Irish Name “O”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is John in Dallas.

Hello, John.

Hi, John. Welcome to the program.

Thanks. My question is, all of the O’s that you hear in the Irish words, like O’Reilly, O’Malley, or Loco the Irish, I was just curious, where does that come from? And, you know, is it popularized here in America, or did it really start over in Ireland?

Well, now, John, you have to tell us why you’re wondering about that.

Well, I was traveling in Europe, and I met a young Irish traveler, and he was telling me that it was the Americans who popularized this and made it a big thing, and it wasn’t really the Irish at all. And I didn’t really believe him when I heard that, so I had to call you guys.

Really? So what is he implying, that in Ireland nobody goes by O’Malley or O’Grady?

I guess he was saying that we just took it and ran off with it, and they didn’t really have it. But I still didn’t believe him when he told me that.

Your instincts are right, John. He’s full of a bunch of balarney. Just know.

But I should point out that the luck of the Irish is something different. The of the Irish is what it’s abbreviation for. It’s a different O than you would find in names like O’Flaherty and so forth.

Obama.

Not Obama.

But it’s interesting that you bring this up, and there’s something to talk about here. These, that O apostrophe, or say the Mac and McDonald, or the Fitz and Fitzgerald, the Fitz, the Mac, and the O, are what we call patronymics, P-A-T-R-O-N-N-Y-M-I-C, patronymics. And they just mean that you are the son or the descendant of a certain person, usually the father, sometimes the grandfather.

So it’s like Judah Ben-Hur.

Yeah, exactly. You find it in Hebrew and you find these kind of patronymics in a mini language, which is Arabic as well with the Ibn, Ibn, same sort of thing happening there. And the reason I can tell you that this Irish fellow didn’t know what he was talking about is that these go back to the 1500s, at least in printed matter. And that was, of course, well before the Irish ever came to the new world in any numbers whatsoever.

So he was pulling your leg, I guess.

Well, speaking authoritatively. But what’s really interesting, it’s so common, actually, in the 1600s that there was a pat-set phrase that’s less used today, but where they’d call the Irish in general the Max and the O’s, or the O’s and the Max. It’s kind of like saying the Smith and the Jones. It’s like the generic Jane Doe or Joe Sixpack.

Yeah, that sort of thing, the Max and the O’s, that sort of thing.

Oh, very cool.

Well, glad to help you. What were you doing in Europe?

I was just backpacking for a few months and ran across quite a few interesting characters, and that was one of them.

Oh, yeah, yes. Thanks so much for your call, John. Glad to help.

Thank you.

All right, bye-bye.

Bye.

Fitzgerald is one that usually surprises people. A lot of people don’t know what that Fitz is doing in that world.

Yeah, well, you think Fitzpatrick, Fitzgerald. But Fitz goes back to the Latin word for son, Julius.

Sure, sure, that makes perfect sense. Through a couple varieties of French.

Sure, and Fis, yeah, in French, yeah. Makes perfect sense.

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