Odhrán

Well, to me Odhrán means an animal of grey-brown colour.

tom_tarbucket wrote: »

jaysus, right, thanks for input

Just checked Dineen's dictionary, yeah, a cream coloured horse. Although I have heard it used to refer to any grew-brown animal. It is an old personal name, couple of hundred years old.

Odhar means anything which is grey-brown. So Odhrán is literally: Little grey-brown thing (although -án always meant a living thing in older forms of Irish)

As a name: Little grey-brown haired guy.

tom_tarbucket wrote: »

Thanks, what do you mean by an old "personal " name ?

I assume you are wondering about the "personal" part. It would originally have been the person's entire name.

hullaballoo wrote: »

I know what you mean by this but perhaps you could go into a bit more detail for other people's benefit. It's always interesting reading your more detailed posts.

No problem.

Essentially the name Odhrán dates to at least the 6th century, although spelling variations would suggest it is older (i.e. there was probably a Primitive Irish version of the name).

At this point in time, outside of the nobility, the average person would not have possessed a surname. Their name would at its fullest simply be stated along the lines of "Seán of the people of Duibne", often "of an area/god", but this was not a surname with any legal status or day to day meaning, simply a fact, just as "from Dublin" is not considered part of a person's name today.
An individual would have only been known as Odhrán, nothing more.

Patronymic additions began to be used in the 800s, things like:

Seán Mac Aodha (with Aodh in the genitive) Seán, Aodh's son.

However these were not hereditary, again simply a fact (i.e. Seán was Aodh's son) and not invariant across the same generation, as Seán's brother could easily have been:

Seosamh Ó Séadna = Seosamh, Séadna's grandson. With Séadna being Aodh's father, let's say.

Irish surnames formed during 900-1200 during a time when Brehon law expanded and reorganised (this was contemporary with the reorganisation of the Bardic orders).

tom_tarbucket wrote: »

How would you pronounce Odhrán ?

I've uploaded it here:
http://www.forvo.com/word/odhr%C3%A1n/

AnLonDubh wrote: »

No problem.

Essentially the name Odhrán dates to at least the 6th century, although spelling variations would suggest it is older (i.e. there was probably a Primitive Irish version of the name).

At this point in time, outside of the nobility, the average person would not have possessed a surname. Their name would at its fullest simply be stated along the lines of "Seán of the people of Duibne", often "of an area/god", but this was not a surname with any legal status or day to day meaning, simply a fact, just as "from Dublin" is not considered part of a person's name today.
An individual would have only been known as Odhrán, nothing more.

Patronymic additions began to be used in the 800s, things like:

Seán Mac Aodha (with Aodh in the genitive) Seán, Aodh's son.

However these were not hereditary, again simply a fact (i.e. Seán was Aodh's son) and not invariant across the same generation, as Seán's brother could easily have been:

Seosamh Ó Séadna = Seosamh, Séadna's grandson. With Séadna being Aodh's father, let's say.

Irish surnames formed during 900-1200 during a time when Brehon law expanded and reorganised (this was contemporary with the reorganisation of the Bardic orders).

Excellent post, but I would contest the date of 800 as earliest for Patronymic, we have several examples of use of in archaic Irish (ogham) where formula is "X MAQI Y" (x son of Y)

Obviously you see alot in the form of "X MAQI MUCOI Y" (X son of the "tribe" Y), as well as some that are "X MAQI Y MAQI MUCOI Z" (X son of Y of the "tribe" Z).

There's also the use of "AVI" for Uí in ogham.

It's probable though as you mentioned that the form "X of tribe Y" was dominant means of expressing oneself in the pre-christian period.

Obviously though as you mention these aren't surnames in our modern sense of word, modern Icelanders follow basically this practise still, as you mentioned Irish surnames really become fixed from 9-10th century onwards,

I've put Odhrán, the word it is based on "odhar", and that word's genitive "oidhre" up on Forvo, I hope that helps:

http://www.forvo.com/user/AnLonDubh/

There would be a difference pronunciation for Odhrán in Cork, with the á being very heavy and long sounding, I had that originally, but I've changed it to the Kerry one here as the Cork one is very particular to the dialect.

Well there's some debate that Italic and Celtic formed a "paragroup" within western Eurasian dialects of Proto-Indo-European. Some people rubbish the idea but they do seem closer related to each then either to Germanic.

Closest written language to Archaic Irish is probably Gaulish (apart from the sound-shift of kw -> p), it also shows the lack of Goidelic sound shift of V/W -> f
Vindos (proto-Celtic) -> Find (O. Irish) -> Fionn
In Brythonic this sound shifted to "gw", thence gwen/gwyn and fionn are cognates.

Good example in Ogham is: VELITAS -> Filed (o. Irish) -> File (m. Irish)

Still Latin is a good analogy, the language of Ogham stones is to modern Irish what the inscription on the Arch of Titus is to modern Italian