James

[Old Hippie]

Not quite sure that I follow your penultimate paragraph .

No problem. What I was aiming toward was the thought (as you say below) that there is no "Hamish" in Gaelic, that it is merely how Seumas' name is pronounced when addressing him directly. Sometimes (often!) my brain goes off at a tangent when a casual comment touches on something I've been mulling over.

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.

I have a passingly casual interest in several languages -- Gaelic, Maori and Chinook -- mainly because it's interesting to me to see how they deal with relations between people and with complex actions performed between people and things. As a speaker of any of them beyond what is essentially "howdy," I'm bloody useless.

:ootd: