The annual Irish Times list of most common children’s names tends not to change much – but below the top twenty, I suspect that there are a few names plummeting or even disappearing.
I do not think I know of someone called Gobnait, Concepta, or Attracta (shortened to Tracta) who is under the age of fifty.
I have a recollection of there being very many by the names of Mary, Finbarr, Noreen and Margaret when growing up – but I do not think that I have heard anyone in school with or playing with our ten year old by any of those names. Even extending the search to friends of neighbours, nephews and nieces does not hit a match with those names.
Even Patrick and Michael are 16th and 8th on the Irish Times list. They are definitely not as often encountered as they were when I was younger. Out of 120 pupils in my year, we could probably have had a full team made up of just Mike, Micheal, Padraig and all derivatives of Michael and Patrick – all children of the mid-sixties.
Recently visiting St . Mary’s Cemetery at Fanlobbus in Dunmanway, I spotted this headstone to Goodhand Clarke. My first thought was that it was a name more likely to be heard on The Little House on the Prairie or in a film about the Amish community – not one in West Cork.
I do like the name – both the sound and the message.
I am not sure our society is creating very many Goodhand’s.
I do not think I know of someone called Gobnait, Concepta, or Attracta (shortened to Tracta) who is under the age of fifty.
I have a recollection of there being very many by the names of Mary, Finbarr, Noreen and Margaret when growing up – but I do not think that I have heard anyone in school with or playing with our ten year old by any of those names. Even extending the search to friends of neighbours, nephews and nieces does not hit a match with those names.
Even Patrick and Michael are 16th and 8th on the Irish Times list. They are definitely not as often encountered as they were when I was younger. Out of 120 pupils in my year, we could probably have had a full team made up of just Mike, Micheal, Padraig and all derivatives of Michael and Patrick – all children of the mid-sixties.
Recently visiting St . Mary’s Cemetery at Fanlobbus in Dunmanway, I spotted this headstone to Goodhand Clarke. My first thought was that it was a name more likely to be heard on The Little House on the Prairie or in a film about the Amish community – not one in West Cork.
I do like the name – both the sound and the message.
I am not sure our society is creating very many Goodhand’s.
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