What’s in a name? You might have heard of Abdul Abulbul Amir, written about by Roscommon man Percy French when a student at Trinity College Dublin in 1877. And Abdul’s enemy Ivan Skavinsky Skavar. Foes, with inevitably tragic results. RIP Ivan.
But you may not have heard of Ballaghaderreen hackney man – now retired – Abdul Abhaile. How perfectly that name weds the somewhat exotic with the local. It is not always so.
Names of some foreign nationals can be a challenge. We can struggle, for instance, with such as Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, or that of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskiy. We even wrestled with former UK prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s full name too.
You have to wonder why they couldn’t have such simple, beautiful Irish names as Caoilfhionn, Meadhbh, Saoirse, Seoirse, Niamh or Caoimhín? Even such as Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh. What could be easier?
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Former Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga (meaning “the all-powerful warrior who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake”) was better-known as Mobutu
It is a pity the Chinese president has that strange name Xi Jinping. How in heaven’s name are we expected to pronounce that, or that of Fumio Kishida, prime minister of Japan? Could they not have “moderated” such strangeness, as Bono did when he abandoned Paul Hewson, or former taoiseach Bartholomew Patrick Ahern did when he became Bertie, or the Daily Mail’s latest columnist, Alexander de Pfeffel (Piffle?) Johnson did when he became Boris?
Other examples of such simplification would include the Spanish artist Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech, better known as Dalí. Or former Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga (meaning “the all-powerful warrior who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake”), who, mercifully, was better known as Mobutu.
Or film star Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland, better known as Kiefer Sutherland. And there was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso, better known as Picasso.
Simplicity wins, every time. Take “Patsy”, for example.
Name, for person or thing denoted, from Old English nama, noma.
