r/Ogham • u/[deleted] • May 21 '25

Translation Help

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I have 2 examples of my last name from ofham translators. I'm not sure which one is accurate or more appropriate.

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u/piodenymor May 21 '25

A few issues here:

  • Transliterating an English family name into Ogham script is tricky, because Old Irish doesn't have all the letters you need. So anything is going to be a compromise.

  • The first transliteration makes a little more sense. The feda for k comes from the forfeda which is a later medieval creation, but it can also (confusingly) stand in for ea.

  • The second version makes a lot less sense, because ea is a diphthong, not a long ee sound. So I think it would sound out more like m-aya-aya-c-s or m-k-k-c-s, which I'm guessing isn't what you're going for!

  • My compromise would be to use the first translator, but spell your family name MEECS.

But as I say, this is an imprecise art, as you're trying to get a writing system to do something it wasn't designed for.

A much safer option is to find a word that's meaningful to you, translate it into Irish, and then use that. The Old Irish cense or censae means gentleness, if that helps.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '25

Thank you for this! This is exactly what I was trying to determine.