better
bet.  Convincing Fiacha to get a decent byname is better still, but we
can't wish for the moon.  ;P


Adelaide




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