Edad
The fourth vowel of ogham, four notches or strokes across the stem line, for the sound e. The medieval tracts call it the aspen; the name may have no meaning outside the alphabet.
Meaning
Edad is four notches on the edge, or four short strokes across the line. Its name is a puzzle. Damian McManus, as the Ogham in 3D project at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies summarises him, finds it unclear, and its likeness to the next letter name, Idad, suggests the two were made as a pair. Deborah Hayden and David Stifter of the OG(H)AM project go further: it “seems to be a fantasy name with no meaning outside of the alphabet”. Unicode encodes the letter as U+1693 OGHAM LETTER EADHADH, the modern Irish spelling.
Origin and history
The Auraicept na nÉces breaks the name up as ed uath, “horrible grief”, and makes the letter the “test-tree or aspen”. The Word Ogham of Morann in In Lebor Ogaim calls it “distinguished wood”, which the glossator explains as “a name for the trembling tree”, the aspen; the Word Ogham of Mac ind Óc calls it “synonym for a friend”. Hayden and Stifter note that the usual word for the aspen is crithach.
On the stones
E is in CELI, “companion, client”, a formula word recorded by Ogham in 3D, and in VELITAS, “poet”, on a stone at Crag in County Kerry, which the Heritage Council’s guide notes. In some inscriptions, mostly late, the extra letter Ébad also stands for e.
Write in ogham
stringmash.comOgham translatorWrite English in ogham, the early Irish alphabet of strokes cut along an edge, with the full ogham chart.Read next
- Next in OghamIdadThe fifth vowel of ogham, five notches or strokes across the stem line, for the sound i. The medieval tracts call it the yew; the name may be an artificial partner to edad.
- The same shape in Chinese radicalsCǎo 艸The character for ‘grass’, and radical 140 of the 214 Kangxi radicals, under which the names of plants and flowers are filed.
See also
Beithe, Luis, Fern, Sail, Nin, Úath.
Sources
- Ogham in 3D: alphabet, Ogham in 3D (2013 edition), letter names after Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991) and Ériu 39 (1988), Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, alphabet; Letter names, Aicme Ailme
- Auraicept na n-éces: the scholars' primer, George Calder (ed. and trans.), 1917: the Ogham tract from the Book of Ballymote and the Yellow Book of Lecan, with In Lebor Ogaim, John Grant, Edinburgh (Internet Archive), Auraicept, p. 93; In Lebor Ogaim, pp. 283, 287
- Ogam and trees, Deborah Hayden and David Stifter, 20 December 2022, OG(H)AM project, University of Glasgow and Maynooth University, §3, Edad
- Ogham in 3D: ogham, Ogham in 3D (2013 edition), Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, ogham: Content
- Ogham Stones in Ireland, Nora White, Our Ancient Landscapes: Ogham Stones in Ireland (2021), The Heritage Council, p. 12, Contents of ogham inscriptions
- Ogham (Unicode code chart U+1680–U+169F), The Unicode Standard, code chart for the Ogham block, Unicode Consortium, U+1693
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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