Coventina wrote:
There is a well on Hadrian's Wall which was dedicated to the goddess Coventina in Roman times. The etymology of that name is unknown, and it may not be of Latin (or even Celtic) origin, but let us assume for the sake of this question that it was a Latin name, similar to Valentina.
Now let us also assume that this name had become a popular name among the Scots, given to girls in honor of the goddess, and that this name had remained in use until today, undergoing the linguistic changes that similar Latin names have undergone. What would the contemporary Scottish Gaelic form of that name be?
I don't know any Gaelic and I'm not a linguist, and the best I can do is look at the Latin male name Valentinus and its two Scottish Gaelic cognates, Ualan and Uailean. From these, I guess that a Latin male form, Coventinus, might have developed into Cobhan or Cobhean. Maybe you know better? :-)
I'd also be interested in an Irish Gaelic form of Coventina, if that is more easy to derive.
I'd say your guess is as good as anyone's, except that, following the orthographic rules of both Gaelic and Irish, it would have to be spelled (in either language) either as
Cobhan or
Coibhean. If you want to get closer to the original form, you could use the diminutive ending
-ín and get very close with either
Cobhaintín or
Coibheantín (basically, you'd just be missing the final "a" sound).
The name doesn't actually exist in Gaelic or Irish, nor was I able to find anything to indicate that it or anything close ever existed (I have some very good sources). It also has no meaning in Gaelic or Irish, so there wouldn't be any risk of misunderstanding along those lines (the town of Cobh is based on a borrowing of the English word "cove"). Another possible way to spell the sounds in
Cobh is
comh, which does have meaning, but not as a stand-alone word (it's a prefix).
One thing to keep in mind is that, on both sides of Hadrian's Wall in those days, the people would have spoken Brythonic languages (the Celtic branch of which Welsh and Cornish are modern descendants), since Gaelic speakers only entered Scotland (and parts of Wales) as settlers as the Roman times were winding down. I'm not aware of any close equivalent in Welsh, but I'm not very familiar with any but the more common Welsh names. Interestingly, I did find that there are place names in England based on the name Cofa (including the city of Coventry), but the sources I have say that it was an Anglo-Saxon name. Still, a possible Celtic origin can't be ruled out entirely, because more and more is being discovered about how Celtic languages influenced Old English.