Irish
Baby Names
The
Odd Spellings Are Charming.
Today,
a lot of the trendiest babies receive Irish names. Even those born far from the
Emerald Shores are adopting these lovely names
that sound like something out of fairy tales. Besides, the odd spellings are
charming. A pronunciation key is necessary for most of them as the Gaelic
spellings, to untrained eyes, sound nothing like the way they are spelled.
Names
Like Colleen Are Being Moved Aside
It's
interesting to note that the trend seems to be flowering in Ireland as well, since there were only 27 names
in 1901 in Ireland,
but in 2005, there were 180 names. While at one time, that meant a lot of
Michaels and Marys, today it means names like Aiden, meaning 'fire', for boys,
and Siobhan pronounced: ShiVAWN, for girls. Names like Colleen are being moved
aside for more interesting sounding names.
In
Irish families, the first son is named after the paternal grandfather, the
second son after the maternal grandfather, the third son after the father, and
the fourth son after the oldest paternal uncle. The girls follow a similar
pattern. The oldest daughter is named after the maternal grandmother, the
second daughter after the paternal grandmother, the third daughter after the
mother, and the fourth daughter after the oldest maternal aunt.
The
Irish were the first non-Protestant group to express ethnic pride and there was
a tendency to reach back to their roots to give their children names that
express those beginnings. However, like most immigrant groups to America, the
first generations tried to give their children American sounding names so as to
help them fit in. Later generations, often starting with the third generation
tend to return to the use of ethnic names. For the Irish, this happened in the
1940s. Having been away from their heritage, however, they'd lost knowledge of
authentic Irish names and many used Irish words, for instance, Colleen, which
means, 'girl'. Women named Colleen with Irish roots, who go to Ireland
to explore their family history, are often met with laughter. The Irish natives
want to know: Who names their child, 'girl?' Shannon,
once a popular girl's name, was a name stolen from a river, and was also never an
authentic Irish girl's name.
This trend of using Irish
names is reflected in the Social Security names database. Some examples are the
name Aidan, which went from 816th on the most popular list in 1991 to 63rd in
2002. Alanna has become the 484th most popular name, while Maeve broke onto the top 1000 in 1997 and by 2002
was at 706.
