Name of the Week: Oisín

December 10

This week’s Name of the Week was nominated by @GenevieveReine!

If you would like to nominate a name yourself, you can head over to the name of the day thread on our forums.

Oisín

Pronounced “oh-SHEEN”, Oisín is an Irish name with the adorable meaning of “little deer.”

The story behind Oisín’s meaning ties into that of the demigod Oisín in Irish mythology. The son of the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill and the goddess Sadhbh — herself turned into a doe while pregnant with Oisín — the young boy was found living wild in the woods and taken in by his father Fionn seven years later.

Oisín grew up to be a skilled warrior, as well as a renowned poet and bard (often regarded in legend as the greatest poet in Ireland) — making Oisín a literary name as well as a mythological name.

In Ireland, Oisín is a popular boy’s name today, most recently ranking at #6 in 2022. However, the name hasn’t caught on in the rest of the English-speaking world. In England and Wales Oisín sits at #437, while in the US only 22 baby boys were named Oisin in 2022.

11 more boys were named the spelling variation Ossian — the name of the famous 18th-century narrator and publicist of The Poems of Ossian, an influential work in the development of the Romantic movement and the Gaelic revival.