My manager is hardcore Glaswegian, so I will ask her tomorrow to explain the “hun” and “tim” business.
Up north the other one is H = “aitch” or “haitch”. It seems protestants say the former, catholics the latter.
Oh and on original topic here’s a song
'tWas down by the glenside
I met an old woman
A plucking young nettles
She ne’er saw me coming
I listened a while to the song she was humming
Glory ho, glory ho to the bold Fenian man
It’s fifty long years
Since I saw the moon beaming
On strong manly force
Their eyes with hope gleaming
I see them again through all my sad dreaming
Glory ho, glory ho to the bold Fenian man
Some died by the hillside
Some died with a stranger
And wise man have told us
Their cause was a failure
But they loved their old Ireland
And they never fear danger
Glory ho, glory ho to the bold Fenian man
I passed on my way
God be praised that I met her
Be life long or short
I will never forget her
We may have brave men
But we’ll never have better
Glory ho, glory ho to the bold Fenian man
'tWas down by the glenside
I met an old woman
A plucking young nettles
She ne’er saw me coming
I listened a while to the song she was humming
Glory ho, glory ho to the bold Fenian man
That might be based on a variation of the name “Finnian” like Finnian’s Rainbow. I’m just guessin’, though.
There’s no question that Finnian and Fenian are variations on the same name and derived from Fianna. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Finn probably also derives from Fianna.
My Gaelgor missus says that “Finn” is an angicised spelling of “Fionn”, which means “fair haired” - nothing to do with Fianna.
I sit corrected. So what does Fianna mean?
Also, if Finn=Fion= Fair haired
and Mac= Son of
What does Cumhail (my spelling is likely wrong) mean?
Er, I dunno. She’s refused to answer any more “annoying questions”. Irish women, don’t ya love 'em? 
Wikipedia says Fianna Fáil means “Soldiers of Ireland, but traditionally translated as Soldiers of Destiny”. I am supposing fáil means destiny, since the Scots Gaelic lia fáil means “stone of destiny”?
I’d search the web for answers but most of my questions involve things I don’t know how to spell.
Back in college, my class heard Micheal O’Siadhail read from his new book of poems. The information sheet said he was Irish, so I started trying to figure out how to properly pronounce his name. I was thinking ‘Mik-ull Oh-see-hall’. When the man introduced himself he said his name was ‘Mee-haul Oh-shool’. I was only able to find the proper spelling of his name because I remembered that the book was titled Hail Madam Jazz.
Bringing this hi-jack back to the OP, a few of us noticed something else during O’Siadhail’s visit. One of our classmates, Neal, obviously wanted to comment and ask questions. There would be a twitch as his hand wanted to go up, and then he’d regain control and put both hands in his lap. This was not normal behavior for Neal. We all independently came to the same conclusion. It was because Neal was English. He was afraid that as soon as O’Siadhail heard his accent, there would be conflict.
The original Fianna was the Fianna Éireann of legend, founded by Fionn MacCumhail.
Fianna means something like “band”, “soldiers”, “army” or “champions”. Since we’re talking about a word from about 300BC, it’s hard to know exactly what it meant!
The Irish name Fiachra (it’s a boy’s name, pronounced Fear-cra) means “a raven” and has nothing to do with any of this, just in case someone gets confused by the spelling!
I assume “hun” perhaps comes from the fact that Germans were the original “protestants” against the Catholics?
Maybe things are different where you are from, but I (from Glasgow) have never heard “hun” used to describe protestants in general, only ever used as a derisory term for Rangers fans.
I dunno where hun comes from, but the word has connotations of barbaric, savage physical behaviour that Celtic fans traditionally accuse Rangers of displaying on the football pitch, as apposed to the fair, skillful play of their favourites. I have always thought “hun” meant brute, and has nothing to do with alledged ancestry.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I recently came across an answer to this question, so I thought I’d post it. It’s from the book McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy, sort of a combined travelogue for Ireland and a search for the author’s Irish roots. In the following passage, he’s looking at a family tree that one of his uncles has put together:
nitpick-
The Irish name Tadhg is not pronounced “Tague”, it’s pronounced “TYgue” like the first syllable of “Tiger”, with a very hard “g”.
The perjorative word that he’s thinking of is usually spelt “Taig” and pronounced as written. I have no idea if it comes from the name Tadhg or not.
Wow, this thread is really bringing the UK-and-Ireland voters out of the woodwork.
For the record, if “Fenian” is illegal, I ought to have been arrested by now. Frequently (I study 19th c. history).
[nitpick of the nitpick]
Whatever the Irish pronunciation, it was most definitely pronounced in English as ‘Tague’ (to rhyme with ‘vague’), being usually spelt as ‘Teague’. The ‘Taig’ spelling is much more recent; the OED dates that back only to the 1970s.
[/nitpick of the nitpick]
But the McCarthy theory is, in any case, highly doubtful. The OED evidence on ‘Tim’ is entirely consistent with what one would suspect anyway, which is that the earliest references are all specifically Glaswegian. Moreover, it is recorded only from 1958. Given that ‘Teague’ and its variants were already considered archaic by the late nineteenth century (‘Taig’ being a later revival), it can hardly be considered obvious that there is any connection.
That said, whether the more common explanation - that ‘Tim’ derives from a local Catholic gang leader, Tim Malloy - is any better is another matter and one on which the OED remains silent.