Applied Names

At a Glance

In the annal excerpts, names are repeatedly linked with added explanations. One entry says a cognomen continued to be applied to Fiacha, and another says a king first caused gold chains to be worn by kings and chieftains. A later notice explains that one ruler had first been called Eochaidh and only afterwards received the name Ollamh Fodhla. These are direct statements about naming, not broad commentary on identity. ^[2]

The same passage pattern appears elsewhere in the annals. Finnachta is said to have had another name at first, Elim, and the reason for the later name is given in the text. The excerpts therefore present applied description as something attached to a person after the main name has already been introduced. What can be observed here is the presence of explanatory naming, not a general theory of why such explanations were chosen. ^[2]

Textual Application

The CELT research note uses application in a technical sense. It describes the database as a growing corpus of literary, historical, social, and political texts relating to Ireland and Irish culture. It also states that texts are encoded in TEI and available in HTML, SGML, and plaintext. These details show a system in which texts are prepared for use in several formats rather than presented in only one form. ^[3]

The note also makes the act of marking explicit. It says that texts have structural markup applied, and that descriptive markup is not yet complete for all texts. It lists structural divisions such as chapters, years of annals, paragraphs, verses, lines, pages, folia, lists, and items. It also names descriptive categories such as personal names, placenames, dates, events, artefacts, and numbers. The comparison is between completed structural tagging and incomplete descriptive tagging. ^[3]

Annal Structure

The annal text itself is organized into short dated entries. The excerpt begins with entries labelled by years of the world, then moves from one reign to another. Within those entries, the notices are concise and formulaic, giving a reign length, a death, or a first occurrence. The observable structure is a sequence of separate annal statements rather than a continuous narrative paragraph. ^[2]

Several entries link a ruler with an institutional or ceremonial change. Ollamh Fodhla is said to have established the Feis Teamhrach and erected Mur Ollamhan at Teamhair. He also appointed a chieftain over every cantred and a Brughaidh over every townland. Those details are specific to the excerpt and should be read as claims inside the annal tradition, not as independent corroboration from other records in this set. ^[2]

Editorial Context

The bibliographic notice for The History of Ireland presents a modern editorial frame rather than the historical text itself. It identifies Thomas Osborne Davis as author and notes that the electronic edition was compiled by Beatrix Färber, with proof corrections by Margaret Bonar. The record also gives the text extent as 4,340 words and states that CELT publishes it online under restricted availability, with access granted only with prior consent for academic research and teaching purposes. ^[1]

This notice also lists earlier printed editions and related writings by Davis, along with later studies and centenary material. The list is bibliographic rather than argumentative. It shows that the electronic version stands within a documented publication trail, but it does not itself explain the historical views of the text. The only directly visible point is the accumulation of editorial and reference information around one work. ^[1]

Comparative Reading

Across the excerpts, application appears in two very different registers. In the annals, explanatory language is attached to personal names and reign notices; in the CELT note, markup is applied to text as a technical operation. Both passages therefore present additions to a base text, but one addition is historical naming and the other is digital annotation. That is a comparison of wording and structure, not of historical period or authorship. ^[2] ^[3]

The contrast is especially clear in how the texts classify information. The annals distinguish first names, later names, and explanatory cognomens within narrative notices. The CELT note distinguishes structural markup from descriptive markup and says the latter is unfinished in some texts. The evidence does not show these systems interacting directly; it only shows that both depend on sorting information into named categories. ^[2] ^[3]

Bounded Meaning

The excerpts leave several things unresolved. They do not explain why the annal entries attach explanatory names, and they do not discuss the historical reliability of those notices. They also do not give a completed description of every CELT text, because the note says some descriptive markup is still incomplete. What can be stated securely is narrower: the passages preserve named additions to text in both traditional and digital forms. ^[2] ^[3]

The Davis notice identifies the work as The History of Ireland, names Thomas Osborne Davis as author, and records the file description, electronic edition compiler, proof corrections, and extent of text. In the Annals of the Four Masters, the entries carry internal labels such as M3848 and M3922, with year headings like “The Age of the World, 3848” and “The Age of the World, 3922.” CELT also explains that its texts are encoded in TEI and marked structurally for divisions such as years of annals, with descriptive markup for personal names and placenames. ^[1] ^[2] ^[3]