Gaelic Alternate Titles in the SCA
Draft Edition

The current lists of alternate titles for Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic approved for use in the SCA leave a great deal to be desired. Many of the titles are misspellings, purely modern spellings, purely modern words, and/or non-Gaelic words. Even if these errors were corrected, the lists would not adequately deal with the changes in the Gaelic language that occurred over the millennium or so prior to 1600. And even if that also were improved, there would still be the issues that arise because SCA use of English language titles is its own modern invention that often directly contradicts actual period English usage (for example, in the SCA knights outrank lords) combined with the fact that even within period, different cultures used titles differently so even for actual period titles it often it isn't simply a matter of one for one translation.

Ideally an alternate title list would not only use linguistically accurate terms for a reasonable sub-period, but would also try to balance using period titles that were used for period ranks roughly equivalent to the period English ranks that used the English titles the SCA adopted for other purposes and using period titles that were used for period ranks roughly equivalent to SCA ranks within the SCA.

Unfortunately, to achieve this ideal for Gaelic cultures throughout the Middle Ages is going to take quite a lot of time and research. In the mean time, and as a first step, this article is a first draft of Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic titles appropriate specifically for the 16th century, a period when both these cultures had cause to directly translate the late period English title terms used as the default SCA titles, not least because in that particular period the monarchy and national government of both cultures were English speaking (or rather, in the case of Scotland, Scots speaking).

In the tables below, the "Usage" columns use the following notation:

G

= given name (alas, even if not historically plausible -- it's what we've got to work with)

P

= territory or people (not permitted for most SCA titles, even though in many cultures the titles were not used without indicating the relevant territory or people)

r

= indirect reference ("He fought for King G...")

a

= direct address ("Lord G, you are...")

*

= SCA compromise, known to be historically implausible but more historically plausible styles not being SCA possible (as it happens, there aren't any of these for the default SCA titles -- to the best of my knowledge they were all used with given names, even if it wasn't always the most common form -- what is implausible isn't the title usage forms so much as the relative rank of the various default titles within the system as a whole)

Glossary

Some linguists consider Scots to be a separate language from English, others consider it a dialect of English. Since the categorization of independent language vs. dialect is a subjective one, there is no "one true answer". I choose to refer to Scots as a language for several reasons, including that I find it makes it easier to talk about and explain the linguistic situation in both modern and medieval Scotland.

Note that "Scots" has several other, more common, meanings in addition to referring to the Scots language, including, as an adjective, the meaning "Scottish" and, as a noun, the meaning "more than one Scottish person".

Notes

Bibliography

Help Sharon win a trip to attend DrupalCon London!

	Web MedievalScotland.org