My name is Séamas O’Reilly, or at least I thought it was until recently. The confusion started some years ago, when my father cast a wry glance at the cover of my memoir.
“Why’d you add the fada?” he asked.
“I have a fada,” I said, to the man I presumed had named me. “I don’t think so,” said he, with that tone he uses when I suggest he doesn’t need to apply a kilogram of butter to every scone he eats. In his defence – on the name thing, not his overuse of butter – my father has 11 children, and misremembering a fada would rank quite low on his all-time list of mix-ups in this sphere. Each of us grew up accustomed to the machine gun rattle of different names being tried out, in sequence, any time he wished to call just one of us. (I believe his record for me is six other names before he reached my own, comprising five of my siblings and the dog).
I replied that if he had no memory of it, my late mother must have done the deed; a flourish that she, as an Irish teacher, would have been more likely to commit than he. My father scoffed at the suggestion and implied the only flourish he could see within this embarrassing saga was my own; a desperate attempt to infuse my name with an exotica it did not possess.
Chagrined, I turned to my siblings’ groupchat and found half of them were sure I had a fada, while half swore total ignorance. Articles in my name, and even my passport, I was told, proved nothing, since they were self-reported – and thus suspect.
[ Séamas O’Reilly: ‘My little boy is the same age now as I was when my mother died’Opens in new window ]
It was only some months later, when I put my hands to my long-form birth certificate (for other reasons, I swear), that the matter was put to rest. By which I mean, my father shrugged and changed the subject, granting me zero personal satisfaction from the exchange whatsoever.
I was reminded of this fight for my fada a few weeks back, when Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh tabled a Bill in the Dáil to protect fadas in Irish names and addresses, prompting a bit of sabre-rattling between those who think it’s high time we preserved and celebrated these charming motes of our cultural heritage, and those who don’t really see why we should bother.
As the above anecdote may have already illustrated, I’m all for the Bill, since I do consider my fada part of my actual name – a belief many Irish people, services and institutions seem to equate with me demanding I be addressed as His Eminence, Lord of All Creation.
[ Séamas O’Reilly: Living in Dublin taught me not to mention the TroublesOpens in new window ]
I don’t think too hard about individual people forgetting mine in an email or a message. To be honest, I might not always remember to stick it in myself if I’m in a rush, not least since my version of Microsoft Word – the very programme I am using to write these words right now – renders the standard crtl+alt+e command as a euro symbol. (Though I’ve never stooped to calling myself S€amas, I have been known, in times of dire hangover, to source this errant é by googling Beyoncé).
‘In an email or a message, I don’t much mind, but when this extends to book covers sent for my perusal by publishers, or roughly 40 per cent of articles I’ve ever had published, it gets a little wearying’
— Séamas O’Reilly on his name being misspelt
It’s mainly when using Irish services that it really becomes a pain. Booking a flight, a train or a leisure centre appointment becomes a tedious grind when my “non-standard character” is rejected. This, on grounds that the little toupee over said vowel is a needless, perhaps unseemly, extravagance, and despite the fact that thousands of languages all over the world have got around this problem by not insisting all their services be specifically tailored toward the language rules of British English.
If I’m even more honest, the main reason I want to preserve my own fada is because it’s one of the only two elements of my name I actually like. Séamas O’Reilly sounds stodgy and plain. At best, it’s a smiling, green blazer-wearing figure who greets people off the planes at Shannon Airport. At worst, it’s a place holder name for some local rogue in a film in which Rob Schneider inherits an Irish castle.
The only things that save it, for me, are that wee fada and one other element which almost no one seems to remember; that second “a”, which is great because no one else has it. It’s also bad because no one else has it, since it is so consistently misspelt that I exert a lot of effort correcting people. It’s probably spelt wrong on the page you’re reading right now.
Again, in an email or a message, I don’t much mind, but when this extends to book covers sent for my perusal by publishers, or roughly 40 per cent of articles I’ve ever had published, it gets a little wearying. So wearying in fact, that I often lack the will to kick up any fuss at all, and have likely signed hundreds of documents which do not bear my actual name, and may therefore not even be legally binding. To be honest, I’m not 100 per cent sure the contract I signed to write this very column had my own name or not, and I look forward to using that fact to wriggle out of my professional requirements any time I desire.
Perhaps, if I screw over my landlord, default on my loans, and abandon all professional responsibilities, it’ll teach them to remember. I will strike this blow for all of us. And I’ll do it in the name of the fada.