Irish Names

[Duncan Gardner]

Go raibh maith agat Sean

[seand]

Team entering forthcoming supporters'' fundraising quiz- Liam Og agus an Beal Bocht (rough translation ''''Willy and the Poorboy"). Correction welcome.

You'll need a couple of fadas Duncan, Liam Óg agus an Béal Bocht (fada literally means broad and broanden the sound of a vowel, A = ah, Á = aw, E = eh, É = ay, etc)

Regarding Irish names, it's all incredibly fluid in Ireland these days. Surnames are still more commonly anglicised, so lots more O'Briens than Ó'Bríains but more of a trend in the past couple of decades for more traditional Irish given names, with the fada more commonly used now in the English language version of names. And there's a bit of a trend for people 'reclaiming' Irish surnames, with Murphy becoming O'Murchú and such like.
These days you'll get the full range from traditional Irish, modern/contemporary/fashionable, British inspired and ethnically diverse, with many glorious mishmashes..... Oisín Hussein, Samir Carruthers, Pavel O'Brien, Seán Blaszczykowski, Sadhbh Van Velzen etc

[Duncan Gardner]

Team entering forthcoming supporters'' fundraising quiz- Liam Og agus an Beal Bocht (rough translation ''''Willy and the Poorboy"). Correction welcome.

[ad hoc]

I dunno, these days I seem to encounter a lot of Niamhs and Áines and Deirdres and Eimers and Siobhans , whereas I never did 20 years ago. Fewer men, mind you. Colm, obviously, as on here, Cathal, Fergus, Pádraig (but Pádraig aside, those all seem easy for the English speaker to deal with, and Pádraig is too because we know what the equivalent anglicised version is)

Mind you it could be because of what anton says and that the vast majority of these people are between 35 and 55, which is the kind of age group I tend to run into.

[anton pulisov]

There was a huge Irish name thing in the 70s and 80s, which is why everyone from that time is called Sinéad, Conor, Colm etc.

Now all kids are called Jack.

[Diable Rouge]

What DG says - also in the pre-independence period, there was a vogue for restoring surnames to the original as a political protest, but after 1921, it became viewed as synonymous with the republican ultras, and thereafter enthusiasm was confined solely to first names.

[Duncan Gardner]

1 O'Briain and variants is one of the 5 most common surnames in Ireland IIRC

2 Fashion for Irish names comes and goes. Would be boosted if Saoirse* Ronan wins the Oscar, say

3 Current political debate about whether and to what extent learning the language should be compulsory in schools

4 About 2% of population speak conversational Irish beyond primary school

* Freedom (from British Imperial yoke etc etc)

[Levin]

All the Irish people I've ever met use anglicised names. I assume that these would be the names on birth certificates and passports. I know that my sample pool is very small but is there movement to change names back to their original or Irish spelling? (I just realised that spelling might be an issue if anglisisation happened before Irish was formalised).

Anyway, the only Irish surname I can think of being used is Ó Briain is that just my small sample size or is it rather uncommon. Are first names much more commonly given in Irish than their English forms nowadays?