(November 7, 2024, updated April 27, 2025) In the past, defining the meanings of Old Irish words has just been guesswork trying to extrapolate back in time from existing meanings and seeing how they are used in the texts. The result has not been successful with lots of inconsistencies. Written Irish has undergone lots of changes due to a combination of English language domination and the many attempted mergers of the many local dialects into one standard Irish language.
Below is a comparison of Old Irish place names meanings as seen on the 1598 Ortelius Map below between traditional meaning and their new Druid Akkadian derivations:
Ireland is a compound word first seen in the 1200's. Ire comes from Old Norse Irar which is the Druid Akkadian phrase IR.AR meaning "astrological-fate controllers" implying that the Vikings who founded Dublin saw the Irish as big users of astrology magic. Land comes from Old English lond which is the Druid Akkadian phrase L'.N.D meaning "layout revealing life-manifestations."
Connacht in Akkadian: Ka.NN.AḪ.T meaning "Prodding chaos with attendants of astrology-magic"Connacht in Old Irish (eDIL): Conn-acht meaning "Leader - except that" Corke in Akkadian: K'.RK.E meaning "Prodding the raking disabled." "Raking" is plowing a field.Corke in Old Irish: This word has no meaning. It is assumed to be an Old English word meaning marsh or bog.Down in Akkadian: D'.U.N meaning "Divine-motion-powers and revelations"Down In Old Irish: No meaningHibern in Akkadian: Ḫ.YB.ER.N meaning "Hu's enemy place is revealed. "Hibernia" was the name for Ireland which the Roman's applied to the Island. Whether they created it or heard it from Druid Akkadian speakers is unknown. Hu is the Druid sun god and Ireland is not very sunny. The "Irish Sea" uses the Latin word "mare" which means "stormy place" in Akkadian.Hibern in Old Irish: No meaning. Mountfer in Akkadian: M'.U.N.TP.ER meaning "Pushing and revealing devotion place."Mountfer in Old Irish: No meaning.Quulfter in Akkadian: Q.U.WL.P.T.ER meaning "Threading with Alu to open astrology-magic place." Quulfter in Old Irish: No meaning.Dublyn in Akkadian: D.U.B.L.IN meaning "Manifestations and nourishments lacking the Moon-Eye." The Moon-Eye is the dark moon god and eye pupil god Su. He was also the source of all motion powers and the main god involved with astrology magic. Dublin was founded by the Vikings who apparently did not use astrology magic like the native Irish.Dublyn in Old Irish: Dub-Lin meaning "Dark Flows" (eDIL), or Dark-Number (University of Texas)Leynefter in Akkadian: L.E.INu.EP.T meaning "Lack making ineffective the Moon-Eye's baking of astrology-magic." The astrology-magic done by humans had to be authorized or baked-in by the dark new moon god Su for it to be effective. This is a concept seen in many later Runic texts for magic use in general.Leynefter in Old Irish: No meaning.Kylkenny in Akkadian: KY.L.K.EN.Nu.Ya meaning "Prodding lacking involvement with the reassignments not being revealed." Magic crafters from this place had a reputation of push life-powers through the life network without concerning themselves with the actual connections of that life network.Kylkenny in Old Irish: No meaningTiborray in Akkadian: TY.Ba'u.Ru.AYu meaning "Not doing astrology-magic for nesting the eagle-vultures of Ayu." Ayu is the crescent moon goddess who edits the connections of the life network using eagle-vultures. This place had the reputation of not interfering with them. (One /r/ of the double /rr/ seems to be redundant here).Tiborray in Old Irish: No meaning.The Ortelius Map of Ireland dating to 1598. West is facing up.
Now at the library of Congress. Online at: https://www.old-maps.com/Ireland/irelandmaps1.htm
Old Irish Example from A. Z. Foreman on Bluesky : https://bsky.app/profile/azforeman.bsky.social
(November 7, 2024) (Copied from Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland_(400%E2%80%93795)
Early Christian Ireland began after the country emerged from a mysterious decline in population and standards of living that archaeological evidence suggests lasted from c. 100 to 300 AD. During this period, called the Irish Dark Age by Thomas Charles-Edwards, the population was entirely rural and dispersed, with small ringforts the largest centres of human occupation. Some 40,000 of these are known, although there may have been as many as 50,000, and "archaeologists are agreed that the vast bulk of them are the farm enclosures of the well-to-do of early medieval Ireland."
The first reliable historical event in Irish history, recorded in the Chronicle of Prosper of Aquitaine, is the ordination by Pope Celestine I of Palladius as the first bishop to Irish Christians in 431 – which demonstrates that there were already Christians living in Ireland. Prosper says in his Contra Collatorem that by this act Celestine "made the barbarian island Christian", although it is clear the Christianisation of the island was a longer and more gradual process. The mission of Saint Patrick is traditionally dated around the same time – the earliest date for his arrival in Ireland in the Irish annals is 432 – although Patrick's own writings contain nothing securely dateable. It is likely that Palladius' activities were in the south of Ireland, perhaps associated with Cashel, while Patrick's were later, in the north, and associated with Armagh.
By the early 6th century the church had developed separate dioceses, with bishops as the most senior ecclesiastical figures, but the country was still predominantly pagan. The High Kings of Ireland continued pagan practices until the reign of Diarmait mac Cerbaill c. 558, traditionally the first Christian High King. The monastic movement, headed by abbots, took hold in the mid 6th century, and by 700 Ireland was at least nominally a Christian country, with the church fully part of Irish society. The status of ecclesiastics was regulated by secular law, and many leading ecclesiastics came from aristocratic Irish families. Monasteries in the 8th century even went to war with each other.
(Novermber 16, 2024) Christians claimed the Old Irish word Erdathe was either a Druid phrase for the "end times" or it was a word which could be used for it. The word means:
Thu was the main Druid deity involved in emotion magic and was the cause of all change on earth. Since the runic Druid Akkadian texts make no mention of an end times "day of judgement" this in not what Erdathe means. Instead when Thu becomes ineffective then drought, death, and wars are the result. Helping to defend against this spiritual imbalance is what ancestors would be expected to do.
The word erdathe is found in this passage from Tirechan's Collectanea (from the Book of Armagh) which was originally written shortly before 664 CE. The Book of Armagh is written in Latin.
For Niall my father did not permit me to believe, but (that I should) be buried on the heights of Tara, where men are drawn up for battle, because the pagans armed in their tombs, bear weapons at the ready to face "que ad diem erdathe apud magos, id est iudicii diem Domini" ("that day of erdathe among the Magi, that is the day of the judgment of the Lord.")The Heights of Tara is ancient ceremonial and burial site near Skryne in County Meath, Ireland. Tradition identifies the hill as the inauguration place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland. In Akkadian "Tara" means "Astrology-magic's Controllers" (T.AR) where the controller are the night deities of Su, Selene, and Kate/Hekate involved with fate and the reincarnation of life.
Magi were one of several classes specialized Druid priests:
Carey, John (Aug. 1996) SAINT PATRICK, THE DRUIDS, AND THE END OF THE WORLD. History of Religions, Vol. 36, No. 1. Online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3176472
Conway, M. D. (1883). The Saint Patrick Myth. The North American Review, 137(323), 358–371. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118320
eDIL - Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language. A joint project of Queen's University in Belfast, University of Cambridge: https://dil.ie/
Some of the Irish phrases which Christopher Nugent gave to Queen Elizabeth I around 1570. This shows how the Irish letters and thus writing had changed from Druid Akkadian into Irish Celtic.
So a person "does Irish" but "speaks Latin."
(November 18, 2024, updated December 25, 2024) In May 1169, Anglo-Norman mercenaries landed in Ireland at the request of Diarmait mac Murchada (Dermot MacMurragh) who was the deposed King of Leinster. He sought their help in regaining his kingship. They achieved this within weeks and raided neighboring kingdoms. This military intervention was sanctioned by King Henry II of England. In return, Diarmait had sworn loyalty to Henry and promised land to the Normans.
In October 1171, King Henry landed with a large army to assert control over both the Anglo-Normans and the Irish. This intervention was supported by the Roman Catholic Church who saw it as a means of suppressing Druidry, suppressing the still fairly independent Irish Christian church, and way of gaining tax revenue.
Henry granted Strongbow Leinster as a fiefdom, declared the Norse-Irish towns to be crown land, and arranged the synod of Cashel to take over the Irish church. Many Irish kings also submitted to him, likely in the hope that he would curb Norman expansion, but Henry granted the unconquered kingdom of Meath to Hugh de Lacy. After Henry's departure in 1172, fighting between the Normans and Irish continued.
The 1175 Treaty of Windsor acknowledged Henry as overlord of the conquered territory and Ruaidrí as overlord of the remainder of Ireland, with Ruaidrí also swearing fealty to Henry. The treaty soon collapsed: Norman lords continued to invade Irish kingdoms and the Irish continued to attack the Normans. In 1177, Henry adopted a new policy. He declared his son John to be the "Lord of Ireland" (i.e. claiming the whole island) and authorised the Norman lords to conquer more land. The territory they held became the Lordship of Ireland, part of the Angevin Empire. The Normans' success has been attributed to military superiority and castle-building, the lack of a unified opposition from the Irish and the support of the church for Henry's intervention.
After this takeover of Ireland the Norman lords wanted to secure their lands by appearing Irish. It was then they started supporting local bards and marrying into noble Irish families. But the bards. by using Druid Akkadian phrases as names in their stories helped preserve the old ways in their tales while at the same time providing a deeper level of meaning to these stories to those listeners still familiar with the old ways.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_invasion_of_Ireland
Lebor na hUidre MS 23 E 25 (Scanned images). Online at Irish Scripts Onscreen: https://www.isos.dias.ie/RIA/RIA_MS_23_E_25.html#2
(November 19, 2024) The letters of the Irish alphabet have undergone 2 major sound reassignments as it morphed from Druid Akkadian into modern Irish. The first was when the letters were adapted to local spoken Irish from Druid Akkadian shortly after the Normans conquered the country around 1175 CE. The second was the government sponsored reform which took place between 1947 and 1958.
The official standard name for Irish is Gaeilge. Before the 1947 t0 1958 spelling reform, this was spelled Gaedhilge. The language of the medieval Irish literature after the Bardic Revolution of was called Gaoidhealg. Old Irish Akkadian was Goídelc (Ga'u-IDu-ELu-Ku meaning in Akkadian "breaking-through the channeling of the high-life-power's involvement." This indicates that when this writing was named it was thought to have magical powers.).
The post-bardic Irish language which survived in rural parts of the country were different from each other (being locally derived) and different from the post-Norman medieval Irish of the literary texts. This modern reform merged the dialects and simplified its spelling and pronunciation. The reformed language was called the Caighdeán Oifigiúil, "the modern standard." The reform removed inter-dialectal silent letters, simplified some letter sequences, and modernized archaic spellings to reflect modern pronunciation. It also removed letters pronounced in some dialects but not in others.
Ó Siadhail, M. (1981). Standard Irish Orthography: An Assessment. The Crane Bag, 5(2), 71–75. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30060637
The 18 letters of traditional Irish from one surviving branch before the modern alphabet reform between 1947 and 1958. Compared to the Elizabethan era the alphabet had drastically shrunk indicating that much of the original Druid Akkadian derived Irish language had been lost.
Joyce, Patrick Weston (1878) A grammar of the Irish language for the use of schools. Online at: https://archive.org/details/grammarofirishla00joycrich/mode/2up?ref=ol
MORTAL CHARACTORS IN STORY
SPIRITS IN STORY
(October 7, 2023, updated April 27, 2025) Given recent scholarship the translations of these texts must now be considered to be uncertain.
The earliest set of surviving Irish Bardic Tales is the "Great Tain," (Táin Bó Cúailnge) which is the central story of the Irish Bardic era. This was accompanied by 14 "Lesser Tains," 3 of which are lost. The surviving ones are: the Tain bo Aingen, Dartada, Flidais, Fraich, Munad, Regamon, Regamna, Ros, Ruanadh, Sailin, and Ere.
Dating is provided by the Tain Bó Fraich while the goddess Morrigan is mention in the Táin Bó Regamna and the Táin Bó Cúailnge, both which involve the ancient Irish province of Connaught (Connacht) raiding Ulster who fights back with their hero Cúchulainn.
Connaught (Connacht) was a hilly, wild and economically poor western province of Ireland. It's Druid Akkadian meaning is "Prodding chaos with attendants of astrology-magic."
Morrigan is the Druid Akkadian phrase M'.R.RY.G.AN meaning "Pusher.Griffons.Shepherd-priests.energy.considerations" which translates as "The pusher of the griffons for the shepherd-priest's energy considerations" where shepherd-priests do the astrology magic which shifts fate and considerations are the focused emotions of emotion magic. In Irish culture.
Morigan seems to be a combination of the old Druid dark new moon god Su and the celestial light goddess Selu/Selene who normally sets fate. Both are night sky motion source powers but they were separated by gender which is not really necessary for the magical motion powers because motion powers have little to do with fertility.
Tain is the Druid Akkadian phrase T.AY.N meaning "Astrology-magic for Ayu revealed."
Bo is the Druid Akkadian word B' meaning "nest."
Cúailnge is the Druid Akkadian phrase K.W.AY.L.NG.E meaning "Involvement with Ayu's form for avoiding the coast's ineffectiveness" where coast is an epithet for the rain making sky shell.
Táin Bó Cúailnge means "Astrology-magic for Ayu revealing nesting the involvement of Ayu's form which avoids the coast's ineffectiveness
In the Táin Bó Regamna, Cúchulainn encounters Morrígan but does not recognize her as she drives a magical heifer from what he thinks is his territory.
Regamna is the Akkadian phrase R.EG.AM.N.A meaning "The eagle-vulture's neglect of the Reed-boat's (Ayu) revelation results.
Táin Bó Regamna means "Astrology-magic for Ayu revealing nesting the eagle-vulture's neglect of the Reed-boat's (Ayu) revelation results."
This story is found in the same two manuscripts that also record the Tain bo Dartada and the Tain bo Regamon ; namely the Yellow Book of Lecan, and Egerton 1782. Here is the core of the story (starting at page 132 of Leahy, 1902):
They went out thereupon till they came to Ath da Ferta. When they were there, straightway they heard the rattle of a chariot from the quarter of the loamy district of Culgaire. Then they saw the chariot come before them, and one chestnut (lit. red) horse in it. The horse was one- footed, and the pole of the chariot passed through the body of the horse, till a wedge went through it, to make it fast on its forehead. A red ^ woman was in the chariot, and a red mantle about her, she had two red eye-brows, and the mantle fell between the two ferta'^ of her chariot behind till it struck upon the ground behind her. A great man was beside her chariot, a red ^ cloak was upon him, and a forked staff of hazel at his back, he drove a cow in front of him. "That cow is not joyful at being driven by you!" said Cuchulain. "The cow does not belong to you," said the woman, "she is not the cow of any friend or acquaintance of yours." " The cows of Ulster," said Cuchulain, " are my proper (care)." ......I am a female satirist in truth," she said, " and he is Daire mac Fiachna from Cualnge : I have brought the cow as fee for a master-poem." " Let me hear the poem then," said Cuchulain. "Only remove thyself from me," said the woman ; " it is none the better for thee that thou shakest it over my head." Thereon he left her until he was between the two poles of her chariot, and she sang to him. And the song was a song of insult. Again at the car he sprang, But nothing he found before him. As soon as the car he had neared, The woman, the horse, and the chariot, the cow, and the man disappeared. Then he saw that she had become a black bird upon a branch near to him. "A dangerous ^ (or magical) woman thou art," said Cuchulain. " Henceforward," said the woman, " this clay-land shall be called dollnid (of evil,)" and it has been the Grellach Dolluid ever since. ''If only I had known it was you," said Cuchulain, " not thus should we have separated." " What thou hast done," said she, " shall be evil to thee from it." " Thou hast no power against me," said Cuchulain."I have power indeed," said the woman ; " it is at the guarding of thy death that I am and I shall be," said she. "I brought this cow out of the fairy-mound of Cruachan, that she might breed by the Black Bull of Cualnge, that is the Bull of Daire macFiachna. It is up to that time that thou have to live, so long as the calf which is in this cow's body is a yearling. And it is this that shall lead to the Tain bo Cualnge.In the Táin Bó Cúailnge, Queen Medb of Connacht launches an invasion of Ulster to steal the bull Donn Cuailnge. Morrígan appears to the bull in the form of a crow and warns him to flee. Cúchulainn then defends Ulster by fighting a series of single combats at fords against Medb's champions. In between combats, the Morrígan appears to him as a young woman and offers him her love and her aid in the battle, but he rejects her offer. In response, she intervenes in his next combat, first in the form of an eel who trips him, then as a wolf who stampedes cattle across the ford, and finally as a white, red-eared heifer leading the stampede, just as she had warned in their previous encounter. However, Cúchulainn wounds her in each form and defeats his opponent despite her interference. Later, she appears to him as an old woman bearing the same three wounds that her animal forms had sustained, milking a cow. She gives Cúchulainn three drinks of milk. He blesses her with each drink, and her wounds are healed. He regrets blessing her for the three drinks of milk, which is apparent in the exchange between the Morrígan and Cúchulainn: "She gave him milk from the third teat, and her leg was healed. 'You told me once,' she said,'that you would never heal me.' 'Had I known it was you,' said Cúchulainn, 'I never would have.'"As the armies gather for the final battle, she prophesies the bloodshed to come.
A. H. Leahy, translator (1902) HEROIC ROMANCES OF IRELAND VOL. II Late Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. With Preface, Notes, and Literal Translations. Illustrations by Caroline Watts. Ballantyne Press. Online at: https://archive.org/stream/heroicromancesof02leah/heroicromancesof02leah_djvu.txt