Hello,

I was surfing the web in the hopes of finding somewhere (or someone) to translate my name into gaelic. Hopefully this is the place!

My name is Peter Robert Lawless

If you can help me in translating this I would appreciate it.

thank you very much,

Peter L.

If you mean into Irish (Gaeilge) then it would be
Peadar Roibéard Ó Laighléis

Don't mean to be pedantic, a Aonghuis, but I
think the síne fada in 'Roibéard' is actually over the letter 'a';'Roibeárd'.Other than that your translation seems perfect to me.
I could be wrong though, anyone?

Quite possibly. I have to confess to frequent misplaced fadas. School is a long time back...á sounds more correct.

Yes, the fada should be over the 'a', although I've more frequently seen it written without
any fada: Riobeard.

Oops, I meant Roibeard.

That's more than likely because the writer wasn't prepared to write, or didn't care about, the síne fada.Such is the english world very often.
'Seán', has a síne fada and rightfully should always have one, but in all honesty you don't see one unless it's a completely irish language context.I've never seen it on Sean Connery's name for instance.

A chairde: Mas e bhur dtoil e, cad e "sine fada"?

Sin é an t-ainm oifigiúil ar an marc sin a chuirtear that ghutaí áirithe sa ghaeilge= á é í ó ú.An dtuigeann tú?

Could someone translate my name? How do you know how? My name is Amanda Louise Trancoso. Thanks!

You can't "translate" names. But there are equivalent names in English for common Irish names in Ireland and vice versa.
These are usually not "translations" but just other names picked for a name.

Sometimes these are based on the name being a biblical one e.g. John/Seán or Seamus/James.

But sometimes they have nothing to do with each other, e.g. Diarmuid is sometimes "translated" Jeremiah.

I don't know offhand what the Irish equivalent for Amanda (which means beloved) is, nor for Louise, and as for Trancoso....

There is a book called Irish Names for Children, you might find an equivalent for your first names there. I don't have my books here yet, so I can't give you an ISBN, but the Author is Patrick Woulfe.

Yes, you wonder who originally came up with these translations. My Mum's name is Úna, but her birth certificate lists it as Winifred, which is the English "translation". I can't fathom why Úna/Oonagh is equated to Winifred. Presumably the convention in Ireland of having English equivalents for Irish names goes back to pre-Independence days when all names had to be registered as Béarla.

Perhaps the webmaster/mistress could ask permission to add Róisín Dubh's excellent page to Seosamh 101.

Tá an láíthréan sin an mhaith.
Maith thú, a Chreabhair!
Aonghus

I saw this explanation once for the Úna/Winifred translation. I can't remember where, but it was some scholarly source.

Úna was originally translated (or transliterated, maybe) as Wony/Wuny/Wonny. This was close to Winnie, hence Winifred.

If Úna were to be translated at all, it should surely be as Agnes, both deriving as they do from the word Lamb.

Taitníonn an suíomh liom liom, a Chreabhair. Bail ó Dhia ar an obair!

A Laigheanach:Tuigim agus go raibh maith agat as d'fhreagra.

Drawing equivalence between names starts, I guess, as soon as people of two cultures come into contact. Christianity gave trememdous impetus to the process. Christians started to name children after heroes and saints of the church way back and Christian names eventually became a requirement, at least in places. Then as now, everyone knows that every language with significant numbers of Christians has its own equivalent of Joseph, James, Mary, etc. and people start to translate them. You can't stop them. That's only part of it.

Later the refusal of the British to recognize names in Irish meant everyone, even the unlettered, had to have an English name handy.

All this means that there are not only equivalents for any fairly common Irish or English names. There are often multiple equivalents that can vary by region and district. It's quite interesting and adds to the richness of the tradition: Gobnait is the equivalent of Deborah (as some of you will remember from the great debate on names on the Gaelic-L or A list tamall siar) because the Irish saint (or whatever) Gobnait kept bees and "Deborah" means "bee" in Hebrew.

Now I have to get some work done on this important new work of mine, er, ours.