Hi, I'm trying to translate my kids names in Gaelic. Can anyone help me? My son's name is Declan and my daughters name is Isla.

thank you so much!!

Declan is already a common name in Ireland. I don't know if I've ever heard an Irish form being used, however, it would be spelled either Déaglán or Deaglán.

the name Isla is Scottish in origin and derived from Islay. The Scottish Gaelic for Islay is Ìle, so perhaps you might like to use that. I don't know of any Irish Gaelic translation, however, I imagine it wouldn't be any different really, with the exception of orthographic details like the direction of the accent mark, thus, Íle. I don't know if either of these would typically be used as personal names, however.

Yes, Deaglán in Irish.

Is it Irish or Scots Gaelic you wanted?

Isla is from an island in the Hebrides in Scotland. Norse origin.
In Irish you could say either "Inis" or "Oileán", both terms meaning "island".
But neither are ever used as first names in Ireland.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islay

This made me think of Isla Saint Clair, a favourite Scottish singer of mine. I've just looked up her name and it turns out, I didn't know this, but her original name was in fact Isabella, so apparently in her case, it derives from that. There are these versions of it in Scots Gaelic - Isbeil, Iseabail and Iseabal. It's 'transcribed' into English as Ishbel, which gives you an indication of how it's pronounced and it also happens to be the name of another important Scottish lady, sadly no longer with us - Ishbel MacAskill. (I'll just take another glass of Caol Ila )

I responded to this in the Gaelic part of the Forum, before seeing this thread. As I noted there, despite the similarity of the name Ìle (Islay) in Gaelic) to words like the French île or Spanish isla ("island"), the origin of the name Islay/Ìle is unknown, and probably not from one of those languages, because it existed in pre-Norman times (it may even be pre-Celtic, as some of the names for the Hebrides are suspected to be).

As I mentioned in that other response, if you just want a phonetic way to spell the name Isla in Irish or Scottish Gaelic, then you could use Iosla in either language.

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