". . . In McManusās view, the names of Edad and Idad clearly represent an āartificial pair,ā as weāve already touched on, and he suggests these names came later ā replacing the original letter-names. Seeing as the kennings for Edad and Idad both associate the letters with the yew (where Edad identifies the yew through Ć©o, while Idad identifies it by another name, ibar), McManus has suggested the letter-names may have originally been something like *eburas (or *esox) and *iwas (which represent Primitive Irish reconstructions), where both of the names would then point to the yew-tree. Assuming this is the case, the letter-names of Edad and Idad that weāre familiar with today may then have been created as a way of trying to address the inevitable confusion between the two letters, in essentially having the same name ā giving them a more separate identity while still acknowledging their pairing."
āA Guide to Ogam Divination by Marissa Hegarty
