View Message

Finola and Fiona are very pretty names, but they are anglicisations. Nothing wrong with that, but I prefer the traditional Irish names. But when you live in a country were every road, town and city has two names (the English one and the Irish one), you kind of wonder why. It's because the English invaders couldn't speak Irish and couldn't pronounce the place names, so they gave them anglicized names eg Dún na nGall became Donegal and Ciarraí became Kerry. To me, the English names don't mean anything - in English or Irish. Dún na nGall means "fort of the foreigner" in Irish. Donegal doesn't mean anything. The same goes with people's names. It kind of annoys me when people say names like Keely and Tierney are Irish, when they sound nothing like what they're supposed to mean. I guess I'm kind of a traditionalist when it comes to names.