Word of the Day
Eoghan
Eoghan
Old Irish
Old Irish/ˈoɣan/Modern Irish/ˈoːn/
“An Irish name spoken since the third century, with roots that may be Greek.”
Eoghan appears in Irish genealogies and legal texts from at least the fifth century CE, named for Eoghan Mór, the legendary king of Munster who died around 250 CE. The Eóganacht, the dynasty that controlled Munster for seven centuries, took their name from him, making Eoghan one of the few personal names in Irish history to become the root of both a lineage and a kingdom. Old Irish manuscripts spell it with a long ó, indicating the vowel quality that later anglicizations like Owen and Ewan tried, imperfectly, to capture. The form Eòghann persists in Scottish Gaelic to this day.
5 stops · from Athens, Ancient Greece to Dublin, Ireland