Irish names starting with P

The P names in brief

• Pádraig · “PAW-drig” · Boy's name · also Patrick, Padraic, Paddy, Pat
  From Latin patricius, 'nobleman'. Patrick was a Roman Briton, kidnapped at sixteen and enslaved as a shepherd in Ireland, who escaped, took orders and came back to the country that had held him. His own Confessio survives — one of the very few personal voices from 5th-century Europe.
• Pádraigín · “PAW-drig-een” · Girl's name · also Patricia
  Pádraig with the diminutive -ín: 'little Pádraig'. It began as a boy's pet name, little Pádraig. Wikipedia notes that the ending later came to mark a girl's name instead, and Pádraigín became the Irish form of Patricia.
• Peadar · “PAD-ar” · Boy's name · also Peter, Piaras
  The Irish form of Peter, 'rock'. Peadar Kearney wrote 'The Soldier's Song', Amhrán na bhFiann, in 1907; it became the national anthem in 1926. He was Brendan Behan's uncle, which explains a good deal about that family's way with a line.
• Piaras · “PEER-us” · Boy's name · also Pierce, Piers, Peter
  The Irish form of Piers / Pierce. Piaras Feiritéar of Kerry was both a Gaelic poet and a Norman-descended chieftain who led the 1641 rising in his county — and was hanged at Killarney in 1653. His poems and his rebellion belong to the same man, which was rarer than you'd think.
• Pól · “POLE” · Boy's name · also Paul
  From Latin Paulus, 'small'. The name of the Apostle of the Gentiles. Woulfe says it was never a common name in Ireland.
• Proinsias · “PRIN-shas” · Boy's name · also Francis, Proinnsias
  The Irish form of Francis. Adopted after the Franciscans became central to Irish religious life — it was Irish Franciscans in Louvain and Rome who preserved much of the manuscript record of Gaelic Ireland after the conquest.

Also spelled with P

Listed on the atlas under another spelling, but the P form is the one many families carry — they are the same name.

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