Hello! I'm new to this forum and hope you can help me out. I want to consult you about four names that seem to have Gaelic origin but I'm not totally sure. They are the following:

Edda
Arabella
Delaney
Eilian

If they are Gaelic, could you please tell me their meaning and how you would spell them (or the meaning, I don't know) in Irish? It's just that I've gone to these gazillion-names.com or whatever pages, but I don't trust them really; for example, Arabella means altar and Eilian was an old saint according to my research, but they don't elaborate further.

Thanks a lot!

~eowyn_wannabe

The only Irish name is Delaney which is a surname and Ó Dubhshláine is its Irish form

The word edda is a name for certain kinds of old Scandinavian sagas. It may be that someone liked the sound of it and decided to use it as a first name. It's not Irish, in any case, as already noted.

I found this info online about Arabella (again, not Irish):


Eilian appears to be a Hebrew name, meaning "the Lord is my God", although it was apparently also the name of an ancient coastal city in Israel/Palestine.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thanks a lot, beagle and CaoimhínSF!

Is there any chance that Arabella might be Scottish then? I found a Lady Arabella Stuart but I also did find that the name is not unheard of in Ulster, I don't know if I should ask in the Scottish forum (don't wanna do spam ). Also, is Ó Dubhshláine just a surname or does it have a meaning? How do you pronounce it?

Caoimhín is the main contributor for the Scottish section. If the name were Scottish, I think he would have pointed it out, but the explanation he has posted says it is Latin in origin, not Scottish either.

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Years ago Arabella was a common name and used in England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. but it is of Latin derivation. The Irish form of Delany is a surname and would not be used as a first name.

Not in origin, but it does seem to have been popular there. I can't find any evidence that it was ever given a Gaelic form, as some borrowed names were, but even then it would be spelled very similarly to the original and still wouldn't "mean" anything in Gaelic.


Most traditional Gaelic surnames (as opposed to ones created for people who moved in from other places) have meanings like "son of [personal name/nickname]" or "descendant of [personal name/nickname]", and Ó Dubhshláine would be in the latter category, although it's apparently unclear whether Dubhshláine was actually someone's given name or nickname.

According to MacLysaght’s Surnames of Ireland, the surname Dubhshláine may come from the words dubh ("black") and "perhaps the river Slaney" [i.e. Sláine]. In another part of the book, he says that the surname Slaney [de Sláine] is one of the few Irish toponymic surnames -- names based on a location (which was a much more common practice in other languages, especially English). So, if there were people named de Sláine, then one of them might at some point have been called "Black [or Dark-haired] Slaney", and his descendants could be the Ó Dubhshláine clan, meaning something like "descendant of Black [or Dark-haired] Slaney". That explanation is just a guess, though, not something MacLysaght said.

As for pronunciation, the consonant cluster "sh" has become silent (and, in some dialects, so has "bh"), so the name could originally have been "duh-LAW-n[y]eh", "duv-LAW-n[y]eh", "duh-LAH-n[y]eh", or "duv-LAH-n[y]eh", depending on dialect. From there to "duh-LAY-nee" probably happened when the name was Anglicized.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Thanks a lot again, Caoimhín and Breandán (and beagle as well, of course)!

If I may bother you again, now that I know Arabella can mean "prayerful", "beautiful altar" or "altar or war" as I found doing further research, and Edda is a type of Nordic saga, how do you say those words in Irish? Also, where does the name Branwen come from?

This is very interesting! I wish Surnames of Ireland would be for sale here in my country .

I'm a little confused. As none of those words is Irish, they wouldn't have a special pronunciation in Irish. Unless you're looking for translations for "prayerful," "beautiful altar," "Nordic saga," etc. (though none of those would work as names).

Branwen is likely Welsh.

Redwolf

Sorry! Yeah, I meant the translations.