nGéadal
Ogham letters | |||
Aicme Beithe | Aicme Muine | ||
ᚁ | Beith | ᚋ | Muin |
ᚂ | Luis | ᚌ | Gort |
ᚃ | Fearn | ᚍ | nGéadal |
ᚄ | Sail | ᚎ | Straif |
ᚅ | Nion | ᚏ | Ruis |
Aicme hÚatha | Aicme Ailme | ||
ᚆ | Uath | ᚐ | Ailm |
ᚇ | Dair | ᚑ | Onn |
ᚈ | Tinne | ᚒ | Úr |
ᚉ | Coll | ᚓ | Eadhadh |
ᚊ | Ceirt | ᚔ | Iodhadh |
Forfeda | |||
ᚕ | Éabhadh | ||
ᚖ | Ór | ||
ᚗ | Uilleann | ||
ᚘ | Ifín | ᚚ | Peith |
ᚙ | Eamhancholl |
nGéadal (Ngéadal or Ngeadal) is the Irish name of the thirteenth letter of the Ogham alphabet, ᚍ.
The Bríatharogam (kennings) for the letter are:
- lúth lego "sustenance of a leech"
- étiud midach "raiment of physicians"
- tosach n-échto "beginning of slaying"
Its meaning is probably "[the act of] wounding". In Old Irish, the letter name was Gétal. It may be a verbal noun of gonid 'wounds, slays'. in which case is related to Welsh gwanu 'to pierce, to stab', which comes from the root was *gʷhen- 'to pierce, to strike'. Its original phonetic value in Primitive Irish was [ɡʷ], the voiced labiovelar. In Old Irish, this phoneme merged with g (gort), and the medieval manuscript tradition assigns it Latin ng [ŋ], hence the unetymological spelling of the letter name with initial n-.
References
- Damian McManus, Irish letter-names and their kennings, Ériu 39 (1988), 127-168.
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