Ailm is the Irish name of the sixteenth letter of the Ogham alphabet, ᚐ. Its phonetic value is The original meaning of the name cannot be established with certainty. 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 all refer to the sound and not to the meaning of the letter name, either as the sound of a "groan", or to the Irish vocative particle, ''á''. Thurneysen suggests that ''Ailm'', ''

Beithe Beith (ᚁ) is the Irish name of the first letter (Irish "letter": sing.''fid'', pl.''feda'') of the Ogham alphabet, meaning "birch". In Old Irish, the letter name was Beithe, which is related to Welsh ''bedw(en)'', Breton ''bezv(enn)'', and Lat ...

'' was influenced by ''

Alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...

Beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

.'' However, ''beithe'' is an Irish word, and there is no reason to consider ''ailm'' a sole, loaned letter name among the original feda; Thurneysen did not suggest this letter name involved such a borrowing. The word is attested once outside of the Ogham grammatical texts, in the poem "King Henry and the Hermit", :' which translates to :Beautiful are the pines which make music for me. This single reference is the reason ''ailm'' is sometimes associated with

pine A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accep ...

s. However, the poem likely post-dates origins of the medieval tradition of arboreal glosses of the ogham letters, so is more probably influenced by this tradition than an independent source for the meaning of ''ailm''.

Bríatharogam

In the medieval

kennings A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English p ...

, called '' Bríatharogaim'' or ''Word Ogham'' the verses associated with ''ailm'' are: ' - "loudest groan" in the ''Bríatharogam'' ''Morann mic Moín'' ' - "beginning of an answer" in the ''Bríatharogam'' ''Mac ind Óc'' ' - "beginning of calling" in the ''Bríatharogam'' ''Con'' ''Culainn''.

References

Ogham letters {{Writingsystem-stub