Thanks for the reply. Here are some things to think
about.
Being a goverment translator, I have found it very
dangerous business making broad claims about
languages, and being from a Welsh/Irish background, I
believe making claims about Goidelic languages, like
Old Irish is doubly so.
Citing the name 'Conor' as being an indicator of
vowel pronounciation is misleading in that, strictly
speaking, 'Conor' is an Anglicization of the Old Irish
name 'Conchobar'.
Dr. James MacKillop (President of the American
Conference for Irish Studies, and one of the world's
leading Celtic scholors) writes in his Dictionary of
Celtic Mythology the following:
"...Irish pronunciation in particular is not
standardized. The name of the often-mentioned Ulster
king Conchobar mac Nessa, for example, may be
pronounced (roughly) 'KUN-khuh-var', 'KUNNA-khoor', or
'KRU-hoor', in different periods or places.
Complicating matters further, the many variant
spellings given at different entries, especially when
they are in Classical or Modern Irish call for
different pronounciations"
Following this, if one looks up the name 'Conan' in
Dr. MacKillop's dictionary, the following can be
found: my comments are within [these brackets]
" Conan, a name found with differing associations
in three Celtic lands. In Ireland it is:Conan [accent
on the 'a'] (hound, wolf)...In Wales it is: Conan
[Howard's spelling] (to grumble, to mutter?) In
Brittany Conan is the name for Cynnan, the British
invader of the country...Despite much conjecture,
there does not seem to be a link between any of the
Celtic figures named Conan and the Conan of the pulp
adventure fiction series of Robert E. Howard (d.1936)"
In Welsh, 'o' is more frequently sounded as in
the word 'more', though also as in the word 'knot'.
Jesse
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