So there is a post floating around Tumblr which I have seen many times, saying that if you translate Moriarty from Latin into English, it would mean ‘to die is an art’. And while it’s clever, it bugged me enormously, because Moriarty isn’t a Latin name. It’s an Irish name, a Gaelic one, so it has absolutely nothing to do with Latin. While they’re both Indo-European languages, Latin is an Italic language, and Gaelic a Celtic one. Seeing the Romans never reached Ireland, they didn’t even spoke Latin there.
Moriarty was probably a personal or perhaps occupational name; ‘Muircheartach’, meaning “The navigator”. It is a developed form of the Olde Gaelic pre-10th century surname O’Muircheartaigh.
One explanation for the many variations is that scribes and church officials frequently spelled the name as it sounded; an imprecise method at best. Understandably then, various spellings of the surname Moriarty can be found. These includes Moriarty, O’Moriarty, Murtagh, Murtag, McMoriarty and many more.
The abbreviations of Mc in front of a name, meaning ‘son of’ is popular in Irish names, although this is no guarantee that the name is Irish. Many Scottish names also prefer Mc instead of Mac. Officially in both countries, the abbreviation is Mac. In Ireland, frequently O’ is also used instead of Mc but the meaning is the same.
And seeing I ship MorMor till death and beyond: Moran is an Anglicized form of two distinct Gaelic names – O’Morain and O’Moghrain of Connacht. The personal byname Morain, from ‘mor’, meaning ‘great’ or ‘large’, which would make Moran’s meaning “descendant of a great one”, or “son of a great one”. With this name you can also find different spellings, such as O’Moran, Murrin, or Murran.
I take things like this way too serious, maybe, but I just really like the origin and meaning of names, okay.
Lady Karasu 