Name Musings: August 2016

 

Hopefully you've all been enjoying the summer. As September approaches, I'm looking forward to a new class of children (complete with interesting names) and the final release of the 2015 England and Wales statistics. Here are some of the names I've been musing about this August:

 

Verily

Verily is one of my long-standing guilty pleasure names that I discovered whilst trawling through 17th century Norfolk baptisms years ago. I was once again reminded of it recently while cataloging reading books at my school when I came across the name in a dedication. The book was published in the early 2000s, so this example is a pleasantly contemporary sighting for me. 

Verily is a virtue name, taken from an archaic word meaning "truth." This makes it a sister name for Verity, with the same sounds and style, but a much rarer pick. The name has not been registered in England and Wales since the 1970s. 

 

Virtue

Verily always brings to mind my ultimate virtue name: Virtue. I have a real soft spot for this sweet name which dates back to the 16th century and continued in moderate use up until the First World War. It all but died out in Britain in the 1940s and now only really gets used as a middle name. 

 

Cadha

A few weeks ago, Marta contacted me inquiring about the name Cadha, which she was considering for her daughter. The information she had found suggested that it was a Scottish name, pronounced KAY-də, but she wanted to confirm that this was accurate. 

Finding the right answer was quite a conundrum, but an enjoying challenge. 

 

Cadha is a Scots Gaelic word -- often found in place names -- meaning 'narrow passage, pass, hill road'*. It is also sometimes written as Cadh.* Most sources concur that Cadh is CAH or KAY or KYE (with a breathy 'h' sound at the end) depending on regional accents and the same seems to be so for Cadha. The 'dh' in Gaelic is aspirated -- it makes a 'y' or gutteral 'ch' sound like loch -- not a 'd' sound. This can be seen in several anglicised Gaelic place names:

Cabaan = An Cadha Bàn
Camore = An Cadha Mór
Caroy = An Cadha Ruadh
Caw = An Cadha

 

So, officially in Scots Gaelic, Cadha is Ca/Kay/Kye, however, there is anecdotal evidence that non-Gaelic Scottish natives are pronouncing the name either KAY-da or KAY-a. Cadhla and Cadhlea have been used as Gaelicised forms of Kayla/Kyla and Kayley. 

 

The name is rare in Scotland but it has been used. Between 1974-2014, the name has been registered 6 times in Scotland:

2008	G	Cadha	1	#1490
2009	G	Cadha	2	#992
2011	G	Cadha	1	#1496
2013	G	Cadha	1	#1525
2014	G	Cadha	1	#1534

 
Lerryn

Another Celtic place name which I have recently stumbled upon is the name Lerryn, which is the name of a village in Cornwall that lies on the banks of the River Lerryn. It has been used as a unisex name since the 1940s, though it is more commonly used for girls than boys. 

Since 1996, Lerryn has ranked only five times (with a birth count of 3+) in England and Wales and has never been given to more than four girls in any given year. 

 

Maolán

I came across the surname Mullins recently, and it reminded me of the route name Maolán, originally Maelán in Old Irish. The meaning is debated. It possibly relates to the prefix Mael meaning "tonsored one, devoted one, shaven-headed" which usually related to a friar or monk, however another popular theory is that it means "a warrior." It was borne by Maelan mac Cathmogha (d. 848), King of Maigh Seóla.

The name is pronounced MAY-lan, which is fairly intuitive and halfway between Mason and Dylan sound-wise. 

 

Zakomo

Ringo Starr is a great-grandfather! In August, Ringo's granddaughter Tatia Starkey gave birth to a son whom she named Stone Zakomo Low. Zakomo is an intriguing middle name addition and I would love to know what inspired it. As far as I can find Zakomo is a place in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but I'm not sure that that was the sparking inspiration. It does sound very reminiscent of Giacomo, and is perhaps an international variant. I wonder if the true inspiration, however, is Ringo's son Zak Starkey, Tatia's father. He is just Zak, but perhaps Zakomo was a deliberate elaboration to avoid the choppy Stone Zak Low.