At 5:12:30 PM on Sunday, September 14, 2008, Andrew Jarrette
wrote:
[...]
> I believe the source I got that information from mentioned
> that priests were the tonsured ones in Old Irish society.
Indeed. But not, one assumes, the only bald ones. For that
matter, the corresponding OIr noun <máel> 'cropped head'
also came to connate 'slave, servent', whence its use with
the genitives of saints' names in forenames of the type
<Máel X> 'devotee of X'.
[...]
> Well, I'd much rather take "battlefield" over "crooked
> mouth" for the meaning of name of my ancestors, untrue
> though it may be.
Good grief, why? Surely the facts are more interesting, and
in this case there's really no doubt; see the discussion in
Black, _Surnames of Scotland_.
In any case, even if it were from <de Campo Bello>, it
wouldn't have anything to do with battlefields: that would
be pretty much the exact equivalent of the English surname
<Fairfield>.
Brian