The term banshee made its debut in the English language in a 1771 publication on Scotland, originally spelled benshi. Over the following century, various spellings like ben-shie and banshie were documented, but by the late 19th century, the standardized form banshee was widely adopted. This word is a phonetic rendering of the Irish phrase bean sidhe, translating to “female elf” or more literally, “woman of the fairy mound”. The term bean comes from ben, derived from Proto-Celtic bena and Proto-Indo-European gwen, also signifying “woman” (and the origin of words like queen and gynecology). Sidhe traces back to Proto-Celtic sidos, which may simply mean “mound” but retains fairy associations, stemming from Proto-Indo-European sed, meaning “to sit”. The usage of the term banshee has been on the rise since the 1980s.
