Comments (Meaning / History Only)
An aisling refers to a particular type of dream, you would not use this word for the type of dream you dream every night. It arises from poems, which utilised a poetic device, which came to be known as the aisling, written in the 17th and 18th centuries. In these poems the poet has a dream or vision where a woman appears to him and talks of the plight of Ireland and her future rescue, usually be outside forces.
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Originally when Gaelic was written down, it borrowed the Latin alphabet but for some reason there was no letter "h", and I before an s is used to make a "sh" sound as in Inis, pronounced Inish... the word for an island.
"nn" in Gaelic makes the same sound as 'ng' in English.. and the g crept into the language sometime in the middle ages.
In the 17th century the name was used to describe a particular type of poem, best described shortly as "a prophetical, waking vision".. rather than a "dream\". And this is the first instance I have ever found of it.
The name was used in the mid 20th century for houses, hotels and a company that produces school supplies.
I was born and named Aisling in 1965... though I know of one woman older than me with the same name, it didn't become popular until I was in my teens.
The variants are really only Ashling, Aishling, Aislinn.
It is not the same name as Ashlyn, etc or Islin,