Fitzy O'Macowitz: A Discussion of Names

          Whether we like our own or not, names tend be a significant part of our identities. We use names to associate ourselves with ideals we wish to project or role-models we want to emulate, to indicate relationship as well as a sense of history. We even tailor them into nicknames or don new aliases to fit our own prejudices of a desirable identity. Americans spend millions of dollars every year on books and guides to help them find the perfect monkier for their newest child. However, ‘perfect’ is an elusive and ever-changing concept. Examples of children with names like Agnes, Gertrude, or Percy are extremely scarce these days, and even undesirable for the fact that they’ve become synonymous with outdatededness and decrepitude, labels most people don’t want associated with their newborns. Or take for example the name Adolph which was once a common name in the eastern United States, at least until it became a byword for genocidal dickheadedness. And you can bet that the name ‘Osama’ will suffer a similar fate of ignominy. Few Muslim Americans would be willing to let their child share the same name as the nation’s most recent archenemy, even if it was once a respected family name. The point is that names are always on a trend and points of desirability have altered a great deal.

Over the course of the last century, names have increasingly been used less to honor members of the previous generation, and more to create a sense of individuality and uniqueness. About a decade ago, a trend started to develop among new parents to name their daughters things like Mackenzie, Mackella, and Mackenna. In fact, all three of these names were among the 200 most popular for girls in 2004, Mackenzie breaking into the top 50. One of the first things you might notice about them is that they are Scottish and Irish surnames. You might even recognize that they’ve been used in the past as masculine first names. There’s nothing strange about that, though.

It’s not at all unusual for last names to be given to boys. Due to a traditional opinion of men as name-carrier and title-bearer, boys have, more so in the past, been given maternal family names as their first and middle to pay homage to their mother’s pedigree. It’s also very common for American and British parents to adopt boy’s names for their daughters. Thus, many names have undertaken a process of transference from surname, to boy’s name, to girl’s name. Take for example the names Leslie and Kelly, a Scottish and Irish family name, respectively. Eventually, they both began to be used as men’s names (Naked Gun pratfaller Leslie Nelson and surfing champ Kelly Slater, for example). In time, these two names became popular for girls. The subsequent part of the process seems to be disrepute. Both Kelly and Leslie have become marginally unpopular names for girls since the height of their use, presumably because they were trendy at one time, and they are very rarely given to boys these days because their association as girls’ names. Only their original use as a surname continues without interruption.
Mackenzie, Mackella, and Mackenna seem to have experienced a similar pattern as names like Leslie, Lindsey, and Kelly. However, they have an extra twist of irony carried over from their original meanings. What I'm getting at is the 'mac'. This prefix is a lasting component of these Anglicized Gaelic names which means ‘boy or son’. As one might guess, the origin of these names lies in their utility to indicate direct inheritance from a father to a son. So, the name Mackenzie in its Gaelic form, Mac Coinneach simply means ‘son of Kenneth,’ a rather confusing epithet for any young lady. Needless to say, some parents are shocked when they discover that they’ve certified their daughters as a son of anything. Take for example the Minnesota mother who attempted to sue the service company she hired to help name her daughter Mackenna, another form of the MacKenzie name and one that commemorates a boy being born to some dude named Kenneth. It makes one wonder, who was this alleged Kenneth and how is he still fathering so many children?

Modes of patronymic practice (name transfers from father to child) are a common tradition all over the world, Western naming conventions very much included. Many of our most common surnames are derived from a construction of ‘name’ + ‘suffix indicating direct heritage’. Names with -witz, (Leibowitz, Horowitz, Rabinowitz) -vich, (Davidovich, Murovich, Yaroslavich) or -ez  (Hernandez, Perez, Gonzalez) all mean ‘son/descendant of’. We even have the same thing in English (Jackson, Benson, Johnson). Leif Eriksson, Count Dracula, and Fievel Mousekewitz all share in this patronymic tradition.

In the Celtic tradition, the patronymic component is placed before the name. Prefixes like O’ (O’Neil, O’Higgins) and Fitz (Fitzgerald, Fitzsimmons) also indicates masculine descent. O’ is an Anglicization of the Gaelic word Ó or Ua which means ‘descendant’. Fitz, derived from the Latin filius meaning ‘son,’ came into Ireland with the Welsh-Norman knights that forcibly settled Leinster in the 12th century. Even today, in the small villages which so characterize the Scottish Gaelic speaking Hebrides, it is not uncommon for many people to have the same first name. One man might even share the same name of his father and grandfather, so that you’ll encounter something like Dòmhnall mac Dòmhnaill mhic Dhòmhnaill (Donald son of Donald grandson of Donald).

          Though the Western tradition traces ancestry to a patriarch, accommodation is made for females within some of the naming systems referred to above. In Scottish Gaelic, nic is the prefix meaning ‘daughter’, as in NicDòmhnaill and NicRath, the English equivalents of MacDonald and MacRae. That is to say, a brother and sister by the name MacGregor would have different surnames in Gaelic: MacGriogair and NicGriogair. In Irish, Ó/Ua is replaced by Ní for women as in Ní hUiginn and Ní Néill (O’Higgins and O’Neil). This procedure for feminine surnames is very much like the Norse usage of -dottir/dotter (Magnusdottir and Svensdotter compared to masculine Magnusson and Svensen). In an intimate village context, it is not unusual for boys and girls to be referred to by their mother’s name as a sort of alias as in the Scottish Gaelic Seumas Màiri (Mary’s James) or Calum Seonaig (Joan’s Malcolm). And there’s even the example of Ireland’s legendary King Conchobor who is almost always titled by his mother’s name, ‘mac Nessa’.

          But how important is the etymology of a name? For most parents, meaning is only a secondary consideration in their decision. Sound and even spelling seem to be far more important. That’s probably one reason why Gaelic names like Angus have not really caught on in America. Though the name of the Gaelic deity of love and passion, ‘Angus’ doesn’t lend itself well to a romantic ear in English. In fact, the phonetics of the name and its spelling are more likely to be associated with sphincteral imagery. And let’s face it, nobody, except maybe for Johnny Cash’s antihero Sue, wants their kids to resent their name. Several years of being called ‘Anus’ on the playground will do just that. In that regard, Mackenzie and Mackenna are safe, adorable choices for young girls. It’s unlikely a classmate will know enough about nomenclature to run around taunting “Son of Kenneth! Son of Kenneth!” and even so, such a lame insult from the weird nerdy kid would probably be ineffective at hurting little Mackenzie’s stylish sensibilities. If you’re still hating on little girls named Mackenzie, then consider this: if original definitions were really important, then names like Cameron (crooked nose), Kennedy (ugly head), or Courtney (short nose) would never have made it so big today.

Irish Gaelic: The Little History of A Long Legacy

            This month’s first blog is borrowed from a lecture I gave to a local Hibernian Society. A huge thanks to them for the opportunity and to everybody who attended. They let me blab at length about the history of the Irish language, so I decided I’d share it with the rest of you. The following is a terse account of the ancient Celts and the Irish given through a linguistic lens.

            Irish or Gaelic is Ireland’s official language. Numbers are always quibbled over and there’s a dramatic degree of discrepancy when discussing the amount of people who are speaking Irish. The last census I saw reported an estimated 1.5 million people with varying degrees of Gaelic competence, though only a rough 300,000 to 400,000 claim fluency. That’s only a disappointing 5 to 6.5% of the population. And of that percentage, it’s conjectured that somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 people speak Gaelic on a consistent daily basis, about 0.6 to 1.5% of the 6.2 million that make up the Irish populace. Ireland is the only nation in the EU that claims a minority language as its official. Based off numbers alone, that’s like making Italian the official language of the U.S. But that’s hardly the point. The idea is that Gaelic is an important facet for Irish identity, a key to understanding Ireland’s history and culture, and how a people that model themselves as Celtic figure in today’s rapidly globalizing world. Truly, Irish has a rich history full of triumph and tragedy, of passion and innovation. To uncover the extent of its experiences, let’s start from the beginning.

            Irish is one of many tongues that share a common origin in the language linguists have termed Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European spread over Europe, and even found outlets in Iran and India sometime before 2500 BC. Within the Indo-European family of languages are a large number of subfamilies including some of Europe’s principle languages like the Germanic subfamily (German, Dutch, English) and the Romance subfamily (Italian, French, Spanish). Another subfamily, which incorporates a marginal few speakers compared to those previously mentioned, is the Celtic subfamily of which Irish is a member. Ironically, though use of the Celtic languages is comparatively microscopic today, they were once the most widespread of Indo-European languages. At their height, Celtic languages could be found stretching in a broad band through Europe, from Portugal and Spain through France, into Ireland and the British Isles, through Austria, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Northern Italy, and down into Eastern Europe. Even in Turkey, an enclave of Celtic speakers known as the Galatians, was allowed to flourish.

*This map roughly displays the vicinities in Europe where Celtic languages were spoken. Yellow represents the earliest arena of development (Halstatt 1200-600 BC), light green the second phase (La Tène 600-1BC), and dark green the areas that still claim a strong relationship with a native Celtic language.

Celtic languages developed among the societies designated as the precursors to Celtic civilization, first with the Halstatt culture (13th to 6th centuries BC) and then with the La Tène culture (6th to 1st centuries BC). Both of these societies were named after archaeological sites—the former in Austria and the latter in Switzerland—that typify their respective cultures. Halstatt culture seems to have developed during the Bronze Age out of an importance of trade in tin and copper (the components of bronze) as well as salt, which, in a world without refrigeration, was a vital element in long-term food preservation.

One thing seems to be consistent with both cultures: they were highly mobile. Graves of the elite members of both cultures feature wheels and carts, first as trading vehicles with the Halstatt, then as war-chariots with the La Tène culture. An ease of mobility most certainly aided in the rapid expansion of La Tène culture through continental Europe. Despite that mobility, La Tène art finds its way to Ireland late in the period (about 250 BC) mostly in the form of weapons, decorative jewelry, and equine equipment.

            Celtic language and culture seems to have taken root in Ireland through a long, gradual process of interaction which included trade and emigration from Celtic Britain and the Continent. It seems unlikely that any type of large-scale Celtic invasion took place, because the style of artifacts found in Ireland, though heavily influenced by La Tène art, are unique from the designs found in Britain and the continent. It is more likely that Celts came to Ireland as refugees and traders. Whatever the case may be, a Celtic language—the oldest version of Gaelic in evidence—was firmly entrenched in Ireland by the introduction of writing.

            The earliest form of records we have in Ireland survived through inscriptions on wood and stone. The letters were devised through a system of line scores called Ogham script, and they were used mainly to display names with the purpose to mark landownership or act as memorials. Ogham also seems to have been employed as graffiti. One stone found in County Kerry, for example, transliterates to ‘ANM COLMAN AILITHIR.’ This can be read as ‘the name of Colmán the Pilgrim,’ believed to be etched by a traveler sometime along his holy sojourn merely to commemorate his passing by. Despite a common belief that Ogham script was a druidical alphabet, it was much more likely inspired by Latin letters introduced through the early Christian writings that were coming to Ireland in the 4th century AD. There are only about four-hundred examples of Ogham inscriptions that have survived today, found primarily in Ireland from the 5th and 6th centuries AD and written in a phase of the Gaelic language known as Primitive Irish. Archaeological evidence of Ogham inscriptions has confirmed the vigorousness of the Dark Age Irish, as examples have been found all over the west coast of Britain, especially in south Wales where the Irish were able to establish themselves for an extended period of time.



*A diagram of the Ogham Alphabet. It is interesting to note that each letter is named after a tree or plant, for example the character representing 'b' is 'beithe,' meaning 'birch.' This tradition is still represented by the Gaelic languages today. The last column of supplemental characters was added late and used little.



            Ogham seems to have disappeared by the 8th century, but not before it could demonstrate a transition in the language from Primitive Irish to Old Irish. Old Irish represents a stage in the gradual evolution of the Gaelic language that includes important changes like the loss of the letter ‘q’ and the reintroduction of the letter ‘p.’

Old Irish was spoken from the 6th century up until the 10th century AD. It was not limited to Ireland, however. Irish-speaking people had begun to carve out a territory for themselves along the western seaboard of present-day Scotland, while others established themselves on the Isle of Man. Perhaps the most significant development of Old Irish was its appropriation into a more communicable system of writing. Priestly Irish scholars adopted the Latin alphabet from their studies so that they could communicate, not just devout teachings, but also the histories, myths, poetry, and sagas of their native land.

The Irish continued to demonstrate their energy and creative aptitudes during this period. We can find Old Irish notes written in the margins of religious, historical, and scientific books that Irish monks were copying (without the invention of printing presses, these books had to be written and copied by hand). These Old Irish notes are found in texts from abbeys as far away as Italy, but the most popular was found in Germany and, in poetic composition, compares the scribal duties of the writer and his cat’s preoccupation while he writes:

Messe ocus Pangur Bán

cechtar nathar fria saindán;

bíth a menma-sam fri seilgg,

mu memna céin im saincherdd.

I and Pangur Bán, my cat

Tis a like task we are at;

Hunting mice is his delight

Hunting words I sit all night.

(*note: translated into English by poet Robin Flower;

attention to rhyme is given with sacrifice to literal meaning)

            Middle Irish, spoken from the 10th to 12th centuries AD, represents a flowering of Gaelic culture begun during the Old Irish period. A vast amount of texts derived from this period are still in existence today and have proved invaluable in grasping the literary and cultural identity of the medieval Irish, as well as an earlier pagan heroic tradition.

            During the 12th century, Gaelic as it was spoken in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man began to diverge, eventually becoming three distinct languages with various dialects. Although language historians date the 12th century as a point of separation, high-levels of interaction between these different geographies slowed the rate at which Gaelic diverged, allowing Gaelic speakers of Ireland and the British Isles to communicate relatively easily up until the 16th and 17th centuries. Even today, some Irish speakers and Scottish-Gaelic speakers can understand each other on a level of mutual intelligibility. I had the fortune of testing this out when, while studying Scottish-Gaelic in Scotland, I found myself having a pint with a Northern Irish student. His particular dialect, Donegal Irish, has even more in common with Scottish-Gaelic than any other contemporary form of Gaelic. Through great stretches of his incomprehensible ranting, no doubt made less comprehensible by subsequent rounds of Guinness, I caught snippets and even whole strings of meaning. We did establish that important phrases like ‘cheers’ (sláinte) and ‘kiss my ass’ (póg mo thóin) were verbatim.

            Up until the 18th century, Gaelic proved to be a very capable medium for artistic expression. Archaic conventions of the language, similar to Middle Irish, were used as a standard for poetic language in Ireland and Scotland. Linguists refer to this as Early Modern Irish or Classical Gaelic.

            Unfortunately, several factors led to a sharp decline in the number of Gaelic speakers. Under British rule, Gaelic was prohibited from being taught in schools, effectively distancing the language from applications in art and science, limiting its ability to adapt to modern conventions. Many British and Irish administrators viewed Irish as backwards, and English, a language with a more comprehensible vernacular in sciences and other modern pursuits, as a venue for progression and prosperity. Perhaps even more catastrophic, the Great Famine struck rural Gaelic speakers worse than the predominately English speaking urban dwellers of Ireland. Large numbers of Gaelic speakers died from starvation or immigrated to places like North America, Australia, and New Zealand. For the most part, Gaelic was not passed on to the next generation of these immigrant Irish. However, an exception exists in Newfoundland, Canada where communities of native speakers can still be found today.

            During the 20th century, Gaelic became a rallying point for Irish identity, independent of British sovereignty. There has been a great deal of public outcry and government support given to Gaelic, and programs established to facilitate the language have met with varying degrees of success. Overall, the number of native speakers has continued to decrease despite these measures to promote the language. Encouragingly, however, the count of secondary speakers has risen. At the current rate, native Irish dialects seem destined for extinction, while the amalgamated construct spoken by learners will replace it. With any luck and a good deal of tenacity, Gaelic will last in some capacity, a living artifact of Ireland’s Celtic past.


Diagram indicating how the Celtic languages fit into the broader Indo-European family.



Kelt or Selt?

Welcome to Celt-Mouth, a blog for those interested in Celtic history, culture, language, and mythology. The purpose of Celt-Mouth, besides giving credence to a master’s degree in Celtic studies, is to amuse and enlighten. I hope you’ll enjoy.

For this first post, I’ve decided to keep things introductory and answer a common preliminary question. I’d have a full fanny-pack by now if I got a penny every time somebody asked me “Is it pronounced Kelt or Selt?” Very valid question and an important thing to know at this stage in the blog.

To get our answer, let’s check the annals. In the 6th century BC, Greek geographer Hecataeus of Miletus describes a group of people that he refers to as Keltoi living in southern France. This term was eventually borrowed into Latin by the Romans, and when Caesar invaded Gaul (the homeland of the Keltoi that Hecataeus described) in the 1st century BC, he referred to the Gauls as Celtae, citing their alleged heritage from Celtus, a son of the legendary Hercules. We must note that the classical Latin in Caesar’s day pronounced any ‘c’ as a hard ‘k’ sound. Therefore, Celtae was pronounced kel-tye. In fact, the name Caesar itself was articulated less like see-zer and more like kai-sar. I guess the Germans had it closer when they granted their head of state the imperial name, but try ordering a Kaiser Salad without sounding like you have a stick lodged in your rectum.
            After Gaul was conquered, its inhabitants took on the language of the new administration and Latin eventually became the principal language of the Gauls, the same people Caesar had described as Celtae. Even after Roman hegemony failed, and the lands once held by the Empire disintegrated into separate kingdoms, Latin survived as a daily language. But it too became something separate. In Gaul, Latin survived even when a Germanic tribe known as the Franks conquered the country. Their legacy lasts in Gaul’s modern name: France. Here, over the centuries, the common variety of Latin being spoken changed through the innovation of subsequent generations into the language we now recognize as the ancestor of modern French. That’s why French (along with Spanish, Italian, and Portugese) is known as a Romance language, not because of the romantic passions associated with French culture, but because it developed from the same Latin language that the Romans spoke.

French introduced Caesar’s word ‘Celtae’ into English as Celtes, the ‘c’ now being softened to an ‘s’ sound. Thus the word Celts first came into English pronounced as selts. Interestingly enough, before the 18th century, the word and all of its predecessors was not used to describe a people other than those of ancient Gaul, and the different societies we think of today as Celtic hardly thought of themselves in the same light. I imagine it would have been hard to convince one tribe that it was kin to the same enemy tribe that regularly stole its cattle and taunted the pride of its warriors. It'd be like trying to remind the English troops of either World War that they were a Germanic people. Even though you might share a common cultural and linguistic heritage as the guy in the opposite trench, it matters little when he's firing high-powered artillery at you.

Beginning in the 1700s, scholars began using the word ‘Celtic’ to categorize similar languages under one linguistic family heading. Those Celtic languages that have survived into modern times, though just barely, are Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh. Some Celtic tongues, like Gaulish, Cornish, and Galatian, were less fortunate and died out along the way.

As scholars dug a little deeper, they drew broader connections between the peoples that shared this common linguistic heritage, so that ‘Celtic’ came to describe more than just speech, but also a shared cultural heritage. However, Celtic did not really become a conscious identity until the mid-19th century as a counterpoint to a perceived, mainstream Anglo-Saxon culture. Supporters of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish independence brought credibility to their cause by distinguishing themselves as Celts and cultivating the concept of an ancient cultural legacy. Ironically, the word ‘Celt’ and its variants had come to them through a filter of French and English. In fact, it did not sound Celtic at all, because a ‘c’ is pronounced like a ‘k’ in Celtic languages, and they were still saying seltic. So, it was appropriated and given a hard beginning sound. Thus, ‘s’ once more became ‘k’.

Today when talking about the peoples, their languages and cultures, the preferred pronunciation is keltic. However, it is expected of sports teams such as Glasgow Celtic and Boston Celtics to be pronounced seltic. Although we make the concession for athletics, ‘Celtic’ is elsewhere used as an adjective to describe something as belonging to or resembling the Celts and the cultural components associated with them. With all of that said, modern dictionaries have once more accommodated our confusion by standardizing both kelt and selt (eventually, even ‘irregardless’ will be a time-honored word). As of today, many dictionaries, the Oxford English and American Heritage Dictionary among them, offer both pronunciations. Personally, I say I am a Celticist with a ‘k,’ or else I would probably be scoffed out of my field. That and my professor once told me, “I swear to you, and I rarely swear, that if you should ever pronounce Celtic with an ‘s’ as in ‘sieze the ears from my skull’ rather than with a ‘k’ as in ‘­kill me now,’ I shall whip out your eye with a hot poker, and ask you kindly to correct yourself.” Lovely old chap.