Some Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic words are very similar to some Galician, Portuguese and Spanish words with the same general and specific meanings. The Irish Gaelic word gabhal and the Galician word galla are a clear example. Gabhlán and gobhlan, derivatives of gabhal and gobhal, the latter being a Scottish Gaelic variant of gabhal, are used in compound names of some fork-tailed birds such as the swallow, golondrina in Spanish.

Some bird names are very old. The sparrow hawk was known as gablán in Old Irish. The same bird of prey, the sparrow hawk is known as gavilán in Spanish and Galician, but gavilán has other definitions which are all related to forked objects, both in Spanish and Galician. We believe this is not due to a fortuitous convergence, borrowings or coincidence. We believe these words have a common origin.

The words little, large and medium are basic words in the lexicon of any language. We think that the documents in this trilogy are essential to help us show the presence of Gaelic words in the basic lexicon of the Romance languages in the west of the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper we compare the Gaelic words beag and beagan with the Galician and Portuguese word pequeno, with the Spanish word pequeño and the Asturian word pequén with very similar meanings and phonetic forms.

None of the dictionaries that we have consulted offers an etymologic meaning for the Romance words pequeño, pequeno and pequén. One of them says pequeño is a “word common to all the Romance languages”. But this is not exactly so, since petit is the word used for “little” in Catalonian and French. In this paper we try to show that pequeño, pequeno and pequén are Romanized or adapted versions of Gaelic words with the same meanings and very close phonetic forms.

The Old Irish word medón and the Galician word medón, no longer used, have directly related meanings, the same spelling and very similar phonetic forms. The Irish Gaelic word  meán and the Galician word meán share the same spelling, they have meanings which are directly related and they have very similar phonetic forms. We have also found intermediate forms which show that this group of words had a very similar evolution in Irish Gaelic and Galician.

Both the Irish Gaelic word meán and the Scottish Gaelic word meadhan mean “waist”, “abdomen”. The Galician word van means “waist”. Its phonetic form is very similar to those of meán and meadhan when they are lenited (mheán and mheadhan). Despite being homophone words, the Galician word van, “waist”, is not etymologically related to the Galician word van, “vain”, “hollow”. The latter definition of the Galician word van has its roots in the Latin term vanus.
 

The Galician and Portuguese word mór/mor has meanings which are directly related to the Irish and Scottish Gaelic word mór/mòr. Their written forms and their phonetic forms are almost identical. In this paper we note the use of both words in Galician and Gaelic place-names. The Galician word mor/mór is no longer used nowadays, but its presence in words such as mordomo and in place-names such as Vilamor, Soutomor and Vilarmor show that this word was very much alive in the Galician languages in the past.

In medieval times Mor/Móór was used as a woman’s given name both in Galicia and Portugal. Mór was also used and it is still used as a woman’s given name both in Ireland and Scotland. We have seen that the Galician word mor as a suffix in Galician place-names. In this paper we will focus on the presence of the Galician and Portuguese word mór adapted as mo in place-names and in the lexicon of the Romance languages in the west of the Iberian Peninsula.  

Tolo is a Galician and Portuguese word of daily use in both languages. Although in Galician tolo is mainly used as “mad”, in Portuguese tolo is generally used as “foolish”. We have found several words derived from the Gaelic root toll in the Romance languages spoken in the west of the Iberian Peninsula. Even though the relationship between them is not obvious at first sight, in this paper we show an evident kinship between all these terms.