[ANSTHRLD] Name question: Joe the <color>

[Clint Gallon]

Sounds like we just switch him from irish to french ... :)

Mon Deu !!!

On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Lisa Theriot <lisatheriot at ravenboymusic.com
> wrote:

> 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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