The Gaelic for “Gay”
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LGBT History Month and Gaelic Scotland
February is LGBT History Month in the UK. As an ally, I am celebrating with this post focused on the intersections between LGBT and Gaelic history, arts, and language. I start with a bit of background on the history and situation of LGBT Gaelic speakers in Scotland, then discuss the contributions that the arts, including writing, make to the normalization of LGBT Gaelic speakers. In the final section, I offer a free resource with Gaelic vocabulary for LGBT concepts. This post is not meant to be the last word; rather I hope it will stimulate people to think and talk about the topic more openly in the interest of breaking down assumptions and prejudice.
Homosexual acts were formally punishable by death in Scotland and England from the 1500s and remained capital offences until 1861. After that they still remained crimes punishable with jail time for over a century. The 2015 BBC documentary “Coming Oot” described historical attitudes to homosexuality in Scotland: “For many years Scotland just did not do gay.” According to Dr Jeff Meek, right up through the 1950s “There was almost a bar on talking about same-sex desire.” Meek, author of Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland, says homosexuality was something families, religious institutions, the medical profession and society at large all chose to ignore: “Growing up queer in post-war Scotland [was] essentially occupying a social and sexual wilderness.” Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in 1967 in England and Wales. In the 1970s Scottish activists campaigned for decriminalization, normalization, and civil rights despite the danger to themselves. Decriminalization did not take place until 1980 in Scotland and 1982 in Northern Ireland.
Just like the rest of Scotland, from at least the 1500s until 1980 the Gàidhealtachd was constructed as a community that admitted no cultural or ideological room for gay identities. Most likely, practices now called homosexual were occurring all along, however, in closeted silence at the risk of arrest, imprisonment, violence, familial and social exclusion, or sincerely anticipated damnation. During this stretch of history, the only historically documented gay Gaelic speaker who has been identified is the complicated figure of Major General Sir Hector Archibald MacDonald (1853-1903), reputed to be the Highlander on the Camp Coffee label.
Camp Coffee labels through the decades, probably featuring the image of Hector MacDonald
The anti-gay positions of the largest Christian denominations in Scotland have historically shaped the treatment and experiences of LGBT+ people in Scottish communities, although the Church of Scotland has been gradually changing its stance. Despite the concerted efforts of Stonewall Scotland and other groups, homophobic abuse is still a fact of life for many LGBT people in Scotland according to The Scottish LGBT Equality Report of 2015. Following Scottish devolution and further activist struggles, same-sex civil partnerships were approved in 2005. In 2014, the Scottish Parliament approved same-sex marriage. Due in large part to these developments, in both 2015 and 2016 Scotland was named the best country for LGBTI legal equality in Europe. Two recent newspaper articles convey further encouraging news about the situation for LGBT+ people in Scotland. First, the New York Times published a long article about the increased number of openly gay politicians in Scotland:
Scotland Embraces Gay Politicians in a Profound Cultural Shift 22 October 2016 “Today, in addition to the leaders of three of the five major political parties in Scotland, four ministers in the Scottish government are openly gay, as is the secretary of state for Scotland in Britain’s Conservative government. The one elected representative of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party in Scotland is gay, too.”
Related to the situation prior to the 1980 decriminalization of homosexual activity in Scotland, The Scotsman newspaper reports:
Gay Scots to be “Automatically” Pardoned for Historic Offences 25 October 2016 “All Scots men convicted of crimes relating to homosexual activity are to receive an ‘automatic’ pardon and have their records wiped, justice secretary Michael Matheson announced today. The move was hailed as a ‘historic’ at Holyrood and goes further than a similar measure unveiled by UK ministers last week. Mr Matheson told MSPs today that there are men in Scotland who still have convictions for same-sex sexual activity which only became lawful north of the border in 1980. ‘We must right this wrong,’ he said. ”We will introduce an automatic pardon for people convicted so that they know they are absolved fully of that conviction.”
The rainbow saltire, an unofficial Scottish version of the Pride flag
Normalizing LGBT Gaelic Lives through Gaelic Arts
Nationally, the Stonewall Scotland charity and other groups are pushing back against homophobia with public presence, connection, and education. Regionally, the Highland LGBT Forum has said “We look to the day when our LGBT community is fully integrated within our society.” In Gaelic communities and on the national level, gay and lesbian Gaelic speakers have made important contributions to many areas of Gaelic revitalization in recent decades, including Gaelic media, computing, literature, and all levels and sectors of education. The work of LGBT normalization is in progress, and I believe that Gaelic arts can contribute positively to it. My company, Bradan Press, is proud to have published Lus na Tùise / Lavender, a poetry collection by Marcas Mac an Tuairneir. The poems express a gay poet’s reciprocal acknowledgment of and integration into Gaelic community and culture. Struggles for acknowledgement of same-sex love, and recognition of the prejudice against it, are reflected and given voice in a number of poems in Lus na Tùise / Lavender. For example, the eight-poem “Gun Ainm” cycle imagines letters written by a Hebridean man to his lover, a Highland soldier at the front in the Great War (World War I). The cycle was prompted by the way that the centennial of the Great War was commemorated in 2014, with English-language gay narratives of the time still largely bypassed. Gay Gaelic narratives are not in evidence at all for this time period, nor for any other until the 1990s, meaning the poem cycle in this volume is significant as the only Gaelic text to discuss the phenomenon within this time-period. This poem cycle grew out of a commission by BBC Radio nan Gàidheal for the Great War centennial radio project “Litir chun an t-Saighdeir Gun Ainm” [Letter to the Unknown Soldier]. The “Gun Ainm” cycle was published in its entirety in the Gaelic anthology Litir chun an t-Saighdeir gun Ainm (Clàr) in 2016.
Excerpt from “Gun Ainm VIII” (Unnamed VIII) by Marcas Mac an Tuairneir
Engaging with a present-day event, the poem “Speactram” was written in response to the mass shooting on June 12, 2016 at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. The poem has also been set to music by singer Gillie MacKenzie. In the North American context, the harper and singer Seumas Gagne offers insights into the journey of belonging in gay and Gaelic communities in a 2013 interview.
Someone photoshopped the original Stonewall “Some People Are Gay” campaign poster and it’s still true
Normalization through Language: An LGBT Gaelic Lexicon
Another area in which writing can further the acceptance and normalization of LGBT+ people in Gaelic communities, both in Scotland and internationally, is through developing and disseminating words for concepts, people, and practices. As the Human Rights Campaign organization in the USA says for their glossary of terms about sexual orientation and gender expression identity, many people
“refrain from talking about sexual orientation and gender expression identity because it feels taboo, or because they’re afraid of saying the wrong thing. This glossary was written to help give people the words and meanings to help make conversations easier and more comfortable.”
English terminology for LGBT identities and practices developed over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries and continues to change as people become more open and fluid about gender identities and different ways of naming desires and orientations. Prior to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Scotland, modern Gaelic terms for gay men and gay sex were mostly derogatory. Neutral to positive LGBT terminology in Gaelic did not start to develop until much later, in the process of reporting on the legalization and normalization of same-sex civil partnerships and then same-sex marriage in Scotland as a whole. An article in The Scotsman newspaper noted in 2005:
“The Gaelic language has at least half a dozen words to describe homosexuals, varying from merely impolite to obscene. Such is the lack of a non-judgmental term for gay people that the BBC’s Gaelic radio service was recently forced to invent a word: ‘Geidh’ [sic].
Gèidh (gay) was coined by BBC Radio nan Gàidheal as a borrowing from English, and a number of the other neutral-to-positive terms are likewise dependent on pre-existing English words and cultural categories.
Scottish Gaelic “Some People Are Gay” Stonewall Scotland poster using “gay” instead of “gèidh”, possibly before the latter was widespread in use
Gaelic-English dictionaries published prior to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Scotland such as Dwelly (1901-1911), MacLennan (1925) and Renton and MacDonald (1979) do not contain any LGBT-related terminology. Dictionaries published since 1980 are uneven in their inclusion of the most basic terms. Thomson’s English-to-Gaelic (1986) includes homosexual and lesbian, but gay is defined only in its non-LGBT sense, which has become outdated in English but is still current in Gaelic. Owen’s (1993) Gaelic-to-English contains co-sheòrsach (homosexual) but not gèidh or leasbach or any other words from the lexicon below. Mark (2004) contains co-sheòrsach (homosexual) but not gèidh or leasbach. Robertson and MacDonald (2004) contains English-to-Gaelic entries for homosexual, gay, and lesbian, but Gaelic equivalents are not included on the Gaelic-to-English side. Watson’s (2005) English-to-Gaelic has entries for homosexual and lesbian but not gay, while Watson (2001) Gaelic-to-English does not contain entries for any LGBT Gaelic words.
As a Gaelic Revitalization blog contribution, I have compiled a mini-lexicon of Gaelic equivalents for the most common sexual orientation and gender identity terms in English. I compiled the list in the following way. First, I consulted several online glossaries of English terminology to see how LGBT organizations and individuals were defining the main terms (the Human Rights Campaign glossary, this one, and this one). I selected ten terms from these lists that seemed to be the most basic and commonly used in English. I compiled these English terms in alphabetical order into a SurveyMonkey survey. The survey asked for a Gaelic equivalent for each term, and also asked for opinions or suggestions about each item, since some speakers have opinions about the correctness or suitability of these terms. I sent the survey to a group of fluent Gaelic speakers, some gay and some straight, and seven responded. Their answers suggested adding a few additional terms to take account of the particularities of Gaelic. I should note that this survey was informal, not scientific. Neither this post nor the lexicon are the last word on the topic – instead I hope they will stimulate discussion and debate.
Comedy with the “new Gaelic” word leasbach:
Several issues stood out in the survey results. First, no clear majority of survey respondents agreed on a single desirable Gaelic equivalent for the English terms “straight” and “queer”, owing to the fact that these terms are fundamentally tied to English culture and history. “Straight” is a problem because the literal translation, “dìreach”, brings up even stronger connotations than English of being in opposition to “cam” (“bent” or “crooked”), a term pejorative to gay people. In British English, “queer” is still seen by some as a reclaimed pejorative term that is perhaps only appropriate for the in-group itself to use. Below I present the lexicon as a jpeg file. If you would like to have a free PDF download to print out, please sign up for the Gaelic Revitalization blog e-mail newsletter. Current subscribers can revisit the subscriber thank-you page to access the download (e-mail me if you don’t have the link!).
An LGBT Gaelic Lexicon 2017-02-15
Cuspair cudromach — bha e a dhìth oirnn. ‘S math a rinn thu.
Hi, Emily,
An excellent piece.
Something which may be worth noting is that, down the centuries, female homosexuality was never criminalised. Here is a link to UK government archives on laws and short explanations relating to laws surrounding homosexuality.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/gay-lesbian-history/
Tapadh leat gu mòr a Ghabhainn. That was a big oversight on my part and is well worth noting.
Hi Emily,
This is a great post. We were very fortunate to enlist the help of Edinburgh University postgraduates to help us translate our LGBTI hate crime materials into gaelic. We’d love to publish a lexicon if you’d be willing to work with us?
Thank you very much! Yes, I’m willing to do whatever I can to help! Please send me a message through my “Contact” page!
I had rather hoped when coining new Gaelic words we could find an established Gaelic word that could be expanded in meaning (like the English word “gay” originally just meant happy) instead of re-spelling an English word. For instance, the Japanese word for baseball is “besu bal” despite the fact that they had a pre-established word for ball and for base, but they just nipponised the English word. I would like Gaelic to be Gaelic, not English with an alternate spelling. If homosexual Scots like the word “geidh,” then God bless them, I’m not one to interfere. How many Gaelic words are there for “happy” or “brave” or something else positive? When I was in Ukraine, the people told me, “With language comes identity,” and I don’t want our identity to be a reflection of someone else’s. Let’s be us.
Indeed, it would be good to be able to use existing Gaelic words, where possible, like the Irish example.
The Japanese for baseball is yakyuu, not beesubaru. ,野球
I wonder if the word “ait” could be used for “queer”, at least that is how I would use it if I was translating a book with “Queer” in the title.
The contemporary non judgmental term for gay in Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) is “aerach”. It was in former times applied especially to young light-hearted joyful, even ‘flighty’people. I do not no if the word exists in SG but it would adapt and be adopted quite well. I think a standing lingustic council, a kind of “Academic Gaélique” seeking to share and develop neologisms and technical terms for Scots, Irish and Manx Gaelic would be an idea worth exploring.
Thank you, that is very interesting! I agree with you, it would be wonderful to see a linguistic council or committee like that.
There actually is such a council (23 committees) for Irish, which receives and incorporates suggestions from universities, EU translators, journalists, and so on. Around 3000 new words enter the language a year, to my knowledge. Such a body would be incredibly valuable for the other Goidelic languages, I agree. Languages are ultimately based on utility, and the more there is, the greater for the language—and its speakers.
Hmm. When I studied Irish culture, I didn’t see this at all. Quite to the contrary, the professional poets, the filidh, always tried to ingratiate themselves to the chief by implying their “marriage” to the chief. Everything I’ve seen or read shows that the Irish didn’t have sexual fetishes and prohibitions like the English. They seem pretty relaxed about bodily excreations, sex, and a host of other forbidden behaviours in English society. So if you look at Gaelic society from within it, and not through the prism of English judgement, you’ll find that no one gave a damn.
At least, that’s what I’ve read and seen.
Pre-Anglo-Norman Irish Gaelic culture and 20th-century Scottish Hebridean Gaelic culture were quite different. This post concerns 19th and 20th century Scottish Gaelic culture(s) and communities in Scotland where imprisonment and worse were very real possibilities, and 21st century Scotland, where the positions of the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Free Church of Scotland on homosexuality are still negative (and in the case of the Church of Scotland at least, contested and in flux). Using Gaelic primary sources to study Gaelic history and societies is certainly desirable, and should be required for every historian. Even so, different Gaelic attitudes to sexuality have been found in different areas and eras, according to prevailing religious institutions and governing and/or colonizing powers.
I’m so excited there’s an actual word for non binary 😀 (But how do you pronounce it?)
Brilliant post. Thanks for this.
Tapadh leat gu mòr! I’m happy to say that Equality Network (https://www.equality-network.org/) is working on a bigger, better version of the lexicon now!
For pronunciation of eadar-gnèitheach, click on the audio icon in each dictionary definition link below. In this case you just put the two together as a compound word:
eadar – https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=eadar&slang=both&wholeword=false
gnèitheach – https://learngaelic.scot/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=gn%C3%A8itheach&slang=both&wholeword=false
The Irish Gaeilge non-judgemental/respectful word for ‘gay’ is ‘aerach’. It is a very positive word which in the past implied a carefree exuberant approach to life. I would respectfully suggest Gaidhlig might ‘borrow’ this time-honoured gaelic word rather than the prosaic and unimaginative ‘geidh’ which loses everything in translation.
Thank you. Equality Network (https://www.equality-network.org/) are working on a bigger, better version of the lexicon now, grounded in more feedback from individuals and institutions, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with!
Hi. I´ve just learnt about your wonderful blog and promptly subscribed. As a Brazilian LGBTI who has long been passionate for all Celtic cultures and languages, I could not thank you enough for your support for and material on Scottish LGBTIs – and the Scottish Gaelic neutral and positive terms – but here I try: thank you ever so much!
I´ve already realised I will learn indeed a great deal with your blog but I also know I will have to take daily baby steps as there´s so much to learn and benefit from it!!
Blessed be you and, as we say here in Brazil, kisses in your heart!
Muito obrigado! Mòran taing! You’re welcome, please feel free to post comments and questions any time and I wish you the best on your learning journey!
Mòran taing gu dearbh!
Whilst I agree very much with the sentiments expressed by other commentators here that Gaelic should not just be a ‘reflection’ of the language or culture of other people, I think that, in the absence of a neutral, non-pejorative or non-euphemistic term in Garlic for ‘gay’ in the 21st century, a Gaelicisation of the English term is actually to be welcomed. And that is coming from a ‘language purist’ who has memorised and taken to heart Dwelly’s admonition in his masterpiece of a dictionary that on no account should words that are just the Gaelic spellings of English words be accepted into the language!
But this is the 21st century, and the rights and duties of people in Scottish society who identify themselves as gay is a current topic, and so we need to have the tools in Gaelic to discuss this in a sensible, grown-up fashion, without resorting to pejoratives or euphemisms. We also need to ensure that the Gaelic language remains topical and relevant to the ‘here and now’. As such, I don’t in the end have much difficulty with the adoption into Gaelic of the English word ‘gay’ in the form of ‘gèidh’ (or, for those of us who still follow the older spelling rules, ‘géidh’).
One point which I do want to stress (but which I have not seen discussed elsewhere) is that, if we accept the word ‘gay’ into the language as ‘géidh’, then we do need to treat it as a ‘proper’ Gaelic adjective and therefore to decline it according to the rules of the language, which are being less and less observed nowadays (that is the real tragedy, rather than the acceptance of another English word into the language). As a one-syllable adjective, that means, amongst other things, (i) addition of an extra vowel at the end if the adjective describes a plural noun, and (ii) if the plural noun has -i as its final vowel, slenderisation of the adjective.
So, for example, ’géidh’ will become ‘géidhe’’ in the case of a plural such as ‘na daoine géidhe’ (‘gay people’), and ‘ghéidhe’ in the case of a plural whose final vowel is -i, such as ‘na fir ghéidhe’ (‘gay men’).
If we Gaelicise the word ‘gay’ in this manner and subject it to all the traditional rules of Gaelic when it comes to declension, the word loses its sense of ‘Beurlachas’ (‘Anglicism’) quite easily and quickly becomes an integral, and authentic, part of the language. I don’t have a problem with that.
Is mise le meas,
Eòghann
A word with very positive connotations already exists in Irish, “aerach”. I think it would be good if the three gaelics (Scottish, Manx and Irish)borrowed from one another. Such cross-pollenisation would enrich all three languages and minimise “bearlachas”,( English loanwords)
Just came across your post. As a géidh student of Gaelic, I think this is great!
What about the word buadhach? It carries the same concept, but it’s not a word imitating one from another language.