On old Irish collective and abstract nouns, the meaning of <em>cétmuinter</em>, and marriage in early mediaeval Ireland

Abstract

This paper consists of two parts. The first concerns the use of words such as cerd to denote both an abstract concept (‘craft’) and a person who embodies it (‘craftsman’), and of words such as fine to denote both a collective (‘kin’) and an individual member of the collective (‘kinsman’). The second part consists of an examination of the meaning of cétmuinter, as well as an account of the origin and persistence of the mistranslation ‘chief wife’, which implicitly underpins the notion of polygamy in Early Christian Ireland.