Hello,

My sister and I have been doing a little research into getting our late father's name, Patrick, as a tattoo in Ogham.

Two things I have noticed - in direct translation letter by letter (I hope this pastes properly), the C & K have the same symbol, which looks kind of silly to me:

ᚚᚐᚈᚏᚔᚉᚉ

I understand that letters of the modern English alphabet don't map directly into Ogham, so would it be more appropriate to have a more archaic form of the name - such as Padraig/Padraic :

ᚚᚐᚇᚏᚐᚔᚌ ᚚᚐᚇᚏᚐᚔᚉ

Would either of these be more authentic/logical than trying to use "Patrick"? Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Thank you!
-Stormkin

Anything to do with Ogham is tricky, For one thing, it was phonetic, which is why it could be used to write multiple languages.

There's a pretty good article on it here:

http://gaelic.co/ogham/

If you go with the Irish form of the name, "Pádraig," you'll need to be aware that it's not pronounced the same as the Anglicized "Patrick." Depending on the dialect, it's pronounced anywhere from "PAW-drig" to "Porrik."

Wait for more input, please.

Redwolf

That's because the "ck" combination did not exist in Irish, Latin, or the Brythonic language (ancestor to Welsh) which Patrick may have spoken at home. It was an English (Germanic) consonant combination which came into use in Ireland when people started Anglicizing Irish names (although Patrick was actually a Latin name absorbed into Irish). In addition, when Patrick came to Ireland, Irish had lost the "p" sound, so he was called Gatraic originally (which is still preserved in some old place names). The "p" sound came back into the language later, mostly through foreign words, especially Latin words. This is why few words beginning in "p" are native Irish words.

C, K, and Q all had the same sound in Latin, originally (a "k" sound). The soft "c" in words like "cent" was a later development, so Caesar's name was originally pronounced close to the modern German "Kaiser". The Latins got their alphabet from the Etruscans, who used an adaptation of the Greek alphabet. In Etruscan, the letters C, K, and Q each had a different sound, but when the Romans adopted the Etruscan alphabet, they only had one of those sounds, so they weren't sure what to do with all three letters. For a while, they used K only before "a" and "o", Q before "u" (which is why there's almost always a "u" after "q" in modern English), and C before "e" and "i", but they did even that inconsistently, and the use of K mostly faded out with time.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Early Irish had had two different k sounds: /k/ (velar) and /q/ (uvular). Thet's why there's a Q in Ogham.
Welsh p corresponds originally to Irish q (Welsh map / Irish maqqas, later mac = son)

The Latin name Patricius would be in Early Irish "Qatrikios" or "Qatrikias". I'd think this is the most authentic form for writing in Ogham, but totally artificial as well.

I wish Irish still had the /q/ sound. It is my favorite letter in our Tajik alphabet.

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ЯГОН ТОҶИК НЕСТ ИНҶО???