“I don't think that anyone should come away from this conversation not wanting to use the name Fiona. I think this is a beautiful and rich history. It might not be quite the history that you imagined, but I think it's a beautiful history," says writer and performer Harry Josie Giles. She and PhD researcher Moll Heaton-Callaway investigate this complicated name with fascinating history, in this second of a pair of episodes about the name Fiona.
Read moreAllusionist 165. Fiona part 1
A lot of people assume that Fiona is a very old Scottish name, but the first known Scottish Fiona is from the 1890s: Fiona Macleod, the enormously popular novelist of Scotland's Celtic Revival movement. But when she suddenly stopped writing in 1905...and there turned out to be far more surprises about Fiona Macleod than the novelty of her name. Writer and performer Harry Josie Giles and PhD researcher Moll Callaway-Heaton consider the first Scottish Fiona.
This is part one of a pair of episodes about the name Fiona; part two will explore the etymology of the name and similar ones in various languages, and examine the first appearance of Fiona in literature, which comes with its own cocktail of complication.
Read moreAllusionist 78. Survival: Oot in the Open
You are born and raised in a household speaking a language. Then you start going to school, and that language is banned. If you speak it, you'll be punished physically or psychologically. Across your country, there are people like you who associate their first language with shame, or not even being a language at all.
This is the predicament of the Scots language.
Scots language campaigners Ishbel McFarlane and Michael Dempster recount how Scots was sent into the shadows, and how it is at long last returning to public.
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