The Goidelic celtic "gillae" (lad) often appears as a prefixed generic element in surnames of Irish and Scottish origin, e.g. Gillespie (bishops lad or servant) or Gilfinnan. Perhaps there is a Celtic connection?. Otherwise the Mesopotamian connection is an interesting idea. Tolkien once used a metaphor of the 'ground' of one's imagination being fertilised by the surrounding world in such a way that anything "grown" in that substrate could be influenced by the said world without the imaginer's recognizance (more or less).
|