Trust Issues

What happens when we have issues trusting ourselves

Having the confidence to trust yourself with in how you show up in the Irish language is something that is still very much a work in progress for me.

There is the question of language proficiency to start with; which I suppose is the case for any learner of any language: you are tentative in what you are about to say or do in the language as you are not quite sure how to do so, and when you do have something that you want to say, you’re not sure if it’s going to be right or actually mean what you intend it to mean.

There is a continual process of checking and self-doubt; this is, I suppose, natural and is the thing that we spoke about before in terms of needing to let go of the false and illusive desire for perfection and the surrendering to the process of learning itself.

But I think there is another, deeper layer to this when it comes to the Irish person trying to learn the Irish language.

In a colonial society where the Irish language was for centuries essentially prohibited — seen as the language of dissent and treason, and lesser than that of the prestige language of power, property, and progress that was English — the Irish language speaker was seen as untrustworthy. This involves tropes of either stupidity or treachery; the Irish are either thick or trouble, or possibly both.

Irish jokes were commonplace when I was growing up, English language jokebooks, (which were a feature of life in the 1970s and 80s that no longer seems to exist, I presume the internet took over all of that) were full of jokes at the expense of Paddy Irish man, I laughed at and told them myself in ignorance as a child, though thankfully I was never exposed to being the butt of one as an Irish person living in England, which I know was no laughing matter for anyone who experienced that at the time.

But that idea of the slippery, evasive, sly, roguish Irish type remains. I am particularly thinking now of a TV series based on the Sommerville and Ross novels of the Irish RM that aired when I was boy, they were set in West Cork and there was even a Florry McCarthy (which was the first time I saw my name appear outside of my family and a man’s name to boot), and it was full of these types of charming Irish peasants or upwardly mobile parvenues aspiring to their English betters.

That Faulty Towers episode entitled The Builders, while possibly one of the funniest pieces of TV comedy ever made, in which David Kelly was a masterful, did still spring from and continue this trope. And in a way I think Father Ted, and Father Dougal in particular, did too; and while I do get that that, like Kelly in Faulty Towers, Morgan et al in Father Ted were Irish comedic artists chosing to be self-depracating and more than in on the joke in creating great art, nevertheless I do think there is a connection there that we can’t deny.

The other side of this was in twentieth century Ireland itself, where Irish, while honoured constitutionally and by much lip service, but was not given much, or any, real power and few resources.

The Irish language’s unique place in society, being recognised with legal status, but not widely used or understood, created an opportunity for exploitation.

For instance, my name in English is Florence McCarthy and it is the name I have used exclusively for most of my life, known by most as the shortened form Flor. It’s an unusual name for a male, but is quite common in this part of west Cork and south Kerry. The Irish language version of my name is Finghin Mac Cárthaigh (the first name is pronounced Fineen in English phonemes).

While one might be able to see how Mac Cárthaigh was Anglicised as McCarthy, how Finghin became Florence is anyone’s guess, and it certainly isn’t intuitive. But there you are, they are very distinct and distinctive names.

I have identity cards in both names. My records with the National University of Ireland are in the name Finghin Mac Cárthaigh and my UCC Student ID card and Boole Library card are in this name with my photo.

My passport and driver’s licence are in the name of Florence McCarthy. I would be entitled to have any of them issued in the name Finghin Mac Cárthaigh. I would not be seeking to change my name by doing so, both are my name and neither involves a change, they are just each the different versions of the same name in the two official languages of the State.

I would also be entitled to have bank accounts in either name.

I have not done this and have kept all of my non-educational documents in the English language version of my name. The primary reason for this is that I run a business with bank accounts using Florence McCarthy and to start to unravel any of those would lead to the potential for untold confusion in a world where proving who we are for anti-money laundering purposes etc. becomes increasingly fraught.

But here’s the thing: people who use aliases and different versions of their name are inherently suspicious. We immediately wonder what they are up to; what are they trying to hide or avoid?

I’ve been practising as a solicitor in Ireland (an attorney) for over 25 years. One of the areas in which I have practised extensively is property law; mainly transactions involving the transfer of the title to property, representing clients in the purchase and sale of it, etc.

One of the things you must do on a transfer of title to property is ensure that the person purporting to sell it is, in fact, the actual owner of it and hasn’t done anything with the property that might impede their entitlement to transfer that ownership.

This is done by means of a process of due diligence called an investigation of title. It’s mainly a series of questions, called requisitions on title, to check to see that all is in order.

Then, when the sale is about to go through, you carry out searches in the various registries of titles and judgments, etc., to confirm that there isn’t anything on the record that might contradict or call into question what you have been told.

Requisition 13.2 of The Law Society of Ireland’s Requisitions on Title 2019 Edition, reads as follows:

Has the Vendor ever executed any document in relation to the property in the Irish equivalent or any other variant of his name. If so, furnish details.

The requisitions then go on to enquire if the vendor has ever been adjudicated a bankrupt or had any court judgments entered against them and so on.

This, of course, makes perfect sense; if I were buying a property from a person named Florence McCarthy and they had previously sold it to someone else by a deed using their name Finghin Mac Cárthaigh, and I were then to carry out searches against the former name, it would not show up anything of the latter. I could be defrauded in this way.

It creates an immediate suspicion. Why would someone choose to use different names?

For these reasons, among others, I think as Irish people we can sometimes have self-trust issues when it comes to the language, because there has been a long history of the potential of mistrust arising out of the use of the language in different contexts.

I may be imagining it, but then again, just because you’re paranoid does not mean that they’re not out to get you!

Here’s what came to me when I sat down to try to express what I thought about all of this and how I show up in the Irish language:

In Two Minds

In two minds

Idir dhá chomhairle

Between two stools

Idir dhá thine Bhealtaine

Johnny come lately

Tadhg i ndá thaobh

Psychic partition

Ó mo áit dúchais

What’s that in English

Cad is ainm dom

Why can’t I speak to my Mammy

In my mother tongue

An bhfuil cead agam dul amach

How do I get in

Has the Vendor ever executed

any document in relation to the property

in the Irish equivalent

or any other variant of his name

Cuairteoir nó treaspásóir

Feallaire nó file

Who’s your man

Cé hé mo dhuine

(Some explainers in case they might be of benefit:

Idir dhá chomhairle ~ this literally means in between two advices, but is what we would say for being in two minds in English

Idir dhá thine Bhealtaine ~ this again literally means between two May fires (long story), but in English we would say on the horns of a dilemma.

Tadhg i ndá thaobh ~ Tadhg on both sides ~ playing both sides.

Ó mo áit dúchais ~ from my native place

Cad is ainm dom ~ what is my name

An bhfuil cead agam dul amach ~ do I have permission to go outside, the famous Irish language expression that almost every Irish person knows from school, as it is how you say: may I go to the toilet

Cuairteoir nó treaspásóir ~ vistor or tresspasser

Feallaire nó file ~ traitor or poet; also there is an well known seanfhocal/proverb in Irish, filleann an feall ar an feallaire, the treacherous act returns to the traitor, or what goes around comes around, and here file and filleann sound alike.

Cé hé mo duine ~ who is my man, who is yer man.)

P.S. This is Day 20 in a 21-Day series on The Irish Language and Its Role in Irish Identity; you can start at Day 1 here or read Day 21 here.