Ceirt (''Queirt'') ᚊ (

Primitive Irish Primitive Irish or Archaic Irish ( ga, Gaeilge Ársa), also called Proto-Goidelic, is the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages. It is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the ogham alphabet in Ireland ...

''cert'') is a letter of the

Ogham Ogham (Modern Irish: ; mga, ogum, ogom, later mga, ogam, label=none ) is an Early Medieval alphabet used primarily to write the early Irish language (in the "orthodox" inscriptions, 4th to 6th centuries AD), and later the Old Irish langua ...

alphabet, transcribed as Q. It expresses the

labiovelar phoneme. The 14th century '' Auraicept na n-Éces'' glosses the name as ''aball'', meaning "

apple tree An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

". Its phonetic value is {{IPA, ʷ}. The ''

Bríatharogam In Early Irish literature a ''Bríatharogam'' ("word ogham", plural ''Bríatharogaim'') is a two word kenning which explains the meanings of the names of the letters of the Ogham alphabet. Three variant lists of ''bríatharogaim'' or 'word-oghams' ...

'' (kennings) for the letter are: *''Morainn mac Moín'': ''Clithar baiscill'' ‘the shelter of a lunatic’ *''Maic ind Óc'': ''Bríg anduini'' ‘substance of an insignificant person’ *''Con Culainn'': ''Dígu fethail'' ‘dregs of clothing’ McManus (1991:37) compares it to Welsh ''perth'' ‘thorn bush’, Latin ''quercus'' ‘oak’ (

PIE A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), brown sugar ( sugar pie), swe ...

*''perkwos''); it survives in the Modern Irish ''ceirtlis'' ("

cider Cider ( ) is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Cider is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and the Republic of Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, ...

"). The name was confused with Old Irish ''ceirt'' ‘rag’, reflected in the kennings. In the framework of a

runic Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, and for specialised ...

origin of the Ogham, the name has also been compared to the name of the

Anglo Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

Futhorc Anglo-Saxon runes ( ang, rūna ᚱᚢᚾᚪ) are runes used by the early Anglo-Saxons as an alphabet in their writing system. The characters are known collectively as the futhorc (ᚠᚢᚦᚩᚱᚳ ''fuþorc'') from the Old English sound va ...

''p''-rune, ''

Peorð is the rune denoting the sound ''p'' (voiceless bilabial stop) in the Elder Futhark runic alphabet. It does not appear in the Younger Futhark. It is named peorð in the Old English rune poem, Anglo-Saxon rune-poem and glossed enigmatically as f ...

'': This name is itself unclear, but most often identified as ‘

pear Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the family Rosaceae, bearing the p ...

’, a meaning not unrelated to ‘apple’. The ''p'' letter of the

Gothic alphabet The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Gothic language. Ulfilas (or Wulfila) developed it in the 4th century AD for the purpose of translating the Bible. The alphabet essentially uses uncial forms of the Greek alphabet, wit ...

has a cognate name, ''pairþra'', alongside the clearly related ''qairþra'', the name for the Gothic labiovelar. Since an influence of Ogham letter names on Gothic letter names is eminently unlikely, it seems most probable that the

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...

''p'' rune had a meaning of ‘pear tree’ (''*pera-trewô''?), continued in the Anglo-Saxon ''peorð'' rune (with the meaning of the name forgotten), and was introduced into 4th century Ireland as the name of a rune named after a pear or apple tree. As ''p'' was nonexistent as a phoneme in Primitive Irish, the ''p'' and ''q'' runes would have been considered equivalent.

References

*Damian McManus, ''A Guide to Ogam'', Maynooth 1991. Ogham letters