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Ogham (also ogam and ogom, [4] / ˈ ɒ ɡ əm / OG-əm, [5] Modern Irish: [ˈoː(ə)mˠ]; Middle Irish: ogum, ogom, later ogam [ˈɔɣəmˠ] [6] [7]) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish language (scholastic ogham, 6th to 9th centuries).
English letter names are generally used in both colloquial and formal speech but there are modern Irish letter names (based on the original Latin names), similar to other languages that use a Latin script alphabet. Tree names were historically used to name the letters.
It assigns plant names and meanings to the Ogham alphabet, to a lesser extent to Norse Younger Futhark runes, and by extension to Latin letters when used to write Gaelic. Robert Graves ' book The White Goddess has been a major influence on assigning divinatory meanings to the tree symbolism.
Ogham itself is an Early Medieval form of alphabet or cipher, sometimes also known as the "Celtic Tree Alphabet". A number of different numbering schemes are used. The most common is after R. A. S. Macalister's Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum (CIIC). This covers the inscriptions which were known by the 1940s.
The name of the Irish hero Mac Cuill means 'son of the hazel'. W. B. Yeats thought the hazel was the common Irish form of the tree of life. Proto-Celtic was * *collos; Old Irish and Modern Irish coll; Scots Gaelic, calltunn, calltuinn; Manx, coull; Welsh, collen; Cornish, collwedhen; Breton, kraoñklevezenn. [7]
Descriptions of the language have largely focused on the phonology. Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd published the earliest major work on Scottish Gaelic after collecting data in the Scottish Highlands between 1699 and 1700, in particular data on Argyll Gaelic and the now obsolete dialects of north-east Inverness-shire.
Fearn (ᚃ) is the Irish name of the third letter (Irish "letter": sing.fid, pl.feda) of the Ogham alphabet, meaning "alder-tree". In Old Irish, the letter name was fern, which is related to Welsh gwern(en), meaning "alder-tree(s)". Its Primitive Irish root was *wernā and its phonetic value then was [w]. Its Old Irish and modern phonetic value ...
The five "aicme" forfeda are glossed in the manuscripts Auraicept na n-Éces ('The Scholars' Primer), De dúilib feda ('Elements of the Letters') and In Lebor Ogaim ('The Book of Ogam'), by several Bríatharogaim ("word oghams"), or two word kennings, which explain the meanings of the names of the letters of the Ogham alphabet.