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ArchivesRe: My column on Sean (and Shawn and Shaun)
in reply to a message by clevelandkentevans
Something that many people don't realize is that the vast majority of Irish people had ordinary English names for centuries because of how much control the English had over Ireland. From what I've read, Irish people in the 19th century spoke English and had English names. Irish names weren't revived until the late 19th/early 20th century due to Irish nationalism, which led to a revival of Gaelic culture.
The first American-born Seans were probably the children of recent Irish immigrants. During the 1920s many Irish were still leaving Ireland.
Needless to say, some English names were more common in Ireland than the rest of the English-speaking world due to Ireland being mostly Catholic. But I think these tended to be saint names (such as Patrick, Ignatius, Theresa, and Ursula) rather than Gaelic names.
The first American-born Seans were probably the children of recent Irish immigrants. During the 1920s many Irish were still leaving Ireland.
Needless to say, some English names were more common in Ireland than the rest of the English-speaking world due to Ireland being mostly Catholic. But I think these tended to be saint names (such as Patrick, Ignatius, Theresa, and Ursula) rather than Gaelic names.
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Actually as the column points out the first two Seans born in the USA (according to census records) were not children of recent Irish immigrants, but grandsons of Irish immigrants whose own parents were highly educated. This is normal, as highly educated persons would have been those most likely to be paying attention to how the Irish language forms of names were being revived back in Ireland, and later generations were actually more likely to want to revive names from their ancestry than immigrants, who would want to assimilate.
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