With the gods, understanding what the names themselves might mean can really help us get a sense of who they are as individuals, and as divine beings. Looking at the linguistics here can even help us confirm the very fact of their divinity in the first place (as we’ve already seen with Loígde’s name, for example), which is especially useful when we’re looking at figures who aren’t as necessarily well-known, or as identifiable, as others are.
The name of the Dagda is perhaps the most obvious example here (although technically speaking it’s probably more of a soubriquet than a proper name in its own right), because ‘the Dagda’ is traditionally given to mean ‘the Good God,’ deriving from dag (‘good’) and dia (‘god’). This interpretation is one that’s promoted by the early medieval scribes themselves (as we see in stories like Cath Maige Tuired, which explains how he was given the name in the first place), but it’s also been widely accepted by academics until relatively recently. In the last few decades, Eric Hamp has suggested that the name might actually be derived from dago-deiṷos, which would suggest that the Dagda is really the ‘god of the good ones’ – where the ‘good ones’ may relate to the higher classes of society (describing their nobility), for example.44
Ultimately, though, the possible interpretation of the Dagda’s name illustrates an important point: linguistics can’t always offer us a simple (or definitive) answer. Even so, Hamp’s interpretation for the Dagda’s name is also quite suggestive, because as we saw earlier it seems likely that pre-Christian blessings were phrased in terms of wishing ‘good’ upon people. If Eric Hamp is correct here, there seems to be a sense that the gods are ‘good’ because they’re high status, or relate to matters of high status in some way, at least – and this is a point that could be reinforced from the way the gods are equated with the áes dána (the professional classes in early Irish society, enjoying a high-status), while the un-gods are equated with the áes trebtha, or ‘farmers; husbandmen,’ as the Lebor Gabála Érenn tells us (quoted earlier).
On top of this, the idea of ‘goodness’ being related to ‘nobility’ is fundamentally linked with matters of sacredness – not only in the way that the gods are equated with the noble classes, the áes dána, but in the way that nemed, for example, can mean ‘sacred’ or ‘noble,’ and it can relate to a specific class of people within society, or it can refer to certain places – sacred groves or sanctuaries.45 A sacred place is a consecrated place. A privileged place where special rules apply.
The implicit relationship here is that nobility and divinity are both positions of privilege, and may therefore be equated with one another.
Sticking with the names of the gods, if we look at them in a general sense we can see that many of them express similar sorts of sentiments, or themes. Another name for the Dagda is Eochaid Ollathair, which can be given to mean ‘Horse Lord Great Father,’ or else he may be In Rúad Ro-fhessa, ‘the Red-Haired/Mighty One of Great Knowledge.’ Like the meaning of the Dagda, these name refers to matters of high status or (equating it with) greatness, and together there’s a sense that the two ideas are basically synonymous in some way.46 The same sort of thing can be said of the Dagda’s daughter, Brigit, whose name can be given to mean ‘The High One’ or ‘Exalted One.’47 The name of the Morrígan has a number of possible interpretations attached to her name, such as ‘the Great Queen’ or ‘Phantom Queen.’ Either way, her nobility is obvious.48
The name of Donn can be interpreted in a number of different ways, the most obvious being that he is ‘The Dark/Brown One’ (donn primarily means ‘brown’). Alternatively, however, donn can also give a meaning of ‘chief, noble, ruler,’ or ‘chieftain; lordship,’49 and so Donn’s name could be interpreted as ‘The Noble One,’ giving us another example where a name may be linked to matters of status. The two meanings here don’t have to be mutually exclusive, of course; sometimes things are deliberately ambiguous. Incidentally, though, the Dagda is himself sometimes referred to as an Dagda Donn/an Dagda duinn (‘the noble/brown Dagda’).50
Another example here is a lesser-known deity by the name of Erc. This is a figure who crops up in a number of different contexts, and his name may be interpreted to mean, ‘the heavens,’ which points to a rather more literal sort of ‘high status’ – a celestial position that’s articulated in the very name of the gods themselves, dée, can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European root *deiwos, which is ultimately rooted in a range of meanings that articulate a sense of ‘celestial, luminous, radiant.’51 Erc, however, could also mean ‘cow,’52 which could relate to matters of status – and nobility especially – in a different sort of way; the amount of cows a person had was an indicator of their wealth, and your level of wealth did influence your social status (in a legal sense), not to mention your political capital. Wealth has pretty much always equaled power, throughout history. On the whole though, the ‘heavenly’ associations seem more likely here, and it gives us a sense of why these ideas of status or greatness might have something to do with heights as well.
On the surface, Erc’s ‘heavenly’ connotations might seem a bit suspiciously Christian, but it has to be said that the idea of ‘the heavens’ in a more general sense isn’t unique to Christianity. To get comparative for a minute, the Romano-British goddess Brigantia – a counterpart of the Irish Brigit (‘The High/Exalted One’) – has an inscription dedicated to her which addresses her as Caelestis Brigantia, or ‘Heavenly Brigantia.’53 ‘Celestial’ would work, too – and it would be a bit more of a literal translation anyway. Height, in a metaphorical sense, clearly relates to high status and (in particular) divinity, then, which might explain why so many deities are associated with hills or mountains (e.g. Cnoc Áine, the Paps of Anu, or Cnoc Fírinne – home of Donn Fírinne).
As we saw just saw with the Proto-Indo-European root for ‘deity,’ *deiwos, there are other meanings beside ‘celestial’ that are suggested by the word – ‘luminous,’ or ‘radiant.’ The relationship between this ‘celestial’ sort of height, and some sort of ‘luminous,’ or ‘radiant’ qualities brings us onto another common theme that can be observed in the names of quite a significant number of deities, where the names may relate to matters of ‘brightness,’ ‘fieriness,’ or some sort of ‘shining’ quality – even referring to the sun itself. Áed (a son of the Dagda) means ‘fire,’ for example, while on the surface Nechtán’s name can be derived from necht, or ‘clean, pure; white, bright’ (although see the page on Comparative Studies). His wife, Bóand, is thought to mean something like (‘she who has white cow(s)’ or perhaps ‘white as a cow,’ suggesting something like ‘the cow-white water/stream,’ where the whiteness again suggests a luminous, pure brightness, and the reference to cows also points to a link with matters of wealth (and fertility or abundance in general). The name of Bóand’s father, Delbáeth, on the other hand, is thought to be a compound of delb and áed, meaning ‘shape of fire,’ while Áine is ‘brightness, glow, radiance.’54 There is also Grían of the Bright Cheeks, whose named simply means ‘sun’ (spelled Grian in modern Irish; she is sometimes described as a niece of Áine), and she is associated with hill of Cnoc Gréine (‘Grían’s Hill’) in Co. Limerick, not too far from Cnoc Áine (‘Aine’s Hill’ in Co. Tipperary).55 The list could go on, but the point is clear: These names seem to speak to the very heart of what was most important about the gods, what helped define their very divinity, as far as the pre-Christian people of Ireland were concerned.
As you can probably see by now, linguistics can tell us a whole range of things – some of them fairly fundamental – just from looking at Irish (or Gaelic or Manx) on its own. On the next page, we’ll look at certain linguistic matters again, but this time from a comparative approach, helping us flesh out our understanding of things.
References
45 See: eDIL s.v. neimed or dil.ie/33032
46 John Shaw, ‘The Dagda, Thor and ATU 1148B: Analogues, Parallels,or Correspondences?’ in Temenos 55:1 (2019), 103; John Shaw, ‘Fashioner Gods in Ireland and India: the Dagda and Tvastr,’ in Emily Lyle (Ed.), Celtic Myth in the 21st Century: The Gods and Their Stories in a Global Perspective (2018), 154-155.
47 J. Koch (Ed.) and J. Carey (Collab.), The Celtic Heroic Age: Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales (1995), 39.
48 See: Angelique Gulermovich Epstein’s War Goddess: The Morrígan and her
Germano-Celtic Counterparts (1998).
49 See: http://edil.qub.ac.uk/18205 and http://edil.qub.ac.uk/18206. See also Käte Müller-Lisowski’s ‘Contributions to a study in Irish folklore: traditions about Donn,’ in Béaloideas: The Journal of the Folklore of Ireland Society 18:1-2 (1948).
50 P. Smith, ‘Aimirgin Glúngel tuir tend: A Middle Irish Poem on the Authors and Laws of Ireland,’ in Peritia 8 (1994), 132.
51 Carole M. Cusack, The Sacred Tree: Ancient and Medieval Manifestations (2011), 16.
52 Eoin MacNeill, ‘Early Irish Population-Groups: Their Nomenclature, Classification, and Chronology,’ PRIA 29 (C) (1911), 83; Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991), 107.
Compare 1 erc, “heaven, the heavens”: http://edil.qub.ac.uk/20223
With 4 erc “a spotted or red-eared cow; a cow”: http://edil.qub.ac.uk/20226
Although it seems erc is a versatile word with a number of other meanings, including both serpents and bees…
53 And: https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/2091
54 Áed – http://edil.qub.ac.uk/613
Necht – http://edil.qub.ac.uk/33016
Delb (áed) – http://edil.qub.ac.uk/15324
Bóand – John T. Koch (Ed.), Celtic Culture: a Historical Encyclopedia (2006), 217.
Áine – http://edil.qub.ac.uk/1261
55 Patrick Logan, The Old Gods: The Facts about Irish Fairies (1981), 33; 56; P.W. Joyce, A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland (1906).
Eòlas 