Gallowglass - Name

Name

The term is an anglicisation of the Irish gallóglaigh (lit. "foreign young warriors"), with the English plural -s added to the end. The singular of gallóglaigh is gallóglach. The word óglach comes from Old Irish oac (meaning "youth") and Old Irish lóeg (meaning "calf" but later becoming a word for a hero). Encarta specifies the plural of gallowglass to be "gallowglasses", but this article assumes that the singular and plural terms are both "gallowglass", as the English term comes from an Irish plural. Shakespeare uses the form "gallowglasses" in the play Macbeth.