Re: Why the name Terence is common in Ireland?
It is more likely that it is a Romanization, because Roman Catholic ritual stipulates that “Since those who are brought to baptism are thereby reborn in Christ as children of God and enrolled among his followers, care should taken that obscene, mythical or ridiculous names or those of false gods or heathen heroes be not given; rather, so far as it is possible, should be given the names of saints”. There is a Terentius on the List of Saints, so that name would be acceptable to the Roman priests. Likewise Tadhg was sometimes altered to Thaddæus and Brian to Bernardus. The same policy was imposed in England with the result that Anglo-Saxon names were mostly suppressed, with exception of those belonging to (usually royal) saints, such as Edmund and Edward and Oswald and Oswine. Terence seems to have arrived in England from Ireland comparatively recently as Withycombe thought that it was exclusively Irish: “it has not been used as a Christian name, except in Ireland”. So it is misleading when writers such as Hanks & Hodges say that Terence is an Anglicized form of an Irish name. Rather, it is the Anglicized form of a Roman name, and that Roman name was used in Ireland as a substitute for an Irish name.