The importance of being Enda

Enda isn't the easiest name to carry off – you get teased, mistaken for a girl, your name is mispronounced. So will the prominence of our new Taoiseach improve life for all the other Endas, asks ENDA O'DOHERTY

THE APPOINTMENT of Enda Kenny as Taoiseach in the Dáil today will mean different things to different people. For those who voted Fine Gael, it will set the seal on an almost unprecedented political landslide. For others, it will mark the beginning of a period, of as yet unknown duration, in political exile.

There is another significant yet not much considered group however which holds out high hopes for Mr Kenny’s period in office and indeed aspires, through his very occupation of that office, to a recognition that has until now been denied them. I refer, of course, to the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of Irish people called Enda.

Endas know what it is to be excluded, unheard, misheard, misrepresented.

“Hello, I’m Enda.”

“John, let me introduce you to Edna.”

“Ah, no, it’s ‘Enda’ actually . . . well, let it pass.”

There weren’t too many Endas around when I was in primary school. I think I went through the entire seven years without meeting a single other one. But younger children can often accept what is given; they do not, like adolescent males, live by mockery.

Later, it seemed I never gave my name without being greeted by the sneer: “But that’s a girl’s name!” There is nothing that children like more than being like everyone else. The happiest child is therefore the one called John Smith, or in Ireland perhaps Patrick O’Connor.

It would seem I was called Enda in the first place as some kind of by-product of my father’s deep cultural nationalism. My brothers were also gifted with names that were (then) equally obscure. The association of Patrick Pearse with St Enda’s School in Ranelagh, later Rathfarnham, was certainly one factor in my christening, while the name of my mother’s home parish, Killanny, or Cill Éanna (Enda’s church), in Co Louth, was another.

St Enda was a sixth-century noble and warrior from Oriel in Ulster, who renounced that life for the more demanding one of austere monasticism. He is chiefly identified with the Aran Islands, in particular Inis Mór, and is sometimes spoken of as the founder of Irish monasticism.

While the pretty stories associated with the holy Enda might have impressed some, they did not always work well, I found, on hardbitten 13-year-olds. To add to my considerable troubles, my parents were at this time about to visit another disaster on me.

Our new house, a tall, narrow redbrick on a steep city terrace, overlooked the old city mental hospital. From our bedroom in the attic we could closely observe the patients as they were led out onto the grass to take the sun on summer days. Just the kind of thing a young lad enjoys. But the street was named after the institution which it hosted.

From then on, on the frequent roll calls and checks to which a schoolchild is subjected, I was to suffer double jeopardy. “Name?” “Enda O’Doherty.” Titters. “Address?” “11, Asylum Road.” Howls of derision, copy books in the air.

There are, I suppose, two possible long-term effects of being at the receiving end of such unwelcome attention at an early age. One can become invested with a lifelong timidity and prefer to linger in the background in company one does not know; or one can choose to simply ignore all unpleasantnesses and let nothing or no one stand in the way of achieving one’s goals. Congratulations, Taoiseach, on so splendidly incarnating the second way.

After adolescence of course, everything gets easier – even for Endas. Though my name puzzled work colleagues in England, their bemusement and curiosity was not unfriendly, even if this difficult two-syllable word sometimes proved beyond them. “Eh-, Eh-,” stuttered one friendly boss. “Do you mind if I call you Andy?”

Over the years, I have been Andy for convenience, Ends for abbreviation, Endy for affection, Elmo and Emo in error and Elbow through plain facetiousness.

But things are getting better. There are more of us around now than ever before, the Edna thing is seldom heard in Ireland at least and now that one of us is famous and set to bestride not just the Irish but the European stage, surely there can never be any confusion or mistakes again.

But what is this I hear? Could it be the voice of Sky News’s Kay Burley? “The Irish prime minister, Edna Kenny, arrived in Brussels today . . . ”

“Hi, I’m Andy.”

Enda O'Doherty works on The Irish Timesforeign desk