Mago Bill as my great grandfather and Mago as a name in history and prehistory
My great grandfather was probably a Munsterman even though his parents brought him to the States as a toddler. Munster has long been the name of an area in the far south of Ireland.
More exactly,Mago Bill is a name I have given to my great grandfather, M. William Sheehan. Sheehan is a fine and interesting surname, but Mago attracts me more.
Spanish speaking friends tell me that in Spanish mago means magician and the like. Some also tell me that "the three kings'' or "three wise men" of Christmas are called magos and that each of them is a mago. This seems interesting to me but may have been of no interest at all to my great grandfather.
However, I have been told that before Rome came of age and in the early days of Carthage, that Mago was an important family name among the Carthaginian Phoenicians. I see that Magos where friends and family of a famous guy by the name of Hannibal.
Magos were well known traders, navigators, and military leaders of Carthage. Carthaginian traders and navigators came to Ireland for a variety of reasons. The main reason was probably tin. In the Bronze Age and beyond tin was important because without it there was little bronze. The Irish of the day were metal workers, craftsmen, and artists. They were also miners, alchemists, poets, and lovers.They seem also to have been impressionable for they heard the name Mago often from the visiting Carthaginians that a few infants were called Mago. From that time and centuries on, the name Mago was from time to time quite popular on the island.
The name Mago and Mago Bill have, from time to time, influenced and inspired my research and writing of history. On this blog you may expect essays and post were so influence of Mago may be detected. You will see his influence to on my history blog and on my timeline blogs. d
Thanks for your visit and thank you for reading this post so you have an idea of the source of the name for this blog which was a sort of flagship for these blogs.
RCS