Last 2 days on the bored...
#2
BE Forum Addict
Joined: Jan 2015
Posts: 3,520
Re: Last 2 days on the bored...
It's Scamp's fault.
#15
Re: Last 2 days on the bored...
It's actually Ó Briain, the original Irish (Gaelic) form of the name which in English is usually rendered O'Brien. It's pronounced Oh Bree-an.
What follows is some information on how Irish surnames are composed which is likely of interest to almost nobody so feel free to skip to the next post where IKN probably says something vaguely provocative but doesn't have the heart to be quite offensive...
The accent over the O in Irish is what makes it a long o sound. The O' thing with the apostrophe is a contrivance that probably arose when the names were transliterated into English. I'm not sure why, though at the time when we were all compelled to take "English" names (mainly during the 18th and early 19th centuries), written Irish had not yet been standardised so maybe that's how the accent was represented at the time? In the same way the Irish word Mac was usually abbreviated to "Mc" in the English form of the name.
All Irish male surnames start with either Ó, meaning from, or mac meaning son. The former was prevalent in the south and west of Ireland, the latter in the northern part of the island and Scotland (Scots Gallic is a dialect of Irish Gaelic from the time of the first millenium dal Riada kingdoms when it displaced the indigenous Pictish Celtic language).
Some names lost the prefix in transliteration. For example Murphy in Irish is Ó Murchú. Norman names even acquired an Irish form over the years; for example Fitzgerald in Irish is Mac Ghearailt. That is noteworthy because it renders the Fitz, which meant servant, as mac meaning son, likely reflecting the very democratic organisation of medieval irish society (leaders were elected from a hereditary ruling clan rather than appointed by primogeniture and there was high mobility among classes).
Unlike in the English form, the female version of the surname in Irish is different to the male as it reflects the feminine possessive case, which leads to sometimes significant changes in the main root name of the clan:
Dara Ó Briain's notional sister, Sorchadh, for example, would be Sorchadh Ni Bhriain - the h after the B requires it to be pronounced like a v so it sounds like "Nee Vree-an" for her name. Similarly Mac becomes Nic for females with the requisite change in the clan name to reflect the feminine possessive.
So now you know...
tl;dr - it's fun making up complicated shit to confuse hopelessly monolingual Anglos...
What follows is some information on how Irish surnames are composed which is likely of interest to almost nobody so feel free to skip to the next post where IKN probably says something vaguely provocative but doesn't have the heart to be quite offensive...
The accent over the O in Irish is what makes it a long o sound. The O' thing with the apostrophe is a contrivance that probably arose when the names were transliterated into English. I'm not sure why, though at the time when we were all compelled to take "English" names (mainly during the 18th and early 19th centuries), written Irish had not yet been standardised so maybe that's how the accent was represented at the time? In the same way the Irish word Mac was usually abbreviated to "Mc" in the English form of the name.
All Irish male surnames start with either Ó, meaning from, or mac meaning son. The former was prevalent in the south and west of Ireland, the latter in the northern part of the island and Scotland (Scots Gallic is a dialect of Irish Gaelic from the time of the first millenium dal Riada kingdoms when it displaced the indigenous Pictish Celtic language).
Some names lost the prefix in transliteration. For example Murphy in Irish is Ó Murchú. Norman names even acquired an Irish form over the years; for example Fitzgerald in Irish is Mac Ghearailt. That is noteworthy because it renders the Fitz, which meant servant, as mac meaning son, likely reflecting the very democratic organisation of medieval irish society (leaders were elected from a hereditary ruling clan rather than appointed by primogeniture and there was high mobility among classes).
Unlike in the English form, the female version of the surname in Irish is different to the male as it reflects the feminine possessive case, which leads to sometimes significant changes in the main root name of the clan:
Dara Ó Briain's notional sister, Sorchadh, for example, would be Sorchadh Ni Bhriain - the h after the B requires it to be pronounced like a v so it sounds like "Nee Vree-an" for her name. Similarly Mac becomes Nic for females with the requisite change in the clan name to reflect the feminine possessive.
So now you know...
tl;dr - it's fun making up complicated shit to confuse hopelessly monolingual Anglos...