The only diacritical mark Gaelic uses, whether Scots or Irish, is the fada, which looks exactly like a French acute accent (a small slanted line over a vowel). Trust me, as someone who grew up in Ireland and learned Irish, that name had no similarity to anything in Irish. For Greek, think names ending in -ous, -as or -sis, for example: Papadopoulos, Tsisipas, Onassis. It is well-known, though, that Icelandic women's surnames end in -dottir. It's the kind of general knowledge you just pick up from reading and being curious.TenPoundHammer wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2019 11:42 pmI dunno, with the diacritical marks I could totally see that as Gaelic or a phonetic spelling of a Greek name. Both actually seem far MORE plausible than Icelandic to me.1stlvlthinker wrote: ↑Fri May 03, 2019 11:37 pm So did you guess? You complain about 1 in 3 odds, but that's way better than the 0 percent chance of you not guessing. And clearly, other people had it figured out. You think that name comes from Ireland or Cyprus? Sure it COULD, but it's the top box. They're not trying to trick you there.
And again. If I guess, I guess wrong. If I don't guess, I'm just as wrong. Seems like neither is beneficial.
Though you are right about names not always reflect the country's heritage; I was looking for Leo Varadkar in that category. But you won't find that kind of non-obvious clue in the top box unless the person is a household name.