Sir, – CDC Armstrong (December 16th) finds it "still odder" that O'Brian should have chosen the surname "Palafox" for an 18th-century Irish Protestant in his early novel The Golden Ocean, pointing out that Palafox was an Aragonese name, rather than Irish. A clue may lie in the fact that Mr Palafox is characterised in the book as being from around Sligo, where his father was a Church of Ireland minister. Also in Sligo around that era were the Pollexfen family, prominent ship-owners and merchants, and familiar because of their connections with the Yeats family. In casting around for a name, O'Brian may have thought to himself "Pollexfen, Palafox"? Perhaps? – Yours, etc,
FERGUS CAHILL,
Dunboyne,
Co Meath.