Deirdre | Anthroponymy | Forum

I think we can do better than "woman", never mind anything sorrowful - which is obviously silly as the Deirdre concerned had that name long before anything tragic occurred to her. Noting the Old Irish form "Derdriu", I suspect we should observe a parallel to Derlughdach (variously "Dar-"). If the argument proposed for that name - ie that Der = daughter - then 'all' we have to do is parse the "dre"/"driu". I don't have a definitive answer, but I start from the assumption that people did not give their children names implying negative qualities or aspirations. Looking for something similar in Scots Gaelic (Dwelly) I would therefore discard various words in "driuch" etc. in favour of eg "dreach" = beauty. Thus the name might mean "beautiful daughter" or even more emphatically "daughter of Beauty". I would not assert that this is the right answer, but I think that it is probably the right approach. Hopefully there will be someone with a detailed knowledge of Irish Gaelic who might be able to zoom in on the sensible answer.