Greetings! I have a request for you. I have been learning Irish in honor of my great grand-dad who taught Irish in Coilte Mách. This October I was in Ireland. Four days after returning home, and eleven days before she turned twenty-four, my niece, my god-daughter passed suddenly without cause. It has been devastating. To honor her we want to create a "Jessie stone", a Stone with her name (jessie) carved into it for myself and my family to remember her. In short I want Her name carved into stone written in Ogham. Researching her name in Irish I came up with "Yesheh". I wanted to check with you to see if that's correct. I'm hoping you can help. If so, would you please let me know if this is the correct spelling & if not please let me know what is the correct spelling. Her name is just Jessie, not Jessica or anything else, simply Jessie. Thank you so much for your time and consideration for this project.
Le meas,
Micki

First up, you're in the Scottish Gaelic section of the site, and most people don't come here.

Secondly, there's no letter Y in the Irish alphabet, so that's definitely wrong.

It may be that what you have there is some version of the Biblical "Jesse" (Eshal or Yishal in Hebrew), but that's a man's name from a different root than Jessie anyway.

Sadly, not all names have equivalents in every language -- I mean, there's no Italian for "Donald", for example. Jessica is first recorded in English in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, so it's a relatively new name, and most international names have stopped moving and naturalising in the way they used too.

Long story short: I don't think there is one.

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Hi, I've moved your thread to the main forum where it may get more attention.

First, let me say sorry for your loss. We will try to do everything we can.

Wikipedia suggests that the name appears for the first time in English in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, as NiallBeag mentions, but also that it most likely came from the Hebrew Iskah in the Book of Genesis (11:29). In the version of An Bíobla Naofa (The Holy Bible in Irish) that I have, this is rendered as Isceá.

Here is how I would render Isceá in ogham:



There are no accents in ogham. I have used the combined character for EA.




In case you were looking for the old Irish script form of Isceá as well:

Isceá

My version of An Bíobla Naofa is fairly recent. There might be other versions of Iskah in older translations of the bible into Irish.


The above is based on the name Jessica, from which Jessie is derived. If you want something closer to just "Jessie", I would suggest leaving out the third Ogham character (four upward lines), this would remove the k sound from the name and leave Iseá which is the closest you would get in Irish to "Yesheh" that you found earlier. (Old Irish script: Iseá)

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Hi,

Sorry to hear of your loss. You have requested the name in the Ogham script, unfortunately, there is no "J" in Ogham. So if you want the name to read Jessie in ogham than you will have to leave the "J" out of it. This reads as "Essie". But the problem with that is Essie is an independent name all by itself. So you are not going to be able to write Jessie as Jessie in ogham- sorry!

http://nuacht1.com/ogham/?q=jessie

You gave "Yesheh" as being the Irish equivalent. That is very, very unlikely to be true; as Irish never had "y" and it never uses "h" to slenderise "s" and also Irish never has a "h" standing on its own at the end of a word like that! It looks more like Hebrew in the Roman script.

However, I know you specifically said that her name is jessie and not Jessica, but you might have to sacrifice that stance if you want it written in Ogham. From a quick look at Wikipedia it says that Jessica is an Anglicisation of the Hebrew Iskah and the name was rendered as Jeska in the English bible. If we can find the Irish equivalent of Iskah we may have something. Unfortunately, I don't have a bible in Irish so you'll have to wait for someone to look at theirs.

Crossed with Breandán!

Cian.

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

I just read on in the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_(given_name) and it through up:

Seasaidh for Jessie as the Gaelic form.

Interestingly,Under usage in Scotland in Wikipedia it reads;

"The Scottish variant of Jessie is Seasaìdh/Teasaìdh, (respectively pronounced "SHAY-say" and "CHEH-say"). It is important to note, however, that in Scotland the name Jessie is not related to Jessica. Instead, it is considered a pet form of the name Jean (feminised from John). This is expressed in Gaelic variants as the names Seana (Shawna) or Sìne (Sheena). Related feminine names taken from John are Jane/Joan (Sìne), Janie (Sìneag), and Janet/Janice (Seònaid); all are considered equated, though spelling may change slightly dependent upon what form of Gaelic (Irish or Scottish).
An additional nickname for Jessie, heard in Scotland, is Jinty (or Jinny). This may or may not be the case in Ireland or Northern Ireland. It hints at the connection there to Jean (female given name)/Jane//Jennie."

So, I think Seasaidh(e) or Seasaí would be more natural in Irish than Isceá.

Seasaidh: http://nuacht1.com/ogham/?q=seasaidh

Seasaidhe: http://nuacht1.com/ogham/?q=seasaidhe

Seasaí: http://nuacht1.com/ogham/?q=seasa%C3%AD

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Please wait for corrections/ more input from other forum members before acting on advice

Nice work, Cian.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

First of all thank you for your kind words, prompt response, ythe beautiful irish script and of course putting me on the right site!
I'm an idiot,
as further demonstrated when I reviewed my initial post prompted by the response to Yesheh, which should have read Ieise/YESH eh. Yup....
So just with starting with the letter "J" it makes it technically untranslatable. But then you find "Jesse" in the Irish Language Bible yeah? So ignoring gender issues and all kind of other things my ignorant self probably is, does this seem to make sence that it would be "safe" to go with the Irish language Bible translation of Jesse or the Scottish variant? I'm torn because of the "Jean" deviation with the Scottish Seasai it seems a step away, if that makes ant sence at all?

Thanks again. I hold good thought & blessings

Micki

Hi, what I gave you was "Jessica" from the Irish Bible (having not read your comment "Her name is just Jessie, not Jessica or anything else, simply Jessie." properly ).

What Cian (An Cionnfhaolach) gave you was the Scottish Gaelic form of "Jessie" which is unrelated to the biblical name.

Cian's suggestions seem closer to what you are after. The old Irish script for those would be:

Seasaiḋ

Seasaiḋe

Seasaí

Ieise would be: http://nuacht1.com/ogham/?q=ieise

If you are torn between the two, you might also like to consider putting the ogham for Seasaidh on one corner and Iscea/Isea/Ieise on another? Some ogham inscriptions were also accompanied with inscriptions in Latin on the face of the stone.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

I might get shot down here but in modern Irish the letter 'J' seems to get substituted with the letter 'I'.

For example: Julianstown = Baile Iulian. (This is a town very close to where I live).

This form 'Jessie is Seasaìdh' although a Scottish Gealic version of the name seems very close in structure to my sirname 'Ó Scolaidhe' which is in old Irish (Ó Scolaí in modern Irish/ Scully in English). It may or may not be important for you to have an ogham stone depicting old Irish as opposed to modern Irish to present it more naturally as ogham had its hayday in the third-fourth centuries and was most definately an Old Irish form of writing representing old Irish in some form?

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Caithimíd dul siar chun teacht aniar.

There is also a completely different way to look at all of this in that if you want to really get into the old Irish form you could forget the whole Jessie idea altogether and look at it from an old Irish position. Ie. In ancient Ireland (and around the time that Ogham was in use) Names were thought of in a very different way than they are considered in Ireland today. People really only had one name and that was their first name. The second name or sirname as we consider it today was really a representation of where they were from or rather from the name of the first chieftan coming down the line who lay the borders of that teritory. That is to say the land controlled by their Tuaidh or sept. So a person may have the same name as the person beside tham but be geneticly completely unrelated. They become an O'Brien or O'Flaherty by default of where they reside and under who's protection they exist (Their cheiftan's name)

The first name (which is the one you are interested in) was a descriptive name which told you something about the person in question. This is actually very similar to how native Americans saw names. example Domhnal (Donal or Donald in English) Meaning of the Earth or Daragh/Dara from Daire meaning oak trees. Domhnal may well have been the son of a resident of three consecutive generations on a particular piece of land for example (In old Brehon law this time frame entitled you to particular rights to that piece of land) this would have meaning to his name and declare his status among the community. On this basis you might take Jessie and research the origional meaning of Jesica from its native language and find the meaning for this, then find the equivalent old Irish word and use that as the basis for structuring the name. This might be more authenthic with Ogham. I hope I have not gone off on too much of a tangent here but if a direct translation to ogham (Which does not seem possible) does not please you, this alternative might be more pleasing.

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Caithimíd dul siar chun teacht aniar.