MEANING: Meaning “”fair-haired,”” the name has been popular since the sixth century when St. Finbar came to an area of Cork that was being tormented by a serpent. The people begged him to do something to help them. One night he went to where the serpent was sleeping and sprinkled it with holy water. The angry serpent tore and devoured the land until she slithered into the sea at Cork Harbor. The track she left behind filled with water and became the River Lee and that’s why St. Finbar is the patron saint of Cork. It is said that the sun didn’t set for two weeks after Finbar’s death.

MEANING: Meaning “”fair-haired,”” the name has been popular since the sixth century when St. Finbar came to an area of Cork that was being tormented by a serpent. The people begged him to do something to help them. One night he went to where the serpent was sleeping and sprinkled it with holy water. The angry serpent tore and devoured the land until she slithered into the sea at Cork Harbor. The track she left behind filled with water and became the River Lee and that’s why St. Finbar is the patron saint of Cork. It is said that the sun didn’t set for two weeks after Finbar’s death.

MEANING: The name of one of the twelve apostles, it is the Irish form of the Hebrew name Bartholemew “”Son of Talmai.”” Bartley is also a derivation of the name Parthalon who was the leader of the first people to occupy Ireland after the Biblical flood, about 2,800 BC, and who, according to legend, brought agriculture to their new homeland. As such it is not really an Irish name although it was in relatively common usage in times past, particularly in the west of Ireland. The present Prime Minister of Ireland is Batholomew Ahern, although he is more commonly known as “”Bertie.””

MEANING: The name of one of the twelve apostles, it is the Irish form of the Hebrew name Bartholemew “”Son of Talmai.”” Bartley is also a derivation of the name Parthalon who was the leader of the first people to occupy Ireland after the Biblical flood, about 2,800 BC, and who, according to legend, brought agriculture to their new homeland. As such it is not really an Irish name although it was in relatively common usage in times past, particularly in the west of Ireland. The present Prime Minister of Ireland is Batholomew Ahern, although he is more commonly known as “”Bertie.””

MEANING: The name of one of the twelve apostles, it is the Irish form of the Hebrew name Bartholemew “”Son of Talmai.”” Bartley is also a derivation of the name Parthalon who was the leader of the first people to occupy Ireland after the Biblical flood, about 2,800 BC, and who, according to legend, brought agriculture to their new homeland. As such it is not really an Irish name although it was in relatively common usage in times past, particularly in the west of Ireland. The present Prime Minister of Ireland is Batholomew Ahern, although he is more commonly known as “”Bertie.””

MEANING: Comes from the word bradan meaning “”a salmon”” in Irish and the bradan feasa, the “”Salmon of Knowledge”” (read the legend) is central to the tales of Fionn MacCool (read the legend).

MEANING: There are at least seventeen saints who bear the name but St. Breandan the Navigator is probably the best known. Tradition has it that he was born in County Kerry, set sail in a small boat with a group of monks in the early 6th century, visited an island inhabited by birdmen, rode on the back of a whale and was the first European to set foot on the shores of the Americas, nearly a thousand years before Columbus. In the 1970s Tim Severin recreated St. Breandan’s voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in a flimsy, hide-covered rowboat known as a “”curragh.”” St. Breandan is venerated in Ireland as the patron saint of seafarers and travellers.