Dia sibh!

(Or is that the correct plural salute?)

This may be one of the dumbest ideas that ever occurred to me, but I thought it might be interesting to try and spell some Finnish names the Irish way... for both fun and learning the glide vowels and some exceptions too.

I have read this site:
http://www.standingstones.com/gaelpron.html
which was my primary aid when I began from nothing in May. However, it only gives simplified pronunciation rules.

First thing of interest, what vowel would you use when you needed to pronounce a broad, clear S before E? This I would need to transcribe my own surname.

Another that comes into my mind right now, is when you need to consecutively pronounce pure vowels that in the Irish spelling form a comnbination (like AO or EA).

I have a feeling that a direct transcription is impossible, but i want it as close as it gets. One problem mihgt be that Finns use Y as a third slender vowel (german Ü is closest). Also the best Irish counterpart for Ä might be EA, but for Ö, I don't know what.

In advance, go raibh mait agat!

Dia daoibh. :)

http://www.daltai.com/grammar/pp.htm

Dia daoibh. :)

also: go raibh maith agat.

Go raibh maith agaibh, a Domhnall agus Pádraig! B)

(Now, should I have lenited? I guess so... Dhomhnall, Phadraig?)

Yes that H was intended but my finger refused from hitting the key all the way.

I printed out the table of p.p. so I now have a reference ready at hand.

Any suggestions for answers to the original questions?

BTW the closest Irish name for me might be Seán... and my surname could loosely translate into English as "Grove of spruces"... any suggestions for a translation?

(Now, should I have lenited? I guess so... Dhomhnall, Phadraig?)

Yes, and slenderised where possible, e.g. "a Dhomhnaiill".

Oh, and as for "spruce grove", I know that earlier Irish had collective suffixes for stands of trees but I don't think these are productive any longer; your best bet is probably to hope Dennis comes along. There does seem to be some precedent for collectives in -ach (e.g. drisleach "brambles, briars", giúsach "fir, pine", etc.) so I would tentatively suggest *sprúsach.

(Of course, Irish surnames are overwhelmingly patronymic in origin. I can't think of a single example of one derived from a toponym, but perhaps there were regions where people were informally known by house names.)

(Message edited by Domhnaillín_Breac_na_dTruslóg on September 07, 2008)

Failte, a Churiousfinn to the mad, mad, maddening land of spelling and pronunciation rules that defy all logic in the English speaking world.

Obviously no need to slenderize Pádraig, but you might take advantage of the "help with fadas box at the bottom of the "add your message box" below.

As to your initial question, in your place, I would keep my original name in my native language for the same reason I proudly explain to anyone who'll listen that the boys at Ellis Island stole my Grandfather's name in 1876, and that before that happened it was MacEachmharcaigh. Unfortunately, all that usually gets me is a blank stare.

To answer your original question, a Fhinn, Irish back vowels have fronted allophones in proximity to slender consonants. For details, see this summary. They are probably never as fully fronted as the chief allophones of the front rounded vowels of Finnish, but they may well be close enough to be perceived that way. (Listen to some recordings and judge for yourself. Ciúin "quiet" should be a relatively easy word to find in song lyrics. How close does this sound to a theoretical Finnish *kyyn?) Even using this workaround, there's no foolproof transcription for ö because eoi would naturally be pronounced long rather than short due to the rarity of /o/ between slender consonants in Irish.

For [æ] (Finnish ä), I would go with a flanked by slender consonants. Deain, for instance, would come out fairly close to the normative pronunciation of the common give name "Dan".

(Message edited by Domhnaillín_Breac_na_dTruslóg on September 07, 2008)

Scríobh Pádraig:

you might take advantage of the "help with fadas box

Missed the fada key by a couple micrometers. Very common with me, a hardware problem. Will require some software patching, perhaps reducing typing rate. B)

Obviously no need to slenderize Pádraig

If I compose a list of names like recently, do I lenite all of them, or only the first? And apparently, the last vowel of Pádraig is already slender, but in Domhnall it isn't, hence I would slenderise the latter?

I would keep my original name in my native language for the same reason I proudly explain to anyone who'll listen that the boys at Ellis Island stole my Grandfather's name in 1876, and that before that happened it was MacEachmharcaigh. Unfortunately, all that usually gets me is a blank stare.

You know what, I have an intriguing story behind my name too. When I was young, I carried my dad's last name which would have been "pine grove". Mom and dad divorced, she was given custody (thank god) and we took her maiden name some years later, which I now use after 17 years. But the trick here is, that my current name isn't originally related to trees at all. It came from a Polish sailor some centuries ago, and was bent into the Finnish mouths to sound like the closest similar word. Guys at school wouldn't first off believe at all, because it appeared that I switched trees.

---

Scriobh Domhnaillín:

Irish surnames are overwhelmingly patronymic in origin. I can't think of a single example of one derived from a toponym, but perhaps there were regions where people were informally known by house names

There are few patronymic surnames here too, but they are mostly direct translations of foreign names that come from Norway, Denmark etc... original Finnish patronyms and matronyms were more often given as second names, and sometimes the gender boundaries were omitted, you could give a patronym to a daughter (or vice versa, not as frequent though). We have very original toponymic surnames like mine, and most of them are obviously forest or water related. Then there are many surnames that relate a person to descend from a house, from a village, city, other country... But at least allegedly, the most common surname is Virtanen, "little stream".

I have translated "Braonáin" as "Tippanen" because I read it would be just that - a diminutive drop. By that logic, "Virtanen" would translate "Srutháin".

---

Back to the topic, which I must percolate further. Is there a broad vowel to insert between S and E to "broadify" the S, and which would become a silent glide?

And apparently, the last vowel of Pádraig is already slender, but in Domhnall it isn't, hence I would slenderise the latter?

That's the rule as I understand it.

HOWEVER! Isn't it the case that you only slenderize the final syllable of only men's names, not women's? Anybody?

Scríobh Domhnaillín:

Listen to some recordings and judge for yourself. Ciúin "quiet" should be a relatively easy word to find in song lyrics. How close does this sound to a theoretical Finnish *kyyn?

Haven't listened, but that might sound close... and without the fada, it would apparently be shorter...

BTW, "kyyn" isn't that theoretical... it's the singular genitive of the viper snake. B)

quote:

I have translated "Braonáin" as "Tippanen" because I read it would be just that - a diminutive drop. By that logic, "Virtanen" would translate "Srutháin".

Hang on a minute. Braonáin is in the genitive case, a form it normally only has after Ó "descendent". It can't function as a surname on its lonesome.

Non-patronymic Irish surnames (many of which are of foreign origin) appear always in the nominative-accusative, e.g. Breatnach "Walsh/Branagh", Cundún "Condon", Seoigheach "Joyce", etc. So I would expect Sruthán, with a broad final vowel, or even Sruthánach (with an relational suffix).

quote:

Back to the topic, which I must percolate further. Is there a broad vowel to insert between S and E to "broadify" the S, and which would become a silent glide?

Tricky question. It depends on whether the sound is long or short and what follows it.

Long is rather straightforward: ae before broad consonants and aei before slender. But short is a different matter. The digraph oi can be pronounced /e/, but only before certain consonants (which ones varies by dialect). In addition, the vowel is often subject to raising. So scoil is /skel'/ in some varieties and /skol'/ in others. Croiceann may be pronounced with /o/ by some people and /e/ by others--even within the same dialect!

Raising also applies to ai in some circumstances, so this may also represent /e/. Saibhir "rich" is pronounced /'sev'ir'/ in West Cork, but this is something of an exception--normally, bh in the middle of a word like that would give rise to a diphthong.

(Message edited by Domhnaillín_Breac_na_dTruslóg on September 07, 2008)

Ciúin "quiet" should be a relatively easy word to find in song lyrics.

Something springs immediately to mind! Namely, the chorus to Siúil A Rún:

Siúil, siúil, siúil a rún
Siúil go sochair agus siúil go ciúin
Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom
Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán

You can hear it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZP-4B7kHqA

Scríobh Domhnaillín:

Hang on a minute. Braonáin is in the genitive case, a form it normally only has after Ó "descendent". It can't function as a surname on its lonesome.

OK, let's rethink... A now non-formal but historically common expression for Antti Virtanen, "Virtasen Antti" (Anthony of Little Stream) would have "Virtanen" in the genitive, and could then translate to "Antaín Ó Srutháin"?

Of course I may have messed up the fadas again, and I'm assuming that Antaín and Anthony are the closest names to Antti, not trying to translate them... we have plenty of names that are foreign loandwords originally, then a lot of original Finnish names that have long lost their meaning outside of their use as names. Then, there's a fashion of giving nice sounding words as names, almost regardless of their meaning. But I guess all of this and previously mentioned naming fashions happen all around the world.

No, Ó signals descent from.

"Antaine na Glaise" would be my suggestion, Glas being a brook. (little stream)

A Dhomhnaill,

Listened to the song, and yes, ciúin seems to have a long Y noise. And it's a nice song too.

Also I noticed that "siúin" sounds like a long U was in it... is there an exception of rules (or even a rule of exception) if the sound before IÚI is changed by the slender vowel or not (C would sound K anyway while S sounds SH)?

A Aonghus,

I guess all of this doesn't necessarily translate correctly anyway. "Virtasen Antti" would be an Antti who descended from the house named for the little stream it was by, or from a father who carried the surname Virtanen already, by descending from that house, even if he had moved deep in a forest before meeting Antti's mother. Our surnames are now mostly "familial".

And then, originally I was looking for possible transcriptions. By what I have got so far, "Cúsaila" or "Cúsaela" might fall somewhat close to how my surname is pronounced in Finnish. My first name could perhaps come close to "Dhiussoi" (if sleder DH sounded like Y in you, then if O was needed before I to make the double S broad).

But as said before, my first name is closest to Irish Seán, and my last name might translate approximately as Sprúsach.

Well now I've got to drink my coffee and go. I'll be back when I'm at my pictúrlann and the show is running so I have free time.

(Message edited by curiousfinn on September 08, 2008)

I understand that, and Ó|Mac Glaise would be possible.

But it is hard to transpose the habits of one set of naming conventions to another.

I don't advise on transliterations for the same reason I avoid pronunications! (I find it hard to analyse them)

There's a certain poetry to "Seán an Sprúsaigh". In any case, you see why I chose to adopt a nickname rather than attempt to Gaelicise my actual surname.

Another nickname I use is "Domhnall Liaim Liaim", which reflects the informal patronymic usage of the southwest. Literally, this is "Donal of Liam of Liam" and reflects the fact that both my father and his father were called "Liam" (or, rather, its approximate English equivalent, "Bill").

One final note on adaptations like "Cúsaila/Cúsaela": Another problem for transcribing vowels is the vowel reduction of Irish, which is in some cases even more extreme than that of English. If you write a short vowel in anything but the stressed syllable, it will be reduced to [ə] or [ɪ] according to the nature of the surrounding consonants.

The only way to preserve the quality is to transcribe a long vowel, as in the second case. But here you run up against other complications, like the Munster stress rule that relocates stress to the second of two long syllables in cases like this. I would naturally read "Cúsaela" as /ku:'se:lə/, which is pretty far from what you're trying to capture. The transcription works well for Ulster, however, where unstressed long vowels are shortened but not reduced.

(On a side note, "Cúsaila" also violates the rule of caol le caol agus leathan le leathan. If you want to keep the /l/ from becoming "dark", it would have to be "Cúsailea", which comes out something like ['ku:sˠəlʲə].)

Scríobh Domhnaillín,

I would naturally read "Cúsaela" as /ku:'se:lə/, which is pretty far from what you're trying to capture.

The Finnish pronunciation for "Kuusela" would be somewhat "ku:sela" but as far as it goes, the English people who tried without transliteration, haven't come much closer. Maybe this is the closest you can get.

I knew it wasn't a good idea after all, but now that I started playing with it...

I live in a city called "Akaa". "Acá" would perhaps get closest, but it's a long A, not with an "aw" characteristic...

I work in a city called "Valkeakoski". Because they actually attempted to re-dub it "Walkiakoski" as it was by an old spelling convention, perhaps "Bhalciacosci" would be rather close. Only the W would be a V in pronunciation, and the Irish IA has a long I and short A. Still you would need to slenderize the initial, "Bhialciacosci"... would the I after BH be voiced or otherwise have a significant effect on the sound of the A? I know that BH or MH would be pronounced slender anyway if the broad pronounciation would prove hard.

As a side note, the old Agricolan spelling actually separated slender and broad to an extent in the spelling, this affected the relations of C to S and K especially (a very Latin way). Then at some point of time it used C in a very Irish way, initial C was almost always pronounced K, nowadays the original Finnish words only use K and S as needed, no C.

Well, I'm already starting to like my new Irish name... Sean Ó/Mac/an Sprúsaigh... perhaps Ó because that sounds more Irish to me... From a little kid I have thought that Scots use Mac... well now I know better.

(Message edited by curiousfinn on September 08, 2008)

(Message edited by curiousfinn on September 08, 2008)

quote:

I work in a city called "Valkeakoski". Because they actually attempted to re-dub it "Walkiakoski" as it was by an old spelling convention, perhaps "Bhalciacosci" would be rather close. Only the W would be a V in pronunciation, and the Irish IA has a long I and short A. Still you would need to slenderize the initial, "Bhialciacosci"... would the I after BH be voiced or otherwise have a significant effect on the sound of the A? I know that BH or MH would be pronounced slender anyway if the broad pronounciation would prove hard.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. If you're aiming for Finnish [a] rather than Irish [ɑ] here, I would recommend "Bheal". This will also preserve the [v] quality of bh even in those dialects (e.g. Connacht) where broad bh/mh is generally [w]. And, again, you're violating a fundamental rule of Irish spelling by writing cosci rather than coscai (which looks better to me as coscaí, even though the vowel isn't long in Finnish).

But the name is so beautifully transparent in Finnish, why not simply rechristen it "Dílegheal"?

Would that mean "white rapids" in some sense?

Actually, díle is more like "flood". "Rapids" would technically be fánsruth, but this isn't a word that shows up in place names. Perhaps someone else can think up a more appropriate equivalent.

Geal is a good equivalent for valtea, however, because it contains the sense of both "white" and "bright".

Heh, now that we got this far...

My home city has the name of a former county which contained the two current towns and many more... now it consists of Toijala and Viiala, which have their etymologies... allegedly Toijala got its name from Russian stoi because it was a central area where people stoied a lot. Viiala is apparently "VII ala" (7th area of some division scheme of the county) although it's known worldwide for its files, called "viila" in Finnish. The former county of Akaa had its name allegedly derived from "akuaa" < "aqua" in the Agricolan times because the land is very broken up by different water systems. So an approximate Irish translation might be "Uisce". LOL

We have a surname "Valkeapää" which translates "Fairhead" in English - wouldn't that be "Fionn" in Irish?

(Message edited by curiousfinn on September 08, 2008)

Boy do those all sound like popular etymologies! Russian influence in the area is extremely recent and scant, so anything that relies on borrowing a Russian word is suspicious, as is anything that requires an abbreviation like "VII". I wouldn't trust either of these, nor one that invokes Latin aqua.

A more literal translation of "Fairhead" would be ceannann, which is a contraction of "ceannfhionn". I haven't heard this as a surname outside of "Ó Con Cheanainn" (lit. "descendant of the fairheaded [i.e. white-face] hound").

I don't think these etymologies are water tight either, LOL. There are other suggestions too, and even if plausible, they have flaws in their logic too. One theory says Viiala was named after the files, but I know they haven't been manufactured here for much longer than a hundredsome years. The factory quit here in 1996. A historical division of the Akaa county is far more plausible, yet I know, unlikely. A similar theory says that Toijala became from "toi ala", that area, but such dialect that uses "toi" instead of "tuo" is very fresh, and the town was there far before. Also the Akaa county was here and called closely like that before Agricola introduced the Finnish Holy Bible and reformed the language. Down the dumpster with those.

There are other explanations than "spruce grove" for the Finnish word that is my surname now, one of them "6. ala" or "kuu(de)s ala" for "sixth area", but it falls to the same category with "VII ala". That would also require mixed numbering conventions for the time, and afterall, my grandad moved here from Turku after WW2 and at least it is not related to any division area of Akaa. Currently "spruce grove" is approximately closest to truth. The Polish origin where the name was adopted from has been reserached and tracked down to a Kucera or Kucela.

There are plenty of theories around, that are just theories, some more plausible than others. One theory I recently read says that most of the currently known Europe area was once inhabitated by Finnic peoples, and the Indo-Aryan peoples squeezed the Finnic to remote locales, like current Scandinavia - and, huh, the British and Irish isles. Also that theory states the Celts were the first indo-Europeans to come together with the Finnic...

Obviously that theory came from a person of Finnish descent, so plenty of that, if not all, is most probably ethnical pride talking. OTOH it gives a good quality to the Celts compared to other Indo-Europeans. B) Thinking over it, that would vaguely explain some similar words in our languages, though.

It's one thing to play with bizarre ideas, one thing to think outside the box, and yet one thing to take for the truth everything that sounds vaguely plausible. And therefore, we must consider that while there most certainly is an etymology behind all names of places, things, and people, plenty of them have changed meanings by now, and plenty have lost their meanings.

But yes, translations are hard, transliterations perhaps even more so, best off sticking to what we have or translating the best choice. Seán Ó Sprúsaigh works well for me if I need to Gaelicize.

Go raibh maith agaibh!