Quote Originally Posted by neloon View Post
Mike,
There appears to have been an Old French form "Gemmes" in the mix of European forms you refer to. I suppose it is possible that this could have been favoured in Scotland before England because of the Auld Alliance.
There being no "j" in Gaelic, the usual transliteration would be Seumas (pron. "shaymus") of which the vocative is Sheumais (pron. "Haymish").
(So "Hamish" is not really a sensible formation unless you're actually speaking to the guy.)
Alan
***... Nobody where I come from is actually named Hamish. There are tons of people named Seamas and Seamus. As Neloon pointed out, when we address a Seamus, we say A Sheumais (a Hamish), but the name is still Sheumais. This vocative custom changes most names Mairi becomes Mhairi (vah-di) etc...

I don't know of any other language that does this to names, including Irish, as far as I know. Admittedly, I've never studied Irish and have only been told this by an Irish friend who isn't fluent but took it in school.

Another interesting coincidence is that Hamish (Haymishe) is a common yiddish expression that means (familiar or like home). Being a Germanic language like Scots, they share the word hame for home, although as I proved in another thread, I'm not sure if this holds for all dialects of Scots/Lallans as I have very limited contact with it and far more familiarity with Gàidhlig.