Does there exist a suffix or a prefix in the Irish language that I could affix to a name that would mean “Mother of” or “____'s mother” the way that Johnson would mean “John’s son”?
If not in Irish, does such a thing exist in any other Gaelic language? In fact, if you know of it in any language at all, that would be helpful.
I don’t know the answer, but I can offer a suggestion for where to find it. You might be able to find titles for the Virgin Mary in religious materials, including possibly something along the lines of “Mother of God”.
Hm, I found the Hail Mary written in Irish Gaelic, and it translates “Mother of God” as two words: “Máthair Dé.”
I’d still prefer to say it in one word, but if I just said “Máthair Aoife” that would be understood as “Mother of Aoife” and not just “Mother Aoife”?
The prefix ‘ni’ in Gaelic and ‘ferch’ in Welsh indicate ‘daughter of’ if I recall correctly. I can’t seem to find an easily digested reference for you, though.
The patronymics and matronymics are common, but I can’t think of any forms for ‘father of’ or ‘mother of’. Names are generally derived from the older generation. But I’m no big expert.
In Arabic “Umm _____” is used to mean “the mother of _____”; e.g., a woman has a son named “Khalid” thereafter may be known as “Umm Khalid”. (The corresponding term for “father of” is “Abu”.)
In Icelandic, …dottir means daughter of … . I can’t think of any language that has a suffix or prefix for mother of or father of, though.
“Ni” or “Nic” (don’t know when you use the different spelling - think it might have something to do with the surname beginning with a vowel) means “daughter of”, and is the female equivalent of “O’”, which in itself is a compression of “Oag” (IIRC).
A female e.g. Grainne Ni Nuadhain, might have a brother e.g. Padraig O’Nuadhain.
At least this is as far as I can work out - proper Irish people will no doubt come and correct me.
Dunno about “mother of”.
In Hindi or Urdu you put the phrase ki ma after the name.
Oh yeah, about Irish. You wanted to know how to show the possessive sense of “of”, and not just simple apposition. For this you have to put the following name into the genitive case. There are several different masculine and feminine noun declensions in Irish, using different forms for the genitive. IAMNAIL, but if you tell me specifically what name you want to say the mother of, maybe I can help find what declension it is.
Sometimes the genitive singular is made by inserting -i- into a word. For example, the genitive of bád ‘boat’ is báid ‘of the boat’. Sometimes the genitive is made by adding -a at the end. For example, the genitive of gnólacht ‘company’ is gnólachta But for some words the genitive is no different from the base form. Since the example you asked about, Aoife, already has an i in it, and ends with a vowel, maybe it’s analogous to bearna ‘gap’, of which the genitive is also bearna. I don’t know. My Irish dictionary doesn’t list proper names.
Cessandra, going by analogy, Aoine ‘Friday’ is of the feminine fourth declension, in which apparently the genitive singular is the same form as the nominative singular. Since it differs by only one letter, I’m guessing that the feminine name Aoífe works the same way.
Then ‘Mother of Aoífe’ would be Máthair Aoífe (note: don’t omit the accent marks!), pronounced approximately “maaher eeva”. How do you tell this apart from the apposition “Mother Aoífe”? I don’t know… context?
In Persian, to say ‘mother of’, you simply put mâdar-e before the name.
Swedish might be language worth checking out as i believe many children actually take the mothers, rather than fathers surname. Although granted this is the surname. And of course the scandanavians are perhaps the most common to have suffixed with ‘son’.
None of this is probably useful, only looked at the thread as i am Irish. But alas the only gaelic most of us know these days is ‘Pog ma thoin’.
Ah, the tuiseal guineadach (‘genitive case’ in Irish). One of the many many reasons the languge has remained mostly incomprehensible to me despite twelve years of it in school.
Here’s more than you would ever want to know about the genitive case in Irish:
http://www.contemporarypoetry.com/brain/lang/irisha12.html
For example:
Got that? It s a bit like: ‘put your coat on the lower peg after lunch before saying your prayers unless you have a younger brother and you won’t be attending rugby practise otherwise your brother should put his coat on the upper peg, and you should write your letter home’.
I’ve never heard of a prefix for ‘mother of’ in Irish though, but I’m not the best source, as evidently, I know more about Monty Python, than my mother tongue.
And according to the page below its spelt ‘tuiseal ginideach’. See? No idea.
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~eofeasa/level04/ceacht404/miniu/404f.htm
Nope. Not particularly common in Sweden. Iceland however uses -dottir per default. If John and Linda have kids (Paul and Yoko), they would be Paul Johnson and Yoko Lindasdottir (I think the Iclandic use one ‘s’ in son, they may well use two as in Sweden or ‘sen’ as in Norway and Denmark.
What you may be thinking of is that children born to mothers who are not married to their fathers (fairly common with Swedens cohabitation laws), is that the child takes the mothers surname per default, unless the parents request otherwise.
I should note that in recent years it has become a little more common for adult women to change their names to Whateversdotter (Swedish word for daughter) either as a feminist thang, or for other reasons.
Wow, lots of information.
First, a question:
Are you sure Aoífe has an accent over the i? I didn’t see it written that way in the baby names lists, but if it does I’ll be sure to use it. We are considering naming our next child Aoífe, and I don’t want to screw her name up!
Secondly, the reason I was asking this. Like I said, I am considering naming our next child Aoífe, and I was also looking for a new screenname. I sort of like Máthair Aoífe. Nielaine (since my mom’s name is Elaine) looks kind of neat, too, but I think it’d be weird having my mom’s name in my username.
Thanks for the info on the other languages, but I’m not sure I like any of those. But I appreciate the info!
Cessandra, I’m not 100% sure, but I used Google to search on Aoíne-with-the-accent, and got many hits. (Of course, I got hits without the accent too, but that’s to be expected because of all the people who don’t put in the accents when they’re s’posed to.) If it weren’t meant to have an accent, then I shouldn’t have gotten any hits when I searched the accented version. Did your baby name book use accents on the other Irish names? Did it have Caitlín or Caitlin? Máire or Maire? If it didn’t use accents in these names, it isn’t reliable for Irish spelling. I think you need to look it up in a book on Irish mythology that was published in Ireland, so that you will not be in any doubt.
Also, find someone who really truly knows Irish grammar to verify that the genitive of Aoífe is Aoífe. I think it probably is, but I’m not 100% on that either. Ask our ruadh.
I’m not Icelandic, but I always thought that you took your father’s name as your last name, so Paul would be Paul Johnson and Yoko would be Yoko Johndottir.
Jomo, I don’t remember if there were accents on the other names. I went to so many many sites, and then someone recommended this name to me, but she spelled it wrong because I couldn’t find it anywhere. So I Googled “Irish Eve Baby Names” and saw “Aiofe” over and over in the results, so I just hit the first page to be sure. I’ll go look at some other sites and see.
Hrm… I figured it out. Perhaps Aiobh is not as popular or something, but when this friend told it to me, I could not find it. All I could find was Aoife. But now I see that they are BOTH names, and Aiobh is “Eve” while Aoife is “Eva.” This site does not put accents on either name.
So, now, do you have any clues about Máthair Aiobh, which is the name I actually want?
Aoife is a name from old Gaelic mythology.
Sounds very much like a Gaelic version of Eve; so does Aoibh, but aoibh is a native Gaelic word meaning ‘smile’ or ‘pleasant’. In fact, aoife and aoibh are variant forms of the same word. It seems that the site you linked to has confused this native Irish word with the Biblical name for Eve, which comes from Hebrew .Havvah ‘living’ (no connection with “Hava Nagila,” which uses a different Hebrew letter h). Googling around, I see a lot—a lot—of people have made the same confusion.
I looked up the Irish version of Eve in the Bible, and it’s spelled Éabha (pronounced “ay-va”; note the accented É). My Irish dictionary says it’s the feminine 4th declension, which means the genitive is the same as the nominative.
My dictionary also included the genitive phrase síol Éabha, literally ‘the progeny of Eve’, meaning the human race. This shows that the genitive of Éabha is indeed Éabha. There you go, Máthair Éabha.