Irish names about hair and colouring

Each name, and where the meaning comes from

• Barra · “BA-ra” · Boy's name
  Short form of Fionnbharra, 'fair-headed'. St Finbarr founded the monastery on the marsh that became Cork city (Corcaigh, 'the marsh') and Gougane Barra, the lake source of the Lee where he had his hermitage, still draws pilgrims. He is Cork's patron saint.
• Bébhinn · “BAY-vin” · Girl's name
  'fair lady' or 'melodious woman'. Borne by Brian Boru's mother and by several medieval princesses, and in the sagas by a giant woman of the Otherworld. It appears in Norse sources too, carried east by the sea-traffic between Dublin and Scandinavia.
• Caoilfhionn · “KEE-lin” · Girl's name
  Caol + fionn, 'slender and fair'. A name that survived mainly through St Caoilfhionn, and which returned in the late 20th century — often in the simplified spelling Keelin, which spares its owner a lifetime of spelling it out.
• Ciara · “KEER-a” · Girl's name
  From ciar, 'dark' — 'dark-haired one'. The feminine form of Ciarán, and the name of a 7th-century saint of Kilkeary in Tipperary. Its spelling has spread far beyond Ireland — often to people who pronounce it 'see-AIR-a', which no Irish speaker would.
• Ciarán · “KEER-awn” · Boy's name
  From ciar, 'dark' — 'little dark one'. Two great saints share it: Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, who founded the monastic city on the Shannon and died at 33, and Ciarán of Saighir, one of the pre-Patrician saints of Ossory. Between them they made it one of the most enduring names in the country.
• Cronan · “KROH-nawn” · Boy's name
  From crón, 'dark yellow, swarthy' — 'little dark one'. St Crónán founded the monastery at Roscrea in Tipperary, where the west front of his church still stands in the middle of the town. The surname Cronin comes from the same root.
• Donnchadh · “DUN-a-khoo” · Boy's name
  Donn + cath, 'brown-haired warrior' or 'strong warrior'. Borne by a son of Brian Boru and by kings of Munster and Leinster; the Scottish form is Duncan. Donnchadh Rua Mac Conmara was an 18th-century Waterford poet whose mock-epic on emigration is still read.
• Dubhghall · “DOO-gal” · Boy's name
  Dubh, 'black', and gall, 'a foreigner'. The name the Irish gave the Danes — the dark foreigners, as against the fair ones. It became a personal name, then the surname Doyle, and survives in Scotland as Dugald.
• Feardorcha · “far-DOR-a-kha” · Boy's name
  Fear, 'a man', and dorcha, 'dark' — the dark-complexioned man. A description that hardened into a name, common in the sixteenth century and in use for long after. Often written An Feardorcha, 'the dark man', with the article still attached.
• Finghin · “FIN-een” · Boy's name
  Read as 'fair birth' or 'fair offspring'. Common among the MacCarthys, O'Sullivans, O'Mahonys and O'Driscolls of west Munster — and anglicised, in Woulfe's word, absurdly, as Florence. Generations of Munster men were christened Finghin and registered as Florence.
• Fintan · “FIN-tan” · Boy's name
  Fionn + tan, 'white fire' or 'fair offspring'. Fintan mac Bóchra, in the mythological tradition, survived the Flood in Ireland and lived five thousand years as the island's memory — a one-man archive. Some seventy saints share the name, chief among them Fintan of Clonenagh.
• Fionn · “FYUN (also FIN)” · Boy's name
  'fair, bright, white'. Fionn mac Cumhaill, leader of the Fianna, gained all knowledge by burning his thumb on the Salmon of Wisdom and sucking it — and thereafter had only to put thumb to mouth to know anything. Folklore made him a giant who built the Giant's Causeway to reach Scotland.
• Fionnabhair · “FIN-oor” · Girl's name
  'white phantom' or 'fair spirit'. Daughter of Medb and Ailill, offered again and again as a prize to warriors who would fight Cú Chulainn, until she died of shame at what her mother had done with her. The name is the same word as the Welsh Gwenhwyfar, which is to say it is the same name as Guinevere.
• Fionnbharr · “FIN-bar” · Boy's name
  Fionn, 'fair', and barr, 'a head'. Patron of the diocese of Cork, whose monastery on the marsh became the city. Shortened to Barra, which is how Corkonians say it.
• Fionnuala · “fin-OO-la” · Girl's name
  Fionn + guala, 'white shoulder' — 'the fair-shouldered one'. The eldest of the Children of Lir: turned into a swan with her three brothers by their jealous stepmother Aoife, she sheltered them under her wings for nine hundred years, three hundred on Lough Derravaragh, three hundred on the Sea of Moyle, three hundred on the Atlantic. Nuala is its everyday short form.
• Flann · “FLAN” · Boy's name
  'blood-red, ruddy'. Flann Sinna was a high king of the 9th century whose cross still stands at Clonmacnoise. Brian O'Nolan borrowed it for his pen name, Flann O'Brien, under which he wrote 'At Swim-Two-Birds' — a book Joyce admired and almost nobody understood at the time.
• Mongfhionn · “MONG-in” · Girl's name
  'fair hair', from mong, 'hair', and fionn, 'fair'. Wife of the high king Eochaid Mugmedón and mother of three of his sons, and stepmother of the fourth, Niall of the Nine Hostages, whom she is said to have schemed against all his life. She died at Samhain of poison she had meant for her brother, and the feast was called the Festival of Mongfhionn long afterwards.
• Muireann · “MWIR-in” · Girl's name
  Muir + fionn, 'sea-white' or 'sea-fair'. A name out of the sea, borne in the Fenian tales by Muireann, mother of Fionn's wife, and by a legendary mermaid (Muirgen, 'sea-born') who was caught in a net in Lough Neagh and baptised. It survives in Connacht and has been steadily rising since the 1990s.
• Odhrán · “OH-rawn” · Boy's name
  From odhar, 'dun, sallow, pale-brown' — 'little pale one'. St Odhrán was one of the twelve who sailed with Colmcille to Iona, and the first of them to die there; the island's oldest burial ground, Reilig Odhráin, where Scottish kings were laid, still carries his name.
• Órlaith · “OR-la” · Girl's name
  Ór + flaith, 'golden princess' or 'golden lady'. A genuinely royal name: Órlaith was a niece of Brian Boru, and the annals record several princesses of the name in the 10th and 11th centuries. It vanished for most of a millennium and returned in the 20th century, usually spelled Orla.
• Ruairí · “ROO-a-ree” · Boy's name
  'red king' — rua + rí. Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair was the last High King of Ireland: he submitted to Henry II in 1175 and died a monk at Cong in 1198. Rory O'More's name became a password of the 1641 rising, and Rory O'Connor held the Four Courts in 1922.

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