Yes, as I mentioned earlier, if you leave out an accent the word is misspelled. If an accent is in a word, you need to use it. Without it, the pronunciation changes, but also, what your left with will be meaningless, or may have an entirely different meaning. Whatever the case, it won't mean what you want it to.



Yes, neart does mean strength. And it can be used somewhat abstractly, for example in the seanfhocal, ní neart go chur le céile, whereas, as I understand it brí refers to physical strength more specifically. Perhaps other members can confirm or correct me here?

By the way, on windows computers, if you want to get an accent mark over a letter, press AltGr and the letter at the same time. On Mac computers it should be option and the letter.



I wouldn't waste your time looking too far into the "tree symbolism" that's been ascribed to ogam. It's something of a modern construction with little historic basis. Tree names were used in a manuscript to describe the sounds of the letters, long after the original users of ogam ceased to use the alphabet, and this practice has been somewhat fetishised in the modern day.

It's a bit like if somebody, 1000 years from now, found a young child's copy book from today with "a is for alligator, b is for bear, c is for cat, d is for dog, etc." written in it. The animals are a mnemonic device to help people learn the alphabet. They don't signify that we have a cult of animals in the 21st century, and that we believe every letter of our alphabet has magical properties associated with each animal.

Although Ade is right about being careful about issuing meaning to Irish words, there are many people out there who believe that there is some sort of magic in using Ogham. See this Wikipedia section and notice that a lot of the text seems to be opinion and citations are needed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholastic_ogham#Magical

This doesn't mean you can't assign your own artistic ideas to your tattoo. If you search images of Irish Gaelic tattoos, you can see some really wonderful ink work done.

I think "neart" would work if that's what you want.
Here's an Ogham drawing with both Ogham and Roman script: https://img.etsystatic.com/il/d45dff/76 ... ?version=0

Since Ogham was used early on, I thought that also considering an Old Irish word might be interesting like
the Old Irish word "sceola" which basically means "a story teller who has survived to tell about it."

https://www2.smo.uhi.ac.uk/sengoidelc/d ... =Cuardaigh

http://www.dil.ie/search?q=sceola

Did you search images of Irish tattoos using Ogham? Some of them are really nice.

Here is a link to the alphabet if you want to play around with writing some different words: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ce/7f/ca ... 7f2a72.jpg

Thank you all for the suggestions!!
I really think 'sceola' may be very accurate, as the word I'm searching for encompasses the purpose of surviving many life long traumas, learning to forgive (so very difficult), but not forgetting the past.
A physical symbol, just for me to understand, to attempt to not make the same horrible mistakes (a daily struggle).
I think this may be the word!!

So, this Is an Old Irish word as opposed to Irish Gaelic? I'm still a bit confused about the Irish, Irish Gaelic (Old Irish?) differences. I'd like to understand this in more detail eventually.

I know there is a Scottish Gaelic laguage also, but don't quite understand where they split since both are Gaelic (to the best of my very limited knowlege).

Thank you all so much for your effort & especially time to help me. I know a tattoo is not an earthshaking undertaking, but accuracy is important to me as I have such respect for the language & heritage.
I hope to visit Ireland some day & not have something offensive or incorrect on my body.

If anyone has more information or education, it is always appreciated.
Again, Thank You All!!
Elizabeth

Old Irish is the older form of Irish Gaelic like Old English is to Modern English. The language was brought to Scotland around the 6th century. After that, Scottish Gaelic developed one way, and Irish another. In Old Irish, the words can sometimes be very different from, similar to, or obsolete in the modern language. The modern form of "sceola (sgeola?)" may be "scéalaí" but the nuances may have changed over hundreds of years. I don't think it would mean "survivor" now. As a contrast, Scottish Gaelic writes the modern "scéal" as "sgeul". I don't know what "scéalaí" would be.

With "sceola", you can think of yourself as the storyteller who has survived, if that's the idea you want to go with. I would definitely get more opinions on this as there may be something more appealing to you. Maybe you can write it using that Ogham Alphabet chart, and make some designs.

I would be careful about using this particular chart. There's no precedent for many of these letters, and they seem to be modern inventions. In particular, the two columns on the left have never been used on ogam stones which survive to the modern day. Similarly, the ogam letters on this chart representing H and Z have no history of usage in the surviving stone record, while the letter represented as NG has only one, dubious, usage in stone, according to Macalister (see here), however, McManus transliterates it using a W.

While the manuscript tradition does include the letters H, Z, and NG as they are on this chart, McManus has argued that the manuscript tradition, being hundreds of years after the usage of ogam on stone, is inaccurate and simply applied new sounds to letters for which the original sounds had dropped out of usage in the language (hence him using W instead of NG in the link above). The letter F also occurs in the manuscript tradition, however, replacing the old V sound which is accurately displayed as three right-hand dashes on this chart.

The reason I say all of this is that it seems authenticity is important to you. If so, you may not want to just play around with the ogam alphabet on this chart after putting so much work into finding an appropriate term.

For what it's worth, I think using an Old Irish word would be a great idea, as Old Irish would have been used historically on ogam stones. Sceola seems like a very appropriate option for this purpose. The Old Irish form of the word for strength which we have discussed, neart, is rendered nert, however, I think this typically refers to physical power, or moral strength. I don't think it has the survivor connotation you're looking for.

I am going to use the Old Irish word 'sceola'. It does come closest to the meaning that I am looking for and authenticity means a great deal to me, yes.
I will still search around and look at the different symbol & font options, but I'll probably still get the Ogam (spelled right??) symbols.
Now, I have much more confidence in this 'venture'. I'm so very glad that I consulted with you all (y'all, I'm from the South) and took the time needed to get it right, with your help.
I'll be proud of my permanent symbol and proud of it's history and my Irish heritage. I hope to learn more in the future and, fingers crossed, visit some day. I've heard from others that the beauty can't be described.
Thanks to all of you so very much!!!!
Elizabeth

It's spelled Ogam or Ogham. I grew up with the spelling Ogham. Ogam is closer to the original Irish spelling. I don't know why an "h" was put in there.

The chart is perfectly fine for the letters you want to use. You can look at any Ogham site and find that the letters s, c, e, o, l, and a are the same. These letters are not modern inventions but have been in existence for hundreds of years as evidenced, for example, by the stone at Melleray in County Waterford. You can see it on this page: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ogham.htm

I wouldn't promote false or neo-pagan mumbo-jumbo on you, Elizabeth. I'm hoping you can have a look around, play with some ideas, get lots of feedback, and finally come up with something you like.

Because the Modern Irish form is ogham and it is pronounced as such (/o:m/).

An dtagann an litriú an Bhéarla ón Ghaeilge mar sin?

I didn't mean to suggest this for a minute by what I said. My apologies, tiomluasocein. You are, of course, absolutely correct in saying that all the letters of the word sceola are accurate on that chart. I just wanted to weigh in on the left two columns, and some of the unattested letters of the other columns in case OP wanted to go with another word and decided put it together using the more dubious letters.



The lenition after the g is implied in Old Irish, where the word would be rendered ogam. The letter g doesn't typically show lenition, but it is to be assumed when it's surrounded by vowels within a word. This is where the modern spelling comes from, it just shows the lenition which was always there. As regards pronunciation, the lenited g of old Irish would have been voiced, similar to a word beginning with a lenited g in Modern Irish.