An Irishman's Diary

Kevin Myers: There is, apparently, a P. Flynn in Mayo who no longer welcomes the postman as once he did. I wonder why

Kevin Myers: There is, apparently, a P. Flynn in Mayo who no longer welcomes the postman as once he did. I wonder why. Now this is the sort of character to whom you would as soon entrust £50,000 for someone else as you would tell a tomcat to mind a saucer of cream for a tabby.

Yet Tom Gilmartin was so bewitched by him that not merely did he apparently hand that sly buffoon £50,000, but even allowed him to put the name of the payee on the cheque. Tom, the next time you want to make a contribution to anything - a dog's home, say, or the Vatican - you may contact me through this newspaper. I do not give receipts, however: like P. Flynn, I belong to a sect which abhors them, and it would be an insult to my religion even to ask for one.

But P. Flynn is representative of more than the sleazy side of Irish life. He reflects a curious dichotomy in the way many Irish people name their children. Daughters tend to be given names which declare social aspiration; boys are more often given names which reflect membership of the tribe. The Flynn daughters all have "English" names - Sharon, Beverley and Audrey - but his son is called Turlough. This could suggest the young male Flynn keeps disappearing, which might indeed be the case - but not as much as his father himself wants to.

Alison, Diana, Emma, Victoria, Emily, Jessica: these are the female status-names of modern, Catholic, middle-class Ireland. The traditional Catholic names of the past - Assumpta, Attracta, Goretti - are gone; but are any girls now christened the traditional (and lovely) Irish names of Kathleen, Maureen, Eileen or Noreen? Yet with the lamentable exception of Kevin, Irish male names have not suffered so severely, Conor being the flagship Gaelic name for several generations now.

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The fate of the name Kevin - "comely at birth" - is quite mystifying. It was until recently unknown outside these shores, and for long was associated with the most gifted and distinguished members of our race, so that naturally, it was relatively uncommon. Of the 800,000 dead from the old United Kingdom during the Great War, only 10 were called Kevin, all of them Irish or of Irish extraction. Four were officers, and six from other ranks, which suggests that it was a strongly middle-class name.

Kevin Barry then gave the name a boost, for all the wrong reasons - of course - and it became a popular name throughout Ireland. But it remained confined to this country; and then, for reasons unknown, it spread to England, even before Kevin Keegan became popular there.

The most deplorable feature of the popularity of Kevin was that it was adopted not by parents who were grooming their children to be concert pianists or poets, but by people who wore tracksuits to supermarkets, smoked at breakfast, picked their noses in public and taught their children to shoplift. In the US, however, and simultaneously, Kevins became incredibly, astonishingly up-market: Bacon, Costner, Kline, Spacey, Dillon. Why? How? No one knows.

Worse, no one in Ireland is christened Kevin any more. It has become a non-Irish name But Kevin had been preceded in international popularity by two other Irish male names - Brian and Oscar. Oscar - thanks to Hollywood - is one of the famous names in the world, and Brian is the only Irish name to have been held by a prime minister of Northern Ireland - Brian Faulkner.

In Britain, it is a grey squirrel of a name; it has been so naturalised there that few people know it is foreign. Alas, the proles think the same of Kevin.

There has been a reverse flow of male names, usually Scottish, into Ireland, and unlike the English names given to girls, these tend to be classless. Do solid republicans who name their sons Keith know that this was originally a surname, and was turned into a first name after Admiral Keith's victories? Why did it become so suddenly popular? Another Scottish name now common in Ireland is Gavin, which means the same as Kevin, with just the harder initial consonant of the Scottish Gaelic (though some maintain Gavin is from the Welsh name Gawain, meaning "white hawk").

Ian is merely Scots Gaelic for Eoin, and like the other imported Scottish names, and unlike the suddenly popular English (or English-sounding) female names, is classless. Moreover, Scottish names have always been more internationally successful than their Irish equivalents. Duncan is our Donnchadh: brown warrior. Douglas was originally a toponymic, meaning "dark water". Malcolm is merely Maol Colm - servant of Colm; but, down the ages, the servant has outstripped the master.

As, generally speaking, do all Scottish names of Irish or Gaelic origin. Who outside Ireland is called Donal? Yet its Scottish variant - Donald - is universally known, not least through the melancholy arts of giving thin children five chins: McDonald's. Meanwhile, the other side of the Glencoe disagreement went on to made soup. The name Campbell is from the Gaelic meaning "crooked mouth", and "Donal" - Domhnall - is related to the Latin "dominus", meaning "master". All the grounds you could possibly want for a feud.

Unlike Donald, Donal is entirely unknown internationally, which explains why a friend, when in Australia and meeting strangers always used to explain his name to forestall bemusement. "I've got an Irish name, which is like Donald without the 'd'," he'd say.

To which an Australian amiably interjected: "Nice to meet you, Onald."