Thread by @HJosephineGiles

It's time to tell you a story about the origin of the name "Fiona". A good old Scottish name, you might think. And it is, in a way, a name very representative of Scottish culture and literature. But not in the way you might think...

The first person to be named Fiona was Fiona Macleod, who published widely for a decade at the Scottish fin-de-siècle, from 1894 onwards. She was from Iona, a native Gaelic speaker, and was deeply interested in the literary milieu around the Celtic Revival and neo-paganism.

She was a frequent corresponder with major literary figure, particularly WB Yeats. And indeed she herself became, very rapidly, a major literary figure. Though she's largely forgotten now, she was at the time one of the most celebrated authors in Victorian-era Scottish Celticism.

A peculiarity of her brief but stellar literary career was that no-one ever met her in person, though her letters were voluminous. She subscribed to Celtic literary societies, corresponded with journals, opined on language debates, and yet never appeared.

This led to a lot of speculation that "Fiona Macleod" was a pseudonym, and many questions as to who her author might be. These Miss Macelod herself rebutted, insiting in private letters and public declarations that she was none other than Fiona Macleod, Highland writer.

But in 1905 the truth came out. William Sharp, himself a highly successful Celticist, neo-pagan and editor, died, and a letter was delivered to his closest friends...

William Sharp was the author of Fiona Macleod. He was a middle-class Scot born in Paisley, of only very distant Highland ancestry, and not a Gaelic speaker. How could it be, then, that this was not a deception? After his death, his wife, Elizabeth, set to work explaining.

In 1910 Elizabeth Sharp published the biography of her late husband, including copious extracts from his/her correspondence. Part One up 1893, is named "William Sharp". Part Two, up to death, is named "Fiona Macleod".

It's a detailed and loving biography, and not all about the William/Fiona divide, but its Conclusion is wholly an explanation of the "deceoption". This is how she explains William and Fiona, as different expressions of her husband's soul-beyond-gender, "Wilfon":

WB Yeats felt similarly about William and Fiona. This is how he put it in a letter: "At times he was really to all intents and purposes a different being".

What did Sharp himself have to say about Fiona? "I am tempted to believe I am half a woman".

Sharp also wrote that Fiona Macleod was the expression of his "truest self", all that was closest to nature, imagination and spirituality.

Before I get too carried away with how trans this all is, I will note that there is no evidence that William Sharp dressed as Fiona Macleod, or lived any life as her beyond literature and correspondence.

However, in literature and correspondence, William Sharp and all those cloest to him considered Fiona Macleod to be a very real spirit. She lived. William and Fiona wrote birthday cards to each other, and Fiona personally autographed her books to William.

Though both Fiona Macleod and William Sharp were *central* to Scottish literature at the fin-de-siècle, there is to my knowledge no reading of them from a trans perspective. At best, there is a book & a few papers arguing that Fiona expresses some latent homosexuality in William.

Sharp/Macleod was not exactly a trans woman, not as we mostly understand it now. But s/he was trans, in a way specific to h/er pagan sprituality and philosophy of literature. And there are plenty of trans women now whose main expression is in the books they write.

People familiar with Scottish literature will know the term "Caledonian antisyzgy", a delightfully clunky way of describing the centrality of the motif of the split self to Scottish culture. Think Jekyll and Hyde, think the Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

The term was coined by G. Gregory Smith in "Scottish Literature: Character and Influence", in 1919. In his final secton on what was then modern literature, he names one of the antisyzygy's contemporary forms as that of Fiona Macleod's "escape...from the oppression of fact".

There's work to be done on the role of transgender figures in the development of Scottish literature as such. Im working on material around trans characters in the lit'. of the 80s and 90s: Banks, Kay, Whyte, Welsh, McDermid, Smith - we're *everywhere*. (Please commission me!)

But now I want to loop back to where I started, the name Fiona. I stated that Fiona Macleod was the first person named Fiona, and as far as I've taken my research that appears to be true.

William Sharp stated that "Fiona" was a diminutive form of "Fionnaghal", which is a Gaelic name. He claimed that, though it was rare in his time, it was a true Gaelic name. There appear, however, to be no sources which use it as such. medievalscotland.org/problem/names/…

There is a very, very brief reference to a "Fiona" in, appropriately, Macpherson's Ossian, itself a totemic piece of Scottish literature and, like Sharp's Macleod, largely the invention of an Anglophone writer projecting his own ideas onto Gaelic culture.

There is also an Irish name, Fíona, pronounced differently (FEE-na, very roughly). It was earlier spelled Fíne and the modern spelling may be a back-formation: Fiona as fee-OH-na (not at all a Gaelic pronunciation) has her origins in Sharp.

Sharp's friend Catherine Janvier, one of the few in on the secret, tells this charming story of coming across a boat named "Fiona". Sharp hoped this was a attestation of the name he invented, but no: the boat was named after his Fiona. I hope it's true.

That story encapsulates so much of Scottish literature: a woman, a name, an idea is created, and her author goes in search of authenticity, only to find h/er own creations reflected back at h/er. Our stories of our culture are woven straight back into our culture, true or no.

So there you have it: Fiona, a name that didn't exist, but now does, from a misunderstanding of a language her creator was writing towards, for a woman who didn't exist, but truly did. Fiona, a trans name. For any trans women out there who chose the name Fiona: you are blessed.

SOME NOTES:

- The opening claim of "first Fiona" may be an overstatement. See the thread here for some discussion; more research needs to be done. What is clear from Scotland's census data is that Sharp/Macleod popularised the time to a vast degree.

https://twitter.com/HJosephineGiles/status/1555269498948706305

- Most of the quotations are from Elizabeth Sharp's "William Sharp (Fiona Macleod): A Memoir", which is available in full here: archive.org/details/willia… One is from Catherine Janvier's brief memoir here: archive.org/details/jstor-…

- All of both William Sharp's and Fiona Macleod's writing is also available at the Internet Archive, which is one reason I am very glad the archive exists. It was very significant in its time, and little read now.

- I have no interest in discussing the degree to which Sharp was or wasn't trans. You should be aware in this thread that I've cherry-picked the very transest bits, because I think s/he deserves a trans reading. Read the full memoir: it's full of messes and contradictions.

- This is a thread of early research, and so it will have other errors, overstatements, biases and suchlike. I'd like to have the time to do more. I'm sharing it because it makes me smile, and because sharing it will help me spot what I've missed. More research welcome.

- I and my boifriend are raising money for our own and others' trans healthcare. If this thread made you smile, opened your mind a little bit, or sent you down a pleasing rabbit-hole, I'd appreciate whatever help you can offer: gofundme.com/f/butchfemmebo…

Wow! Thanks for all the interest everyone! I'm glad this is reaching people, and especially glad it will bring some interest to areas of Scottish literature that I care about. A couple more notes.

- Plural folk are rightly pointing out that some of the quotations are also suggestive of plurality or so-called DID. I'm not qualified to speak to this, but if the story says something useful then run with it. And as with transness, this is about reading rather than diagnosis.

- I will note for completeness that the account from Yeats is disputed by Elizabeth Sharp in the very next paragraph: she says that William did remember all that happened when "a Fiona mood was on him". As with all accounts, there are contradictions and complexities.

- Some are raising eyebrows at the appopriated/faked Celticism. Good! You should know that this kind of approach is common, even central, to Scottish literature, and yes it has perhaps been more to the detriment of Gaelic language culture than to its benefit.

- A founding text of Scottish Celticism, Macpherson's Poems of Ossian, is itself ia fabrication, and one that inspired Sharp/Macleod very much. Much of what you imagine about Scotland is fabrication, a romantic construction of Anglophones for their own ends. Welcome to Scotland!

- Replies are such now that I can't keep up, so I can't respond to questions; apologies. If anyone is researching in related areas and wants to chat about it, my DMs are open. And now I'll drop my fundraiser again, because we've got a long way to go!

gofundme.com/f/butchfemmebo…