Hello everyone,

I am trying to do a project involving Ogham and I've attempted online translation but wanted to double check...

First I needed to word "American" translated into Irish, I got Meiriceánach...then I need that word translated into Ogham put I can't post a picture of what I have to confirm. I'll try in comments...but, am I way off on the English-Irish translation first off?

any help would be appreciated!

yeah, I can't figure out how to put a picture in the comments...

But either way, I still need help!

I'd love to help but you'll have to wait for expert opinion.

Firstly, meiriceánach does indeed mean American.

ᚋᚓᚔᚏᚔᚉᚓᚐᚅᚐᚉᚆ

These are the letters of meiriceanach rendered in ogam. There's no way to represent the accent over the á in ogam, unfortunately, and as it's a recent word (relative to the usage of ogam) there's no older alternative that may be substituted. In modern Irish, spelling the word without the accent mark would mean it is misspelled but there's not much that can really be done about it in this case.

You may like to play around with the tool in the top right corner of this webpage which will allow you to write things using the Latin alphabet, and it will change them into ogam script for you.

It appears to be the same thing you and I have come up with, but I did not make the connection about the accent. I know the translations are limited so I will try and find a more simple word I can use.

Thank you for your help!

As far as I can tell, that looks good to me, too. It seems, from looking at the stone inscriptions, that the accent (lengthening of vowels) was ignored.

I would like it to be as accurate as possible given that that word wouldn't have even existed yet... I was trying to make it work but don't feel to comfortable "making up a word" now, as I once did.

I've seen a few phrases online (yes, not the best research tool sometimes) that seem to have in fact been written in Ogham that I may use instead and change the project around...

One I like was "alive like fire"... anyone familiar with that one..?

You've all been great helping me out with this!!!

Just to be clear, Meirceánach is not a "made up" word, any more so than any other word in any language. It is perfectly acceptable to render it in ogam. However, because the American continent wasn't discovered until almost a thousand years after ogam stopped being written on stones, the word, of course, wasn't in use at the time.

If you're looking for a high degree of accuracy in what you want to render in ogam, your options are limited. If you only want to use language from the time of the ogam stones, you will need to get a translation first not merely into Irish, but into Archaic Irish or Old Irish. While this may be more authentic, it will be much more difficult to translate or confirm something in Old Irish, and impossible in Archaic Irish.

As this is for a college project you may want to be this accurate. If so, you should know that writing on ogam stones typically follows a very strict format. It is nearly always the name of a person, or a group of people, in the genitive case, "(stone) of X son of Y". There are a number of great examples on this website if you feel like looking through them.

If, however, you want to translate something of your own creation, and render that in ogam, my suggestion would be to stick with modern Irish. More people will be able to understand something in modern Irish, as the language is still in active use, and more people here will be able to help you translate your idea, and confirm each other's translations. If what you're looking for is a single word or concept which isn't of modern invention (like: television, rocket, telephone, american) there may be an attested Old Irish word which we can give you. But, with something like "alive like fire", I'd recommend sticking with the modern language. And, if you're going to use the modern language, it follows that there should be no real issue with using the transcription we gave you earlier for Meirceánach.

The etymology of the English word that "Meirceánach" derives from is really interesting. American>America (fem. form of Americo/Amerigo)>Emmerich which is cognate with Emory, Imre, etc. (This is not a perfect rendering of the etymology but it gives you an idea.)

I guess you can write anything you want in Ogham as long as it follows the rules of usage, that is, you can't make up symbols, and so on.

Alright,

I'm going to stick to my original idea of using the Irish translation of American, Meiriceánach. I think if I try and change too many words around, it will literally get lost in translation.

Last question, the marks at the end of a would be carving (the 45/135 degree angle at the top and the opposite at the bottom if that makes any sense!), is that for ending and beginning a sentence or would it be used before and after just a word. From what I have seen its just complete phrases and NOT just words, but I wanted to make sure.

You guys have been great...thank you so much!