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ArchivesRe: Brendan means “stinking hair”?
in reply to a message by overtheclouds
Sorry - this is a bit late!
CKE is totally right, as one would naturally expect! But the possible reason why those "older sources" found the "stinking hair" meaning plausible could be that in some cultures it is/was thought unwise to attract the envy of the gods by giving a child such a wonderful name that they might perceive it as competition and zap it with illness, bad luck or even early death. So loving parents with their baby's interests at heart might have thought along the lines of "Let's name him Brendan so the gods will feel sorry for him and either overlook him or perhaps even give him good fortune".
Of course, they didn't, for all the reasons we know about. Or maybe they, too, or some of them, also fell for the Old Irish etymology; like modern parents who think that Katharine means "pure".
CKE is totally right, as one would naturally expect! But the possible reason why those "older sources" found the "stinking hair" meaning plausible could be that in some cultures it is/was thought unwise to attract the envy of the gods by giving a child such a wonderful name that they might perceive it as competition and zap it with illness, bad luck or even early death. So loving parents with their baby's interests at heart might have thought along the lines of "Let's name him Brendan so the gods will feel sorry for him and either overlook him or perhaps even give him good fortune".
Of course, they didn't, for all the reasons we know about. Or maybe they, too, or some of them, also fell for the Old Irish etymology; like modern parents who think that Katharine means "pure".
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