The Éamon Ó Cuív complaint

I contacted the Department of Environment, Heritage & Local Government today to check if they had received by formal complaint regarding the name used by Fianna Fail TD, Eamon O’Cuiv in the recent General Election.

The said they were checking the legislation and would get back to me in a few days

3 thoughts on “The Éamon Ó Cuív complaint”

  1. With all due respect Anthony , your complaint is unlikely to be upheld as it is inaccurate. You will find that ó Cuiv has always been on the ballot paper as Cuiv, Eamon ó. This is the gramatically correct way to write his name in Irish. My own name also contains an “ó” and it drives me crazy when ignorant people take it upon themselves to change my name to the English version “O- apostrophe”. Its not much to ask for a basic level of accuracy in spelling. I doubt very much that a poll topper like ó Cuiv needs to bother getting his name up the ballot paper by the backdoor and youre probably aware that he goes by his Irish name all the time. I believe this was also upheld in a court of law.

  2. Another note on this issue…. In Irish, in a person’s name, in this case “ó Cuív”, the “ó” is not part of their surname. It simply means “Son Of” and the female equivalent is “Nic”, “Daughter of” or “Uí”, “Wife Of…”. You will notice that the “ó” is separate to the surname whereas in English, they are joined, eg. O’Flynn or McDonald. You would never see “Mc Donald”. Clearly McDonald is sorted under “M” because it is part of the surname. But this is not the case in Irish. And its not that Irish is different, all of these names orfinally came from Irish so I would expect that the gramatical rules on it outdate any subsequent anglicization of surnames. I think you will find that your argument here is unfounded..

Comments are closed.