A ( Irish) or (

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic (, ; Endonym and exonym, endonym: ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic language, Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongs ...

; plural ), in the Gaelic world, could refer to any member in general of a powerful family enjoying a high degree of

sovereignty Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority. Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states. In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate au ...

, and so is also sometimes translated as

lord Lord is an appellation for a person or deity who has authority, control, or power (social and political), power over others, acting as a master, chief, or ruler. The appellation can also denote certain persons who hold a title of the Peerage o ...

aristocrat The aristocracy (''from Greek'' ''ἀριστοκρατία'' ''aristokratía'', "rule of the best"; ''Latin: aristocratia'') is historically associated with a "hereditary" or a "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the ...

in the general sense, or can refer to sovereignty itself. Thus it did not usually refer to a specific position such as (king) which any given might or might not hold, allowing for the term to eventually develop the slightly alternative meaning of any hereditary high aristocrat who was understood to be subordinate to the king. In this later sense a was similar to a

tacksman A tacksman (, meaning "supporting man"; most common Scots spelling: ''takisman'') was a landholder of intermediate legal and social status in Scottish Highland society. Tenant and landlord Although a tacksman generally paid a yearly rent for th ...

in the

Scottish clan A Scottish clan (from Scottish Gaelic , literally 'children', more broadly 'kindred') is a kinship group among the Scottish people. Clans give a sense of shared heritage and descent to members, and in modern times have an official structure r ...

system. The later development in meaning, innocent in itself, allowed the term to become confused with "chief" as that term is commonly understood in English, when in fact a Gaelic "chief" was very often technically a (king) of any one of three or more grades and holding a

White Wand The White Rod, White Wand, Rod of Inauguration, or Wand of Sovereignty, in the Irish language variously called the slat na ríghe (rod of kingship) and slat tighearnais (rod of lordship), was the primary symbol of a Gaelic king or lord's legitima ...

. A might not hold a White Wand; he might simply be a brother, nephew or some relation of the king. The might be the head of a junior sept of the royal kindred or a member of another great family which was somehow in the king's service. It became an element in personal and eventually family names, an example being the royal family of O'Flaherty ( "Descendants of the Bright Prince"). It could be combined with to form the personal name ("Princely King" or "Kingly Prince"), an example being

Flaithrí mac Domnaill Flaithrí mac Domnaill (died 777) was a King of Connacht from the Uí Briúin branch of the Connachta. He was the son of Domnall mac Cellaig (d.728), a previous king. The sept of Uí Briun he belonged to was the Síl Cellaig of Loch Cime. He reig ...

King of Connacht The Kings of Connacht were rulers of the ''cóiced'' (variously translated as portion, fifth, province) of Connacht, which lies west of the River Shannon, Ireland. However, the name only became applied to it in the early medieval era, being named ...

. A (lit. "Lady Prince") was a princess more specifically described. However, illustrative of how {{lang, ga, flaith was principally a general term for a member of the high nobility, the personal names

Gormflaith (; ) is an Irish-language feminine given name meaning "blue princess" or "illustrious princess". is also a Irish mythology, Gaelic mythological national personification, personification of Ireland. The word ' is a compound of the Irish words ' ( ...

("Blue Princess" or "Blue Sovereignty") and Órflaith ("Golden Princess") were understood to be female without the addition of the feminine affix.

References

Dictionary of the Irish Language
Letter F, Column 160
Wiktionary: Flaith
from

Proto-Celtic Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the hypothetical ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed throu ...

*''wlati''- (“sovereignty”)
The Brehon Laws: The Flaiths
a treatise by

Laurence Ginnell Laurence Ginnell (baptised 9 April 1852 – 17 April 1923) was an Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as member of the Irish Parliamentary ...

on the title or class as understood in the later sense
Grades and Groups of Society
by

Patrick Weston Joyce Patrick Weston "P. W." Joyce (1827 – 7 January 1914) was an Irish historian, writer and music collector, known particularly for his research in Irish etymology and local place names of Ireland. Biography He was born in Ballyorgan in the B ...

Irish nobility Gaelic nobility of Ireland Medieval Scottish nobility

See also

References