Page "The Morrígan" Paragraph 4

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 a 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.