First Names
Gaelic first names chiefly hail from 5 linguistic layers, Goidelic and 4 others, coinciding with the main languages of contact: Latin, Norse, Anglo-Norman and Scots. Surprisingly, male first names outnumber female first names by about a factor of 2:1.
Read more about this topic: Scottish Gaelic Personal Naming System
Famous quotes containing the word names:
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)