The pattern of Irish names over the last 150 years is very interesting. I used to work in a job that had me looking at old title deeds and it was common turn of the century to see catholic Irish people named George, Harry, etc names that are relatively unusual now
Ethically Irish names were very unusual. You’d never really see a Conor. Post- independence those names came in but often they were names with obvious counterparts in English ie Micheál or Pól. In turn those names became much less common (I can’t think of many Póls my age)
*i have no problem with any of these names, it’s just interesting, no insult intended* now people tend to give your their child a very obviously Irish name, and it’s notable how that’s become quite a south side thing so there’s obviously some status element to it
Having said that i know some who named their kid Harry not to long ago so perhaps trends are moving on already. On top of that immigration + Irishness is re-emerging as an embarrassment to a certain type of Irish person will presumably drive change
*all names are good- call yourself and your child whatever you like for whatever reason- there’s lots of reasons to use any name and they’re all good -no offence intended*
My grandfathers on either side were William and John for example. William came from a bilingual household per the census but was Willie, not Liam, to his family so it doesn’t seem to have been a case of involuntary anglicisation
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How do you feel about this term in its US context (preferably responses from Irish people): “Scots-Irish”
My understanding of the term is that it originates from the famine years - Americans of Protestant Irish stock wanted to differentiate themselves from recent arrivals. Before that they considered themselves Irish (where they didn’t think of themselves as American). could be wrong
My wife is CofI with Scottish anscentry on one side and rankles at the idea of being Scots Irish whenever I jokingly suggest it to her. I think she feels it qualifies her Irishness, which I guess was the point tbf
Weird thing among left wing Irish twitter users where they assume that an anonymous user they disagree with is the alt of a well known twitter personality. ie they conclude without evidence that x person in their mentions is really Gemma O’Doherty or Gearoid Murphy or whoever
I guess the assumption is “so few people could possibly disagree with me” that people must be using alts, nothing else could explain the existence of all these accounts
I hesitate to invoke the spectre of mental illness but the facts are what they are
Current reading. A bit academic looking but every book on the decline of liberalism and democracy I’ve read in the last few years has referenced it in some form so here goes
“The age of party democracy has passed”
Anti-politics of the 1990s - not populism, but taking important decisions “out of the hands of politicians and passing them into the control of non-partisan, objective experts”. Oh how we laughed