Ogham

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Ogham
᚛ᚑᚌᚐᚋ᚜
An inscription found in 1975 in Ratass Church, Tralee, County Kerry
Script type
Time period
c. 4th–10th centuries
DirectionBottom-to-top, left-to-right Edit this on Wikidata
LanguagesPrimitive Irish;
Old Irish; Pictish[1][2][3]
ISO 15924
ISO 15924Ogam (212), ​Ogham
Unicode
Unicode alias
Ogham
U+1680–U+169F

Ogham (/ˈɒɡəm/ OG-əm,[4] Modern Irish: [ˈoː(ə)mˠ]; Middle Irish: ogum, ogom, later ogam [ˈɔɣəmˠ][5][6]) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language (scholastic ogham, 6th to 9th centuries). There are roughly 400 surviving orthodox inscriptions on stone monuments throughout Ireland and western Britain, the bulk of which are in southern Munster.[7] The largest number outside Ireland are in Pembrokeshire, Wales.[8]

The vast majority of the inscriptions consist of personal names.

According to the High Medieval Bríatharogam, the letters are named after various trees. For this reason, Ogham is sometimes known as the Celtic tree alphabet.

The etymology of the word ogam or ogham remains unclear. One possible origin is from the Irish og-úaim 'point-seam', referring to the seam made by the point of a sharp weapon.[9]

  1. ^ "Ogham alphabet".
  2. ^ "BabelStone: The Ogham Stones of Scotland". 8 June 2013. Archived from the original on 2 June 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  3. ^ Padel, Oliver J. (1972). Inscriptions of Pictland (M.Litt). University of Edinburgh.
  4. ^ "ogham". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  5. ^ ogum, ogom in Quin, E. G.; et al., eds. (2007) [1913–1975]. Dictionary of the Irish Language, Based Mainly on Old and Middle Irish Materials. Dublin: RIA. Retrieved 3 December 2021.
  6. ^ Thurneysen, R. A Grammar of Old Irish page 9: "Older as a rule even than the above archaic material are the sepulchral inscriptions in a special alphabet called ogom or ogum in Middle Irish, ogham in Modern Irish."
  7. ^ McManus (1991) is aware of a total of 382 orthodox inscriptions. The later scholastic inscriptions have no definite endpoint and continue into the Middle Irish and even Modern Irish periods, and record also names in other languages, such as Old Norse, (Old) Welsh, Latin and possibly Pictish. See Forsyth, K.; "Abstract: The Three Writing Systems of the Picts." in Black et al. Celtic Connections: Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Celtic Studies, Vol. 1. East Linton: Tuckwell Press (1999), p. 508; Richard A. V. Cox, The Language of the Ogam Inscriptions of Scotland, Dept. of Celtic, Aberdeen University ISBN 0-9523911-3-9 [1]; See also The New Companion to the Literature of Wales, by Meic Stephens, p. 540.
  8. ^ O'Kelly, Michael J., Early Ireland, an Introduction to Irish Prehistory, p. 251, Cambridge University Press, 1989
  9. ^ (MacManus, §8.6)