Good point about Latin, and sometimes Greek.

Also good mention of the pitfalls of phonetic spelling....and translating to a different language at the same time. Unless you "knew" the language speaking, you could only record what you heard via "educated guess".

As for the name debate, I have learned to be skeptical and to be really hard on myself. I can think of a finite number of combinations of letters that in my native langauge could be used to form a variation of Caldwell.

But, I have a background in at least two other languages - Latin and German. Kalt = cold in German. you would pronouce it k + alt. T and D interact a lot in German, often similar in sound or used together (td, dt). For instance the word for city = stadt = you hear both the d and t at the end of the word.

And like the word Kalt, the a is long and makes an "aw" sound.

BUT - I have to remind myself that I am thinking of how to make the name or word sound like it does in present time - no matter what language I try in, it is not written nor spoken exactly as it was 500, 1000, 3000 years ago. In fact, that could be said about language in the US 50 years ago.

My father was an attorney - his expertise was property/Land/real estate. I grew up doing deed and title searches. I am quite happy buried in an archival library - computers and great online catalogs make them fabulous. One of my areas of expertise is researching and interpreting the history of land - the records always come with names. AND - I have personally found some of the strangest information regarding persons named included in these deals. Wills, power of attorney statements, will inventories, court records (in particular upper court decisions) in disputes over land - depositions. Records that take me back to the late 1600's and early 1700's of the New World history.

I have certainly put a great deal of Tennessee's history together this way - but I am not familiar with, nor can I claim any knowledge of, Gaelic with regard to how it would sound, nor what group of letters were used to make the sound I would hear.

My hat is off to each of you for being so thorough in your consideration of this question.

At any rate, I really enjoy the points being made on all sides of this subject - origin of Caldwell name.