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ArchivesA name from my family tree (help please)
Could someone help me find out what origin and hopefully meaning of the name Darthula. I have several women on my family tree with this name. I believe that they are of German and English/Scottish/Irish background.
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The name Darthula is from a poem by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, published as one of his "Ossianic poems" around 1765. Macpherson claimed his works were translations of ancient Gaelic poems, but most experts today believe he was the primary author, though some of his work was inspired by ancient Gaelic legends. His poem about Darthula is evidently based on the Irish legend or Deirdre. Some sources claim that Macpherson created the name Darthula from the Gaelic name Dearbhail, but I don't know if they have firm evidence for that.
You can find a lot about this by Googling "Darthula" along with "Macpherson". Macpherson's poems were extremely popular all around Europe in the 19th century and are at least partly responsible for the popularity of names like Oscar and Selma.
http://www.exclassics.com/ossian/ossintro.htm
You can find a lot about this by Googling "Darthula" along with "Macpherson". Macpherson's poems were extremely popular all around Europe in the 19th century and are at least partly responsible for the popularity of names like Oscar and Selma.
http://www.exclassics.com/ossian/ossintro.htm
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Thank you for your help! That is very interesting and I am now off to google :-)
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