and meaning of this name are uncertain. It may well be derived from the Gaelic ("white-handed"). Another Gaelic origin may be ("white-blooded"), in reference to being very pale. Alternately, it could originate from the Gaelic ("claw"). If the epithet is instead Old Norse in origin, it could be derived from ("cripple"). In several Irish annals, Godred is accorded the epithet . This word could represent either the Gaelic ("mad", "confused", "giddy"); or else (which can also be rendered ), a word derived from ("finger" or "toe"). If indeed corresponds to the latter meaning, the epithet would appear to mirror /, and imply something remarkable about Godred's hands. Godred and his patrilineal royal descendants, who reigned in the Isles for about two centuries, are known to modern scholars as the Crovan dynasty, a name coined after Godred himself. The combination of Old Norse personal names and Gaelic epithets accorded to Godred, and his dynastic descendants, partly evidence the hybrid nature of the Norse-Gaelic Kingdom of the Isles. Background One of the foremost leaders of the eleventh-century Norse world was Þórfinnr Sigurðarson, Earl of Orkney, a man whose maritime empire, like that of his father before him, stretched from Orkney to the Isles, and perhaps even into Ireland as well. Þórfinnr died in about 1065, and was succeeded by his two sons, Páll and Erlendr. Unfortunately for the brothers, the expansive island empire that their father had forged appears to have quickly disintegrated under their joint rule. Although there is no record of the brothers conducting military operations in the Isles and Ireland, the thirteenth-century Orkneyinga saga states that the peripheral regions of their father's lordship reverted to the control of local leaders. It was into this power vacuum that Godred first emerges into recorded history. The ruler of the Isles who appears to have suffered from Þórfinnr's southward expansion was Echmarcach mac Ragnaill, King of Dublin and the Isles. The turn of the mid-eleventh century saw the gradual decline of Echmarcach's authority. In 1052, he was driven from Dublin by Diarmait mac Maíl na mBó, King of Leinster. Although there is evidence to suggest that Diarmait reinstated Ímar as King of Dublin, the latter was dead within two years, and at some point Diarmait appears to have placed his own son, Murchad, upon the throne. About a decade after Diarmait's conquest of Dublin, an invasion of Mann by Murchad appears to