Quote Originally Posted by Old Hippie View Post
A recent comment by one of our Francophone brethren started me thinking about this again. There's a bit of a set-up, but I need to check my understanding.

What I *think* I know is that the Gaelic equivalent of "James" is "Seumas," pronounced more-or-less like "SHAY-oo-mass." When addressing Seumas, lenition would apply such that "Seumas" becomes "a Sheumais" which, as I understand it, would be pronounced roughly "ah HEY-oo-maish" or, if an Anglophone heard it, they might hear "Hamish."

Which causes me to wonder about naming, if names like Shamus and Hamish really come from the same root. Further, given that Hamish appears already lenited, would further lenition be applied, or would a Gaelic speaker simply say "Hamish" the way they might say "Ahmed" or "Jorge," names from another language that may defy attempts to translate them into Gaelic?

The comment that started this whole chain of association was addressing Hamish as "Monsieur Jambon" or "Mister Ham." I appreciate the implicit pun on Hamish, who's often addressed as "Ham."

Am I just thinking too much? Should I be spending more time in the Laphroaig?

:ootd:
Not quite sure that I follow your penultimate paragraph .

In Gaelic there is no such name as Hamish, Vari, Gonnal etc. There are, as you imply, all Anglicised attempts/errors to render the vocative of the root names.

In a familiar setting i.e. family conversation the full vocative is usually elided further so ones hears Hamish, Vari etc.