Aengus (given name)


Aengus is a masculine given name in Irish. It is composed of the Celtic elements meaning "one", and "choice". It is the Irish form of the Scottish Gaelic Aonghas, Aonghus. The names are derived from the Old Irish given name Oíngus
These Gaelic names are Anglicised as Angus' or, less frequently, as "Aeneas."
The earliest form of the given name Angus, and its cognates, occurs in Adomnán's Vita Columbae as Oinogusius, Oinogussius. This name likely refers to a Pictish king whose name is recorded variously as Onnust, Hungus. According to historian Alex Woolf, the early Gaelic form of the name, Oengus, was borrowed from the British Pictish Onuist, which appears in British as Ungust. Woolf noted that these names are all derived from the Celtic *Oinogustos. Linguist John Kneen derived this name from two Celtic elements the following way: *Oino-gustos, meaning "one-choice". Woolf also stated that between about AD 350 and AD 660, the Insular Celtic dialects underwent changes which included the loss of the final syllables and unstressed vowels, which affected *Oinogustos thus: *Oinogustos''.

People with the given name