Para
Colm Hasson
Para Ban and Para Roe
I understand the Ban and Roe are from white and red.
Colm
Trish
"Colm Hasson" <c.ha...@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:bot1tp$1ieg0n$1...@ID-191955.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Can some Irish Language scholar tell me what the Para means in:
>
> Para Ban and Para Roe
>
> I understand the Ban and Roe are from white and red.
>
Hi Colm
I'm not an Irish scholar, but I can't think of any word like Para.
Are Para Ban and Para Roe place names?
The closest I can think of would be Carraroe from Ceathrú Rua meaning 'Red
quarter'.
--
Trish
Dublin, Ireland
http://www.loughman.dna.ie
Dublin City Directory of 1850
Colm Hasson
No they are nicknames
Colm
"Trish" <your...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bp12la$1j7lp6$1...@ID-149571.news.uni-berlin.de...
Trish
> Thanks Trish
> No they are nicknames
> Colm
Hi again Colm
This intrigued me, so I had a bit of a root about on the net.
Parra is mentioned on this page
http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/irish_names.html as the pronunciation
of the first name Padhra.
http://www.ireland-now.com/culture/babynames..html lists it as a variation
of Pádraig, and
http://www.folktrax.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/menus/cassprogs/432fermanagh.htm
includes a reference to a man "known as "Peter Padhra' Ban" meaning
white-haired (from his father)".
I have never heard it used, though of course it may be used in many places
throughout the country.
Don Moody
<your...@hotmail.com> writes
>Parra is mentioned on this page
>http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/irish_names.html as the pronunciation
>of the first name Padhra.
>
>http://www.ireland-now.com/culture/babynames..html lists it as a variation
>of Pádraig, and
>http://www.folktrax.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/menus/cassprogs/432fermanagh.htm
>includes a reference to a man "known as "Peter Padhra' Ban" meaning
>white-haired (from his father)".
To avoid potential confusion, the 'white-haired' bit refers only to the
'Ban' and has nothing to do with Padhra, Padraig, Parra, Para, Patrick
or any other form. Nor does it necessarily have anything to do with
'from his father'. I'm a 'white-hair' and I got the gene(s) from my
mother. Coincidentally she also insisted that I be named Patrick to
placate the Catholic relatives and Donald to placate the Protestants, so
I've been round this route all my life.
Depending on accent of speaker and of transcriber the 'white-hair'
genetic trait is described by any combination of B(rarely V) - vowel - N
- E (or no vowel). The commonest spelling form in English when used as a
surname is BAIN, where the central vowel is a single sound pronounced as
in 'rain'. This corruption is the fault of Shakespeare, who didn't have
Gaelic and who mistranscribed the two syllables for 'white - hair' into
the single syllable when he wrote of Donaldbain, Prince of Ulster.
Because English scribes didn't understand terminal descriptors, they
took the last descriptor as the family name. Hence the sudden appearance
of a lot of BAIN (and variants). They compounded their mistake by not
deleting the so-called surname from the names of those descendants who
did not have white hair.
Hence people like me who are 'ban' but are not called BAIN because we
inherited through our mothers; and people like my cousin who is not
'ban' but is called BAIN because he did not inherit through his father -
my mother's brother. Back a few centuries in Ireland or Scotland the
naming would have been reversed.
It's an interesting genetic oddity in its own right. You can tell us
from albinos even in the cradle. Albinos have red eyes, we have blue.
You can tell us again at puberty. Albinos stay white, we go whatever
colour we should have been in the fist place. In other words albinos
don't have some of the genes need to create tissue colour, we have the
genes but they are not switched on until the hormonal rush of puberty.
So that adequately explains the 'Ban'. But I have no experience of
'Para'. It's not a diminutive of Patrick that has ever been applied to
me or any of my 'Patrick' cousins.
Don
--
Dr D P Moody, Ashwood, Exeter Cross, Liverton, Newton Abbot, Devon,
England TQ12 6EY
Tel: +44(0) 1626 821725 Fax: +44(0) 1626 824912