Nowadays, every Tom, Dick and Harry’s named Sean. Sean is of course the Irish for John, se being the Gaelic digraph for our sh. Ryan, which means “king,” Megan, and Kaitlyn are also trending names. But Irish family names have found a new life as first names.
It’s part of a larger fashion of using last names. Madison is probably the most popular. But nowadays children are named Casey, Donovan, Connor, Logan, Kelly, Finley and Flynn. One fellow in the news has O’Neal for a first name and a last name that sounds neither Irish nor Other- European. The daughters of Golden State Warriors hoopster Steph Curry and of a disgraced presidential candidate are both named Riley. Curry’s second daughter is named Ryan.
There’s usually no evidence that the families want to identify with an Irish heritage. Instead, it seems that Irish names have gone mainstream, all sense of origin lost. The mainstreaming happens for names of many traditions after a few generations of families living in the States. Frank McCourt in Angela’s Ashes tells of a neighbor in New York complementing his little brother Malachy on having “such a nice Jewish name,.” though Malachy was probably named for an Irish Saint Malachy in the days when children were given saints’ names, and sometimes the name of the saint on whose day they were born. Parallel changes have happened in other traditions; it’s no longer possible to believe that Jacobs and Joshuas come of parents who honor the Scriptures.
A second factor is that Irish names are euphonious. A feature of Gaelic, called lenition, creates soft consonants, sweet to the ears. That goes for Irish place names, too. Tara, Kerry, and Tralee sound pretty enough for special little girls. Years ago one of those fad books called Real Women announced that “Real women don’t name their children after counties in Ireland. ” When we see a statement like that, we know that Irish names have made a splash. And the celebrity Alec Baldwin has a daughter named Ireland, which goes one better that naming a child for an Irish county.
The popularity of Irish family names as first names is in- creasing rapidly. The Census bureau, which keeps a report of the polarity of various names gives evidence of it. If we look not only at Riley but also at Reilly and Rilee, we see a groundswell, as if the whole world wanted to be Irish. That is of course unlikely, and probably all for the best.
So the Irish don’t own those names any longer, but it’s still nice to know that they’re Irish and they’re beautiful.
Nevertheless.blog 