This may be a question for which no answer is known, but I was asked what sorts of greetings people used in Ireland in pre-Christian times (before Dia duit etc. became common). Do any of the scholars out there know of any?

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

They have found a word that seems very probably to signify a greeting in Gaulois: - Good (Favourable) Wind (to you) - Bon Vent - SUAVELOS - .i. Hello/Welcome
It's on - La Première Tuile de Châteaubleau - and it has been deciphered by THE specialiste Pierre-Yves Lambert.

Here's the reference -

www.arbre-celtique.com/encyclopedie/sua ... -10944.htm

and - X. Delamarre - Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise - published by Errance in 2003

su, so - good
avelos - wind

That's really interesting, Franc. It's fascinating to speculate that some version of that goodwill wish might lie behind the old "May the wind be always at your back" expression, although that's something which it's probably impossible to know. It does sound like more of a farewell than a greeting, of course, but perhaps not necessarily.

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

The other possibility might be found in the Old Irish manuscripts, where all the various heroes and lesser beings meet up either to feast together or to confront each other before the mutual slaughter starts. Somewhere there must be a phase where they greet each other before they go on to identify who they are and show off and brag. But that entails trawling through a lot of text.

Here's Xavier Delamarre presenting his dictionary and he points out that knowledge of the lifestyle of les Gaulois and especially knowledge of their language has increased enormously just over the last thirty years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OenyZZRUSw
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