There was a ‘Boss’, a ‘Yankee’, ‘Pipes’, ‘Mick Miley’, ‘Wee Mick’, and ‘Slasher’, among others
Cutting through Dublin’s Trinity College one night a while ago, I stopped to watch a rugby match alongside a man who, every so often, shouted: “Come on, College!”
I was reminded of this by a recent story on the BBC website about how our ethnic cousins, the Scots, are at risk of losing their traditional nicknames to modernity. Both are now in danger of dying out, the BBC reports, partly because of the relentless spread of English in the highlands and islands. Alas, before he can get any further with the epic lineage, a psychopathic teacher cracks his head open with an “oar” and announces that, henceforth: “Yer nam is Jams O’Donnell!”. By the end of the day, everyone in class goes home with identical English names and skull fractures.
This led me to fear I was at the wrong funeral, a suspicion not allayed by struggles to identify other mourners from the backs of their heads. Only when the funeral ended and I could ask someone did I finally learn that Callan had always been the family surname. “Richard’s” was a patronymic addition.
Ireland Latest News, Ireland Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
– Frank McNally on a wealthy namesake’s mansion, destroyed in the Los Angeles firesThe house was built in 1887 for the Armagh-born multimillionaire Andrew McNally
Read more »
– Frank McNally on the apparent occupation of 15 Usher’s IslandThe short manifesto in the window has more than twice as many full stops – five – as Molly Bloom’s entire soliloquy
Read more »
– Frank McNally on Argentina’s 150-year-old Irish newspaperThe world’s longest-running Irish newspaper produced outside Ireland, and among the oldest of any kind in Argentina
Read more »
– Frank McNally on the importance of being salientPeace explains why the term “Monaghan Salient” has fallen out of use
Read more »
– Frank McNally on the late-blooming Violet Needham, children’s novelist extraordinaireShe had spent a long apprenticeship as a storyteller to nieces and nephews
Read more »
– Frank McNally on a cultural history of wind colourThe concept of a Dulux-style wind-colour catalogue was well established here and elsewhere
Read more »