Goídel

Goídel (often rendered Goídel Glas or Goidel Glas) is a legendary ancestral figure in medieval Irish and Scottish origin traditions. He appears in texts such as the Lebor Gabála Érenn ("The Book of the Taking of Ireland") and later Gaelic chronicles as a progenitor of the Gaels, the peoples associated with the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx).

Accounts of Goídel vary. In several versions he is described as a descendant of the mythical scholar-king Fénius Farsaid and is credited with creating a unified tongue from the confused languages at the Tower of Babel; that language is sometimes presented as the ancestor of the Goidelic languages and as the basis for his name. Some narratives associate him with a figure named Scota and relate a long migratory path from the Near East through many lands before arrival in Ireland. The epithet glas, meaning "green," "grey," or "blue" in Goidelic languages, appears in many medieval sources, though its original significance is uncertain.

Modern scholars treat Goídel as a mythic or folkloric construct used to explain and legitimize Gaelic origins and identity rather than a historical individual. The name endures in the linguistic term Goidelic (or Goidel) to denote the family of Gaelic languages derived from Old Irish traditions.