Happy St Patrick’s Day. Okay, a little premature, but the prospect of a bank holiday weekend tends to get my juices flowing well in advance. Besides, next Friday is my name day, Patsy being a derivative of Patrick. I was named Patrick Thomas, after my two grandfathers. That became Patsy after my paternal grandfather, who lived with us until I was 10.
It’s not easy being Patsy. Put the letter “a” before it and you have “a patsy” – fall guy, fool-in-the-middle, eejit. Hardly flattering.
In school all was fine until we came to Patrick Pearse and his “Nora Phatsey” – “Nora the daughter of Patsy”. Mortifying that at 14 I had a daughter.
As a student in New York no one would call me Patsy. An old lady in the building where I worked was quite frank about it too. “I can’t call you that; it’s a girl’s name,” she said. And it is in the US, usually spelled “Patsey”.
Róisín Ingle: My profound, challenging, surprisingly joyful, life-changing year
The Big Irish Times Quiz of 2024
Megan Nolan: A conversation with a man in his late 30s made clear the realities of this new era in my dating life
Winter walks: 10 family-friendly trails around Ireland, from easy to challenging
[ St Brigid’s cross. But she was born in Dundalk so who could blame her?Opens in new window ]
The same old lady, on discovering I was Irish, got a crowd around me and ordered “Talk!” As I sank through the red terracotta floor, muttering “What do you want me to say?” she almost sank at my knees and proclaimed to the enchanted audience, “Isn’t that just beautiful?”
It was not so much my words, or name, that turned those good people into my willing slaves, as my west of Ireland accent.
I have never met a guy outside Ireland who was named Patsy. Or Patsey. Not once. In Ireland it can apply to men usually found along the Wild Atlantic Way, or in northwest Roscommon. Which is probably why the editor of one Dublin newspaper I worked for (not this one) said “Patsy, is too country and western, we’ll call you Patrick.”
And, lo, I became Patrick McGarry, leading one critic who had known me in a previous life to comment acidly that I was reinventing myself as posh. (Moi?)
Even further back in my extensive past, at a pirate radio station, the boss said I should refer to myself on air (when reading the news) as “Padraig McGarry”. He felt it would help the station’s “Irish” image and assist him in getting a licence. It didn’t. Besides, the DJs kept referring to me on-air as Patsy.
What can you do?
Patrick, from Latin patricius‘, of noble rank’
