Morrigan

Meaning: (Great Queen, Phantom Queen, Derived from Irish Mór Ríoghain, In Irish myth she was a goddess of war and death who often took the form of a crow. The Morrígan is a goddess of battle, strife, and sovereignty. She sometimes appears in the form of a crow, flying above the warriors, and in the Ulster cycle she also takes the forms of an eel, a wolf and a cow. She is generally considered a war deity comparable with the Germanic Valkyries, although her association with a cow may also suggest a role connected with wealth and the land.

There is some disagreement over the meaning of the Morrígan's name. Mor may derive from an Indo-European root connoting terror or monstrousness, cognate with the Old English maere (which survives in the modern English word "nightmare") and the Scandinavian mara and the Old Russian "mara" ("nightmare"); while rígan translates as 'queen'. This can be reconstructed in Proto-Celtic as *Moro-rīganī-s. Accordingly, Morrígan is often translated as "Phantom Queen". This is the derivation generally favoured in current scholarship.

In the Middle Irish period the name is often spelled Mórrígan with a lengthening diacritic over the 'o', seemingly intended to mean "Great Queen" (Old Irish mór, 'great'; this would derive from a hypothetical Proto-Celtic *Māra Rīganī-s). Whitley Stokes believed this latter spelling was due to a false etymology popular at the time. There have also been attempts by modern writers to link the Morrígan with the Welsh literary figure Morgan le Fay from Arthurian romance, in whose name 'mor' may derive from a Welsh word for 'sea', but the names are derived from different cultures and branches of the Celtic linguistic tree. For more information on the Irish Mythology and name see- ^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Morr%C3%ADgan} )

Origin: (Irish, Irish Mythology, Celtic)

Pronunciation: (Mo-Rih-gAWn, moe-rEE-an, moe-rEE-gan, mo-ree-an, MOOR-ee-an, mor-ree-gun)

Gender: Female

I was watching syfy channels Heroes of Cosplay a few months ago. One of the cosplayers dressed up like a character named this from a video game. I really like the name, it looks like Morgan but a tad bit cooler. It looks like a name that could be in a science fiction or fantasy setting and really work or could be in a very historical setting and work there too. It is pretty and I like the meanings a lot but the mythology is a bit dark but may work for an antagonist characters name. All in all a very interesting name which I kind of love.