Ahh, you fail to note that Marie is French, while the Italian form is Maria. The only difference between the Italian and Spanish forms is that Spanish uses the acute accent: María.
Ah, but Jomo, you fail to note that Marie is the plural of Maria. So she was clearly referring to more than one Italian Maria, but only one Spanish one.
Hyperelastic, I would agree that names like “Mary Katherine” and so on are not typically Irish. What I mean is that a girl whose full name was “Mary Katherine Frances Murphy” would usually be called “Mary” rather than “Mary Katherine”. In my experience.
Ah, but Hibernicus, a rún, you fail to note that in Italian, personal names do not take plural forms, even when they’re plural. So for example, “the Marias” would be le Maria, not *le Marie. Example courtesy of Google:
“Se infatti notate qui le Maria sono tre: una si firma, una a favore ed una che provoca.” (If indeed you note that the Marias are three: one who is undersigned, one to favor, and one who provokes.)
I’m not sure about the OP phenomenon being specifically Irish. The French use double-barreled names as much as in the southern U.S.: Marie-France, Marie-Claire, etc. I was schooled by nuns of the Order of Notre Dame, and I always thought of this as a general Catholic thing, and specifically a nun thing. All those nuns used “Mary” as a prefix to their other names. My 4th-grade teacher was Sister Mary Anthony de Padua. I am not making this up. Since the Order of Notre Dame came from France, I think it’s as much a French thing as an Irish thing, if not more so.
Jomo, a chara, if Google is our guide to grammar, that rule seems to be honoured more in the breach.
Googling in Italian for:
- “tre Marie”: 970 hits (e.g. a picture of them)
- “tre Maria”: 56 hits
My Harrap Italian grammar lists nine categories of nouns that don’t change in the plural, but doesn’t mention proper names.
One thing I found out in Spain was that most girls (of my age) had “Maria” as a first name, but this was not used. So Celin was actually “Maria Celin”, “Rosa” was “Maria Rosa”, etc.
Analogous to Spanish girls (and American nuns) all using Maria or Mary as a universal name prefix, I think it was Richard Reeves in Passage to Peshawar who pointed out that practically all Pakistani guys have their names staring with Muhammad. All the brothers in a family have Muhammad as their first name, followed by individual names. This means, of course, as with the Spanish girls, that the name Muhammad becomes completely ignored when you call someone’s name. Sometimes Pakistanis are amazed when they meet an Arab and ask his name and he says “Muhammad.” Muhammad what? They expect to hear another name to follow it, like waiting for the other shoe to drop. No, the Arab’s name is just plain Muhammad, which is unheard of in Pakistan.
FWIW, the nuns at my old school were all called Mary something too, and they belonged to the Sisters of Mercy (founded in Ireland). The same is true of other Catholic orders not founded in Ireland or France, and some orders founded in both countries don’t follow that naming tradition.
There is a huge fixation about the Virgin Mary in Irish Catholicism. Many theses have been written about connections between the Virgin Mary and Mother Ireland and our whole mother obsession. The intercession of Mary is a common theme in prayer and the rosary has a unique marian significance in Ireland. Priests used hold up Mary as an example to Irish women in terms of purity, self-sacrifice etc. In contrast, Mary doesn’t figure too much in Protestantism and particularly in Irish Protestantism.
There’s a road in East Belfast called My Lady’s Road. A friend of mine from there keeps referring to it as Our Lady’s Road, betraying his Catholic programming. There’s as much chance of calling a road in East Belfast after the Virgin Mary as calling it after Bobby Sands.
A Mhuire!
'Tis an Irish invocation of the name of Mary, which became anglicized as “wirra,” which is how it sounds to sassenach ears. “Wirra” is defined by the dictionary as “Used to express sorrow or anxious concern.”
Speaking of Bobby Sands, when I was in Tehran I saw a hamburger joint named after Bobby Sands. Can you imagine? The dude starved himself to death and they name an eatery after him! So the diners can contemplate political starvation while chowing down. :rolleyes: <shaking head>
Jomo is that where we get the word in the song…
“There was an old woman”
“She stuck the penknife in the baby’s head
weela weela walia
She stuck the penknife in the baby’s head
Down by the river Sallia”
Maybe it’s ‘wirra’ and not ‘wella’ in the song as I had been told.
I made the mistake of playing that song when I found it in The Clancy Brothers Songbook which had been left near the piano, when my wee daughter, all of 3 or 4 years old, was listening. She was much distressed at the gruesome tale, and kept demanding to know if the baby died. F***in’ blooudy Irish ballads.
Ahh! Aaahhh! God not that song!
Crap, no sleep for me tonite…
BTW, hijack, does anyone know what the weela weela walia bit is? I always thought that the end bit was something to do with home, like “dul abhaile” (sorry, can’t spell for crap in Irish).
OK, I went and looked up that wretched song in the Clancy Brothers’ Irish Songbook. It goes “Weela weela wallia.” I do not think this has any derivation from a Mhuire; it’s just one of those old nonsense refrains, this one with a Gaelic accent.
The editor of the songbook remarks:
The more she stabbed it the more it bled
Down by the river Sallia. :rolleyes:
Of my numerous Irish relatives, there’s only one I can think of with Mary as a first or second name…but five first-name Toms/Thomases…maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree? 