The Game of the Name – An Irishman’s Diary about a new study of British and Irish family names

If your surname happens to be “Short”, it’s most likely that this was a simple description of one or more ancestors who bequeathed it to you. In which case, even allowing for centuries of inflation, you may still bear evidence of your forebears’ lack of stature.

On the other hand, it may also have originated as an ironic nickname, which would instead explain why you’re 6ft 8in.

Or perhaps your Short ancestors intermarried with people called Long, and they gradually averaged each other out, leaving you as you probably are, somewhere in between.

The net result might tend to support Shakespeare’s Juliet when she asked “What’s in a name?”; her implication being, not much.

But the new four-volume Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, published this week, would argue otherwise.

And I can testify to the fascination of the almost 50,000 miniature histories therein, because after getting access to the online version, I found that one search led to another, continuously, until I was lost in it for hours.

The plight of the ironically named Shorts, for example, impelled me to look up “Toner” in the database.

That surname is best known these days for association with a 6ft 11in Irish rugby player (and also for a fine Dublin pub, where Irish and New Zealand supporters will gather this evening).

Interestingly, it implies Viking origins, being anglicised from an Irish form of “Thor”. There may be similar ancestry in the rarer name, “Thunder”.

And the dictionary suggests that, in the last version, it may just have started as a nickname for someone with a loud voice.

In any case, as Joe Schmidt (whose surname implies blacksmith ancestors, or even All-Blacksmith ones) attempts to make lightning strike twice today, it's good to know he has Thor on his side, in some shape.

The rugby team is a useful case study for the dictionary, in fact. Getting back to Longs, we also have a "Furlong" playing for us, an old English name that has been in Wexford since the 13th century. It's thought to describe a pastoral place of origin, as in the division of land that gave us the same-named unit of distance.  But there is a theory that Furlong may also have denoted a racecourse, or running track, and that the people so named might once have distinguished themselves as runners: hence a rarer, related surname, Furlonger (which is even more fun to put in sentences).

Consider also Marmion, said to be either a nickname from the Old French marmion, meaning “monkey” or “brat” – both good qualities in a scrum-half – or, less entertainingly, an anglicisation of an unidentified Irish name, like Merriman.

And then there's a certain exciting young Leinster centre, also on the bench today. We know that, as Juliet says, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But what about a Ringrose? Where does that come from (apart from Clare and Limerick, its Irish heartland)? The dictionary doesn't know, except to venture that it's probably an old English nickname, perhaps deriving from a game of some kind, especially one that involved throwing a ring, like quoits.

The alternative origin is a "singing dance", like the children's "ring-a-ring o'roses". And his growing fan club may see historical evidence for that in the way Garry Ringrose mesmerises defences until they all fall down. But that would be an overreach, or what the experts call "folk etymology".

Speaking of which, there is a natural tendency, where possible, to romanticise our surnames. Thus the sad case of the Campbells, some of whom used to persuade themselves that the name implied origins in a “beautiful field”.

In Latin it was often rendered as “Campo Bella” and, in French, “Beauchamp”. But there was folk-all justification for this. Campbell is actually a Scots Gaelic nickname caimbeul, meaning “crooked mouth”. So much for romance.

This brings me to my own humble moniker.

Could the dictionary, compiled from a four-year study at the University of the West of England, hoovering up centuries of tax, church, and census records, have produced new evidence of my ancestral origins, preferably aristocratic?

No. As I learned decades ago at school in Monaghan, some north-eastern McNallys may be anglicisations of Mac Con Uladh, making them "hounds of Ulster", which at least sounds dramatic.

But my probable origin, still, is Mac An Fhailghigh, which the dictionary even nails as “Monaghan Irish”. It means “son of the poor man”. And alas, despite what Juliet says, that sounds about right.