Is it Irish to be Cuil?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Quite a bit more from Mark Liberman here ("Heroic feats of etymology"):

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=420

--Ben Zimmer

On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 12:20 AM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Isn't that surname spelled _Mac Cumhail_ and pronounced [,mak
> 'kuw at l'], where _il_ [i'] represents palatalized /l/?
>
> And _cuill_ would represent a pronunciation about as close to "kweel"
> as to "quill," in the Munster dialect, at least. Munster isn't the
> basis of the standard language, but, outside of the Gaelteacht, it's
> the most popular dialect.
>
> The word for "knowledge" is _fiuss_, related to English _wise_, in Old
> Irish, yielding _fios_, as expected, in the contemporary remnant of
> the language.
>
> -Wilson
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 10:13 AM, Benjamin Zimmer
> <bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 8:32 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> The "About" page for the new search engine Cuil claims "Cuil is an
>>> old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil."  Do you
>>> experts agree, or is this another instance of the class "all English
>>> words derive from Irish"?
>>
>> http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/28/technology/cuil.ap/index.htm
>> "Costello's Irish heritage inspired Cuil's odd name. It was derived
>> from a character named Finn McCuill in Celtic folklore."
>>
>> In beta-testing, it was spelled "Cuill":
>> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/15/cuill-secures-25m-for-next-generation-search/
>>
>> They want us to pronounce it "cool", but "quill" would be a bit closer
>> to the Irish pronunciation.
>>
>>
>> --Ben Zimmer
>>

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