Pine (tree): giuthas vs guisachan

jt256 · Unread post by **jt256** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 12:50 pm

I'm reading a book on trees that contends that "guisachan = pine in Gaelic". I happen to believe that giuthas is the Gaelic for pine. Clearly guisachan is related to pine, but can anyone explain what guisachan actually means, or how it's derived from giuthas?

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Unread post by **Níall Beag** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:39 pm

I'm not familiar with the term, but faclair.com has giùsach or giùthsach as a pine forest. What has happened here is that the second syllable of "giuthas" has lost its vowel when the -ach suffix was added. The long ù is probably caused by the TH being absorbed into the vowel.

As for "giùsachan", I'd suggest it's either it's a dialectal variation of the plural (pine forests) or it's a diminutive referring to a small forest or wood.

But this is all basically guesswork.

Unread post by **akerbeltz** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 8:57 pm

Yeah, it's something like 'place (-an) of pine forest(s) (giùthsach-)'

A lot of books about Gaelic place names are a bit, well, rubbish. They are often written by people with no Gaelic who browse Dwelly or some other dictionary for words that seem to match. Which can be spot on but it can also be somewhat off to totally off. I'd always consider who the author was and how reliable his or her Gaelic sources/credentials sound.

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