Irish Names Explained
Though many people in Ireland have recognizable, anglicized names such as Patrick (Paddy) Reilly (an Irish balladeer), Michael Higgins (the current President of Ireland), and Colin Farrell (an actor), many still have traditional Irish names. You might recognize some famous Irish first names like Saoirse Ronan (an actress), Cillian Murphy (the guy from Peaky Blinders), and Siobhan Magnus (from American Idol, season 9, if you’re into that).
However, if you’ve ever encountered someone with a truly traditional Irish name, you might wonder how on Earth that naming system works. I’m talking about names like Graínne Ní Mháille, Ruaidhrí Ó Flaithbhearthaigh, and Mícheál Ó hUiggin (the Irish name of Michael Higgins). And no, my cat didn’t walk on my keyboard to get some of those names.
Some Notes on Why Irish Spelling Is So Weird
Before we get into the actual naming system, let me address the spelling that makes the Irish language oh so… Unique. I talk about some salient features of Irish in this article, but I’ll quickly go over the orthography. here
I’m told that Irish has a phonetic writing system, meaning that each letter or combination of letters always corresponds to a particular sound, unlike English (take the common example of th ough, th ought, and thr ough). I guess that’s technically correct, but there are so many spelling and pronunciation rules and weird combinations of letters (like seanmháithreacha, which means “grandmothers”) that it seems so chaotic.
However, strange consonant clusters like “mh” in mhaith “good,” “bhf” in bhfuil, a form of “to be,” and “mB” in i mBaile Átha Cliath “in Dublin” are actually pretty easy to pronounce. The first two are just a /w/ sound and in the third one, you just ignore the “b” so you get an /m/ sound.
Two features of Irish orthography that can make the written language look alien are lenition and eclipsis, both of which appear frequently in Irish names. Both involve changing the first letter of a word in a certain grammatical environment.
Lenition involves changing the pronunciation of some consonants to a softer form, such as bean “woman” becoming an bhean “the woman,” where the /b/ sound becomes a /v/ sound. Often the changes involve adding an “h” after the first letter, which changes the pronunciation. The same is true for “mh” that we saw with mhaith; the “bh” and “mh” combinations make the same sound (at least in the dialect that I’m familiar with).
Eclipsis is a similar phenomenon, but now the new letter is added to the beginning of the word and the original first letter is completely ignored. This is how we get seemingly hard-to-pronounce consonant clusters like freagra answer going to bhfreagra. The /f/ simply becomes voiced into a /v/ sound in this example. For “mB” that we saw above, what was a /b/ sound becomes an /m/ sound. That’s it!
A final note on these word modifications is the use of “h” as we saw in Mícheál Ó hUiggin. In names, in particular, this is important and is required if a word begins with a vowel and follows certain words like Ó. We’ll explore this more in a bit.
Irish Last Names
The traditional Irish surname system is a bit more complex than the one we have in the U.S., where usually the woman takes the last name of her husband (though many people choose to keep their last names now). You’re probably somewhat familiar with the system already, where you might have heard that the prefix “Mc” or “Mac” means something like “son of” and “O’” means roughly the same thing. This is kind of true, but let’s clarify things.
In general, a male’s surname can take the form Ó/Ua “descendant” followed by the name or Mac “son” followed by the name. The name is that of the father and is in a special grammatical form called the genitive case, which you don’t really have to worry about. For females, Ní “daughter of the descendant of” replaces Ó/Ua and Nic “daughter of the son of” replaces Mac. Finally, for the wife, Ó/Ua is replaced by Bean Uí “wife of the descendant of” and Mac is replaced by Bean Mhic “wife of the son of.” Let’s look at some examples.
Pretend you’ve just landed in Ireland for a stay with an Irish family in one of the Gaeltachtaí. The family consists of a father, mother, son, daughter, and a dog (the dog isn’t important, but dogs make everything better). The father introduces himself as Pádraig Ó Braonáin. Since you haven’t read this article before arriving Ireland, you assume that the wife and children have the same last name as Pádraig, because why would they not?
When you greet the wife, Máire, you say “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Ó Braonáin,” only to find out her name is Máire Mhic Bhraonáin (Mary, wife of Brennan, if we anglicize everything). You then find the children are named Tomás Ó Braonáin and Siobhán Ní Bhraonáin. Of course, this all very overwhelming for you so just address them as Mr. and Mrs. O, Tom, and S, but you still think it pretty cool that you’ve encountered a traditionally named Irish family.
I’d like to highlight two things about this example. First, notice that the surname stays the same (Braonáin, or Brennan in English). So even though Tomás and Siobhán have “son of” and “daughter of” in their name, their last name doesn’t refer to Padráig, the father, but their surname. Second, notice in the spelling of Braonáin for Siobhán and Máire that an “h” is added after the “b.” This goes back to that lenition idea that we saw earlier, which happens after the word indicating the relation of the female member of the family. What was a /br/ sound now becomes a /r/ sound.
Alternatives in the Gaeltacht
A somewhat conceptually easier naming system occurs in some parts of the Gaeltacht that doesn’t explicitly require this “son of” and “daughter of” business. It’s kind of like the dwarves in Middle Earth or something like what happens in Game of Thrones where your name indicates your father and grandfather.
So, say your name is Brían and your father is named Dubhghlas and his father is named Micheál. If that’s the case, then your name is Brían Dhubhghlas Mhicheál, where your father’s and grandfather’s names are in the genitive case. This is equivalent to saying “Brían, son of Dubhghlas, son of Micheál,” or “Brian, son of Douglas, son of Michael,” in its anglicized form.
Other Interesting Tidbits
There’s a few other interesting facts about the Irish naming system that I’d like to share. First, I’m sure you’ve encountered someone with the last name “Fitz” something at some point. Well, it turns out that “Fitz” is a form of the Latin fillius “son,” so “Fitzgerald” is just “son of Gerald.” The same goes for names that are preceded by “de”. Both are used for names of Norman origin.
Finally, some Irish like to distinguish people with the same name with epithets. A common example of this is the use of Mór “big” and Óg “little,” which are used to differentiate between father and son and would be equivalent to “senior” and “junior.” Adjectives that denote hair color are also used sometimes, so that people can be informally known as blond Mary or red-haired David.
Hopefully this clarifies any questions you might have had if you’ve encountered someone with a traditional Irish name, whether in the media or in your personal life. I find the naming system to be quite interesting, and Irish names are incredibly beautiful. Now, if you do encounter one, you’ll have a better sense of where it comes from and hopefully this will allow you to appreciate the Irish language and culture even more!
References
Originally published at https://urbancitizenblog.com on January 3, 2020.
