This question is aimed at Irish and Irish-descended Dopers but anyone who has some firsthand knowledge, feel free to weigh in.
I have the impression that the name Mary is typically a Catholic name (what with the Virgin Mary and all). In particular, names of the form “Mary X”, like “Mary Katherine” and “Mary Frances”, have very strong Irish Catholic connotations in my mind. What I want to know is whether women with these names are 99% likely to be Catholic, or at least very likely to be Catholic. Or do names like Mary Katherine appear in significant numbers among Protestants? And when I say Catholic or Protestant, I mean by ancestry; if the Irish are like anyone else, these days people are practicing all sorts of religions that may differ from their family background.
A lot of the older generation of women in Ireland (my mother-in-law for example) do seem to be called Mary. And of course, that would almost certainly be because of the Irish Catholicism, which was way stronger then than it is now. Unfortunately I have no stats. Nowadays, according to this survey, “Mary” doesn’t feature in the top 10 - number 37 in the top 100 for the year 2000. Double-barrelling women’s names does seem to be more of an Irish American thing than pure Irish.
I can think of a couple Ulster Unionist politicians called Mary (Hamilton and Simpson are their surnames). I assume they’re Protestants. Dunno their middle names, though.
Ahhh, you fail to note the Italian Marie or the Spanish Maria. Sure, there are plenty of Marys in my family, in fact, I don’t have a single female relative that I can think of offhand that is not named after a saint. But my brother married a Mexican, and from what I’ve seen, her family has taken the saint naming to a new level: to include middle names, and each person knowing exactly the full name, life history, birth and death dates, etc. of the saint that they are named after. So you are right in that it’s a catholic thing, but it sure aint just an Irish thing.
Mary Robinson (former President)
Mary McAleese (current President)
Mary Bannotti (former presidential candidate)
Mary Harney (An Tánaiste)
Mary Hanafin (TD for Dun Laoghaire)
Mary O’Rourke (former Minister for Public Enterprise)
Mary Black (folk singer)
Mary Coughlan (Minister for Social and Family Affairs)
Mary Upton (TD for Dublin South Central)
Mary White (Senator)
Mary Henry (Senator)
Mary Nelis (MLA for Foyle)
Mary Lou McDonald (future MEP for Dublin)
Some friends of mine were travelling in Ireland (I think they were in Dublin) and got thoroughly lost. It had something to do with the fact that there were multiple streets called “Mary Street” or something very similar.
There’s only one Mary Street. However, Mary’s Lane, Little Mary Street and Mary’s Abbey are all very close to it.
That’s not unusual for Dublin, though, it’s quite common to find a group of streets/lanes/roads etc. with the same name clustered around the same area.
The funny thing about Mary is that it’s now not at all a popular name for Irish girls - there were only 140 babies registered with the name Mary in 2002, making Mary the just 41st most popular girl’s name in Ireland (though there were also 104 Marias).
The decline in popularity of Mary started some time ago, I would estimate (warning - anecdotal!) in the 1970s in urban areas and somewhat later in rural Ireland.
There are still lots of older Marys around, of course (such as the ones mentioned by other posters) but in 40 years or so it’ll be very rare indeed.
So I (at 28, from Dublin) don’t actually know many Marys, Catholic or Protestant, but it is true that the ones I do know are Catholic.
Not only that, my girlfriend is Church of Ireland (ie, Protestant) and doesn’t know any Protestants called Mary, of any age.
Thanks for the responses so far. Regarding the lists of famous Marys provided above - are they Catholic? I guess I could rephrase my original question as follows: If someone Irish is named Mary Katherine, Mary Frances, Mary Alice, or the like, would one guess that the person is Catholic, or not? And is it true, as one response indicates, that names of the form “Mary (Something)” are an Americanism and not commonly seen in Ireland?
Here’s what prompted my question. In my family, there are several women named “Mary (Something)”, going back a number of generations. But my family isn’t Catholic, at least as far back as I know (mid 1800s). I don’t know whether is is more likely that I am mistaken in thinking “Mary (Something)” is a typically Catholic name, or that they were actually Catholic but lost it somewhere along the line.
How come noone has mentioned the fact that every single person in Ireland over the age of 20 has Mary as their second name? Over the age of 40 and you can count the boys as well. While I am exaggerating, it’s not by much. My mothers whole family has Mary as their second name, including the boys, and the ones named variations of Mary.
It’s very common in Mexico for women and men to be given a Catholic name and a “non-Catholic” name. Maria/Guadalupe being popular for women and Jose and Jesus for men.
Usually, you will see for example:
Maria Thalia Rodriguez
or
Jesus Yahir Rodriguez.
Because Maria is such a common first name, a good number of mexican women will use their second name, if they have one. I had two girlfriends whose first name was Maria and didn’t know about it until they had to sign in their full name.
To my knowledge, Robinson, McAleese, Coughlan, Harney, Hanafin, Upton, Nelis and McDonald are. With the exception of McAleese, I know this about them only because the others’ names have never come up when the subject of Protestants in their positions has been raised.
I assume most (if not all) of the others are simply because statistically they are likely to be, but I wouldn’t know for sure.
Most Irish are Catholic (in the south of Ireland, where most of the above Marys are from, Catholics are about 95% of the population). I don’t think statistics on the religions of Marys are kept
I recall reading some years ago in the now sadly defunct Punchmagazine a review of a book about given names. It said that something on the order of 30% of women in Ireland in the 1700s had the given name “Mary” or a variant. Variants of Mary are still common among the Irish: Moira, Molly, Maureen, etc.
On a semi-related note, I recall a comedian who wondered about the scene in West Side Story when Tony runs through the Peurto Rican neughborhood yelling “MARIA!” and only one woman comes to the window.
