Recently while browsing the digitized newspaper collection at the National Library of Australia I came across a series of articles on Irish Saints’ names, written to promote the idea that Irish parents should give their children the names of our native holy men and women. This is a not uncommon theme in the popular religious literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially that aimed at an Irish expatriate audience. Whilst I am fully supportive of the desire to preserve the names of the Irish saints, I am left wondering how many prospective parents actually followed these suggestions, particularly in the case of the more obscure saints. It is one thing to lecture an Irish-American reader on why no true Irish maiden should be ashamed to bear the name of Saint Brigid, but did the writer of this article really imagine that a poor Irish immigrant was going to name his son Ceannfaelad or Indreactae? Yet in our present age of reenactment, role-playing and Game of Thrones, these ancient names have acquired a certain cachet once again. The newspaper articles on the Irish saints’ names are laid out on a monthly basis, so we can start with the selection for April, and an interesting selection it is too:

Southern Cross, Friday, 3 April 1914, page 19.

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