THE study of Christian names in Ireland, while not as interesting as the study of surnames, is not without its own interest.
And speaking of Christian names, there now seems to be a marked reluctance on the part of officialdom to use the term Christian name; instead, when filling official forms we are asked for our surname, and then for our first name or names.
Christian names are often said to run in families; that is, that the same Christian names keep on recurring in particular families in generation after generation.
For centuries Mac Carthys bore such Christian names as Ceallachan, Cormac and Saerbreathach. These names are still popular with the Mac Carthys, but in their anglicised forms of Callaghan, Charles and Justin.
Among the O'Briens it is not unusual to find the Christian name Kennedy.
The history of this latter name goes back more than a thousand years, for Brian Boru's father was named Cinneide, and Brian was the ancestor of the O'Briens.
Rory keeps on repeating itself in the O'Connor family. Almost everybody must have heard of Rory O'Connor, the last Ad R', or High King of Ireland; and that name kept on echoing down to the present century.
There was Rory O'Connor, the republican leader, executed during the Civil War; and that great exponent of Irish dancing, Rory O'Connor, many times champion of Ireland.
Among the O Donnells the name Hugh (Aodh) is still almost as common as it was in the days of Aodh Rua, Red Hugh O'Donnell, that valorous young chief who, for nine long years, fought for Gaelic Ireland, and who still remains "a star in the nation's memory."
Gerard, or Garrett, are names that have long been favoured by the Norman Barrys. Garrett Barry was a prominent leader of the Irish Confederate forces in Munster during the war against Cromwell.
Kevin, a name that many Barrys now bear, is not traditional to the Barrys, but was adopted by them in memory of that 18-year-old Kevin Barry, who was hanged in Mountjoy Jail for his part in the War of Independence.
Most important Fitzgeralds also, through the centuries, bore the name Garrett, or, in Irish, Gearóid. There was, of course, the famous Gearóid Iarla, the poet Earl of Desmond. Maurice, too, was a very popular name with the Fitzgeralds.
An tAthair Peadar Ó Laoghaire tells a very interesting story about Christian names in his autobiography, Mo Scéal Féin.
An ancestor of his named Conchúr Ó Laoghaire was living near Ballyvournay in Cork. This Conchúr and his wife were very worried, for although a large family had been born to them, each child had died shortly after birth. And now they were expecting another, who they feared would also die.
One day a strange woman, who had never before been seen in the district, called to the house. Asked by Conchúr where she had come from, she told him: "I have come a long way from home to ye, from the north from County Kildare.
Then speaking to Conchúr's wife she said: "Have no fear this time. The child to be born will live - on one condition: Tugtar ainm chúl le cine air, agus mairfidh sé" (Give him an ainm chúl le cine and he will live).
Those four Irish words "ainm chúl le cine" are not easily translated into English. You might translate them very awkwardly as "a name that turns its back on family, or sept, or race".
What the old woman meant, and said so beautifully in her terse Irish, was: "Call him by a Christian name that no Ó Laoghaire has ever borne before."
Conchúr, Diarmuid, Art, Céadach, Fear, were the Ó Laoghaire names, the cine names; but the child was called Barnaby, a name nobody had known an Ó Laoghaire to be called previously.
And the child lived.
Another son was born, and he, too, was given an ainm chúl le cine, and lived. He was called Peadar.
Fr Peadar Ó Laoghaire, An tAthair Peadar, the author of Mo Scéal Féin, Séadna and numerous other books in Irish, was the great grandson of the Barnaby Ó Laoghaire who, on the old woman's advice, was given an ainm chúl le cine.
A Christian name that one occasionally comes across in southwest Limerick is Eneas, which name is merely an anglicised form of the very ancient Irish name Aonghus.
In the same part of Limerick, Moses are, however, not called after the great Biblical figure of the same name, but after an Irish saint named Moadhóg (earlier form, Maedoc). In Gaelic Personal Names, by Donnchadh Ó Corráin and Fidelma Maguire, we find the following note on the name Moadhóg:
"Maedoc: Maodhóg (mé-óg) m. a pet-form of Aed (Aodh). Among the saints of this name are St Maedoc of Clontooskert, near Ballinasloe, whose feast day is March 18; St Maedoc of Lismore, whose feast day is December 29; and perhaps the best known of all St Maedoc of Ferns, who was born in Templeport, Cavan, and who is thus the patron-saint both of the south Leinstermen and the men of Breifne. In the nineteenth century, in the families of O'Doyle, Kavanagh and other south Leinster families the name was translated Moses among Catholics, and Aiden among Protestants. In Cavan and especially in Templeport the form Aidan is preferred generally, and neither Moses nor the common local anglicised form, Mogue, are in use as personal names."
Limerick man, Fr Patrick Woulfe, author of Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall, tells us that the great reverence in which the saints' names were held in ancient Ireland prevented their widespread adoption.
People preferred to be called the servant or devotee of a particular saint rather than to be called directly after that saint.
And so it was that Giolla Phádraigh (the servant of Pádraig) was used as a Christian name instead of Pádraig, and Maol Eoin (the devotee of Eoin - Eoin being the early Irish form of John) instead of Eoin.
Even the sacred names were used in this way, in the form Maol êosa and Giolla êosa and Giolla Chríost.
Maol Mhuire (the devotee or, literally the tonsured one, of Mary) which was a very common Christian name in olden Ireland, has now been anglicised into the meaningless Myles.
I am thinking at this point about what I wrote some time ago about Nioclás Mac Craith of Ring saying that our placenames and surnames and Christian names had been anglicised into words, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
It was the Normans who introduced the custom of using the saints' names directly as Christian names, that is, of calling people John or Mary, Michael or Catherine, and so on.
A Patrick de Lacy held Bruree in 1320. I wonder is this the first example of the name Patrick being used as a Christian name, a name that in the course of history was used by two of the most illustrious Irishmen Ireland has produced, Patrick Sarsfield and Patrick Pearse.
Related article: Limerick Placenames
