Should Ireland rename places named after British people?

Confused mum84 · 18-01-2017 11:40PM

The US also gained independence from Britain (via a war between the two) but they didn't rename towns etc i.e. New York is still New York , New England region still know as New England etc

maryishere · 19-01-2017 12:20AM

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

We should give Laois and Offaly back their old names too of King's and Queen's County.

Some of the Irish heroes must be turning in their graves when you see the shyteholes that we have 'honoured' them with. Padraig Pearse for example - a dingy street, a horrible train station and a load of dodgey pubs.

Sackville st was far nicer before it was renamed O'Connell st. Now it just has fast food restaurants, drug addicts, a needle in the sky, etc. No wonder most of the old people I knew referred to streets and even towns by their "old" names. Amiens st / Connolly st etc. Streets and areas go downhill when they are renamed.

KingBrian2 · 19-01-2017 12:29AM

maryishere wrote: »

Sackville st was far nicer before it was renamed O'Connell st. Now it just has fast food restaurants, drug addicts, a needle in the sky, etc. No wonder most of the old people I knew referred to streets and even towns by their "old" names. Amiens st / Connolly st etc. Streets and areas go downhill when they are renamed.

That is just not true Sackville street was destroyed following Easter Rebellion. The Brits caused the physical and financial damage when they did that. Renaming was appropriate given the feeling of the populace at the time. A choice between the great emancipator himself Daniel O' Connell or an old bygone name. At some point street names will get changed due to the view points of the people. A very democratic approach to take.

feargale · 19-01-2017 12:44AM

Zebra3 wrote: »

The absurdity of having a Royal Canal in a republic.

Defo the first thing that needs to be renamed.

"The old triangle goes jingle jangle
Along the banks of the Republican Canal." §§

I don't think it will catch on.

getzls · 19-01-2017 12:53AM

The German acknowledge their Nazi past, why can't the UK?[/quote]
Yes indeed. And for that matter the UK should sent back those millions of Irish people and their decendants back to the old sod.
Don't see or hear of too many leaving England and the good life to return.

feargale · 19-01-2017 01:02AM

seamus wrote: »

There's a monument to some British king, still standing in Dun Laoghaire. It's unmistakable by the crown sitting on top that it's from a British monarch.

I presume you are referring to King George IV who in 1821 visited DL, which as a consequence was renamed Kingstown.
In the 1970s some irregulars made a cack-handed attempt to blow it up but only succeeded in dislodging one of the four spherical supports. A satirical radio show of the time reported that the supports were called "spheres of stone" by the Irish Independent and "concrete globes" by the Irish Times. But, according to the comedians, the Irish Press, with typical republican forthrightness, called them "balls". They added that there were no plans to rename the monument after George the Third.

19-01-2017 01:24AM

No, keep them with their British names.

LordSutch wrote: »

By that^ toxic post I presume you suggesting that Poland's relationship with the Nazi's & Nazi Germany is akin to Irelands relationship with Britain.

Are you for real?

Nice try at agitation, but we ain't biting.

Maybe he meant Nazi, but worth thinking about as large parts of modern Poland belonged to Prussia for centuries, Silesia, Pomerania, Prussia

catbear · 19-01-2017 01:54AM

No, keep them with their British names.

Confused mum84 wrote: »

The US also gained independence from Britain (via a war between the two) but they didn't rename towns etc i.e. New York is still New York , New England region still know as New England etc

But they were the same culture, they were just a bunch of brits who didn't want to pay taxation without representation.

mackeire · 19-01-2017 01:57AM

Change the name of Kerry to Londonkerry.

mackeire · 19-01-2017 01:59AM

But on a serious note, yes, yes Ireland should change the names of famous landmarks etc to something that suits them from Irish history.

catbear · 19-01-2017 02:03AM

No, keep them with their British names.

mackeire wrote: »

But on a serious note, yes, yes Ireland should change the names of famous landmarks etc to something that suits them from Irish history.

Except Bastardstown in Wexford. Great fecking name that.

Kermit.de.frog · 19-01-2017 04:15AM

Bring back Nelson I say.

Peregrinus · 19-01-2017 04:16AM

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

Bring back Nelson I say.

What, sitting on top of the Spike? That could be painful.

HellSquirrel · 19-01-2017 05:51AM

I see no reason why some places shouldn't have their names changed, especially changed back to an older Irish name if one applies. But really, if the people that live near it (and thus have to live with it) don't mind whatever name, I really can't make myself care too much. I was one of those who mostly wished Derry/Londonderry and Dingle/An Daingain would make their goddamn minds up already when I thought about it at all.

But if changing the name of a place, don't make a song and dance about it. Change it and move on. But if the person that's shaped a particular area more than anyone else happens to have been born in England, don't whitewash history in ideological zeal. The truth is more important than what we might like to think of as the truth.

Zebra3 · 19-01-2017 06:33AM

No, keep them with their British names.

The ignorance of people talking about the British occupation as "our history".

It was an imposed history.

HellSquirrel · 19-01-2017 06:41AM

Zebra3 wrote: »

The ignorance of people talking about the British occupation as "our history".

It was an imposed history.

Iiii suggest you look up the word "history" and see if you can have a bash at figuring out why Ireland being under Norman/British rule for heading on for a millenium might count.

Doesn't matter a cow's bollock if it's "imposed" or not. Most of history involves things being imposed by people on other people.

4ensic15 · 19-01-2017 07:45AM

Zebra3 wrote: »

The ignorance of people talking about the British occupation as "our history".

It was an imposed history.

The British were invited into Ireland in the first place. British history itself is of being conquered by the Normans so the history of Britain since 1066 was imposed on it. Before that they had the Romans imposing on them. Where does all this imposition end?

Pawwed Rig · 19-01-2017 09:04AM

4ensic15 wrote: »

The British were invited into Ireland in the first place. British history itself is of being conquered by the Normans so the history of Britain since 1066 was imposed on it. Before that they had the Romans imposing on them. Where does all this imposition end?

No they weren't. The Normans were French.

HellSquirrel · 19-01-2017 09:07AM

4ensic15 wrote: »

The British were invited into Ireland in the first place. British history itself is of being conquered by the Normans so the history of Britain since 1066 was imposed on it. Before that they had the Romans imposing on them. Where does all this imposition end?

Not to mention the Saxons, Angles, Alemanni, Britons, Picts, Celts and Vikings. Although some of them were more raiders than settlers.

It's also a bit entertaining in its own way that Ireland was taken by the Normans less than a century after they took the island of Britain. Yet we don't really tend to give out too much about them. Mind you, there's a lot of more recent history that probably gets remembered more. Or "fairy stories" if I'm not allowed to call it history, presumably! :P

19-01-2017 09:36AM

No, keep them with their British names.

JupiterKid wrote: »

we cannot erase or forget our history.

BlinkingLights wrote: »

It's part of our history

Grayson wrote: »

The fact is that it's our history

WoolyJumper wrote: »

For better or worse all these people and names reflect part of our history.

This dishonest right-on bollocksology from the Avril Doyle "The Famine is a shared experience between the British and Irish peoples" world view that sees all things British as a symbol of the Irish being "civilised" and Irishness as being backward. That underlying mentality is the long and the short of this.

It's their history, not our history. It is British colonial history honouring heroes of the British colonial world, heroes of their Empire - the very same empire that has occupied, suppressed and crushed the Irish for centuries. Gardner, Mountjoy, Elgin, Clyde, Lansdowne, Herbert/Pembroke/Sydney, Grosvenor, Victoria and, yes, your beloved Wellington are heroes of the British Empire - a supremacist, extremist project with an equally racist and supremacist ideology underpinning it - ideology like this which dehumanised the Irish.

They are the people who are honoured in Dublin's street names from British rule. The British specifically did not honour heroes of the Irish world, heroes of resistance to the British subjugation of the Irish people. Tomás an tSíoda Street? Aodh Mór Ó Néill Street? Aodh Rua Ó Dónaill Street? Eoghan Rua Ó Néill Street? Dáibhí Ó Bruadair Street? Aogán Ó Rathaille? etc etc. Street names that honour our, as in Irish, actual heroes don't exist from British rule because their street names were never intended to honour heroes of Irish history. Never. They were a statement of who was in charge in Ireland (to put it mildly).

So spare us the whitewashing and distortion of historical reality with this "ah we were all the same" ráiméis.

HellSquirrel · 19-01-2017 09:39AM

It's not whitewashing, it's a simple fact. How could you possibly have a history of Ireland that doesn't include eight hundred-odd years of being ruled from a foreign country? It is absolutely ridiculous - and most certainly a distortion of historical reality - to attempt to pretend otherwise. Do you have some strange alternate history where Ireland developed all by its little lonesome with no pesky Normans or British around? A good part of our national character is shaped by it. The last thousand years of our development (just under, but rounding) is based on it.

The Famine probably wouldn't have happened on such a large scale without it, and our history would probably have been shaped by many smaller famines due to how land was parcelled out, a rapidly growing population and no handy monocultural crop that allowed the land division to continue - which was then relied upon, which then failed across Europe.

I rather doubt you are saying that you have a weird alternate reality where none of this happened, but rather you are trying to say that we shouldn't keep commemorations of this period in street names and the like. But for the love of truth and honesty, please keep terms with meaning, such as "history" out of it. You're arguing that gravity doesn't exist because you hate apples.

HellSquirrel · 19-01-2017 09:39AM

It's not whitewashing, it's a simple fact. How could you possibly have a history of Ireland that doesn't include eight hundred-odd years of being ruled from a foreign country? It is absolutely ridiculous - and most certainly a distortion of historical reality - to attempt to pretend otherwise. Do you have some strange alternate history where Ireland developed all by its little lonesome with no pesky Normans or British around? A good part of our national character is shaped by it. The last thousand years of our development (just under, but rounding) is based on it.

The Famine probably wouldn't have happened on such a large scale without it, and our history would probably have been shaped by many smaller famines due to how land was parcelled out, a rapidly growing population and no handy monocultural crop that allowed the land division to continue - which was then relied upon, which then failed across Europe.

I rather doubt you are saying that you have a weird alternate reality where none of this happened, but rather you are trying to say that we shouldn't keep commemorations of this period in street names and the like. But for the love of truth and honesty, please keep terms with meaning, such as "history" out of it. You're arguing that gravity doesn't exist because you hate apples.

LordSutch · 19-01-2017 10:30AM

Always amuses me when I read those "Foreign Colonial oppressors type posts" why? because of out geography, that's why.

We are an island within a small group of islands, this being the smaller & more westerly of the two larger islands, the island of Britain being the other island. With this in mind, would it not be strange if one of the islands hadn't grown bigger & stronger than the neighbouring island? hence all the terrible oppression & colonisation by our neighbours!

Britain was colonised by the Romans, and then by the Normans, who then in turn went on to "colonise" Ireland (naughty Normans).

Nothing like throwing a bit of colonisation & oppression into a thread.

LordSutch · 19-01-2017 10:33AM

Always amuses me when I read those "Foreign Colonial oppressors type posts" why? because of our geography, that's why.

We are an island within a small group of islands, this being the smaller & more westerly of the two larger islands, the island of Britain being the other island. With this in mind, would it not be strange if one of the islands hadn't grown bigger & stronger than the neighbouring island? hence all the terrible oppression & colonisation by our neighbours!

Britain was colonised by the Romans, and then by the Normans, who then in turn went on to "colonise" Ireland (naughty Normans).

Nothing like throwing a bit of colonisation & oppression into a thread.

catbear · 19-01-2017 10:37AM

No, keep them with their British names.

Rather than being about just downgrading foreign rule names, I think the thread would have been very different if the question had been what streetnames need an update to honour someone who made a contribution to our society.

Surely that great brit Jack Charlton deserves such an honour.

whisky_galore · 19-01-2017 10:37AM

I couldn't care fcuking less about renaming streets etc. The way some go on and on about 'the Brits' you would swear they fought the Tans alongside Dan Breen...some of them weren't even around for the worst of the Trouble in NI.

We have far bigger things to worry about getting our house in order, our tanking health service/homelessness/Brexit....

Not Propaganda · 19-01-2017 12:18PM

No, keep them with their British names.

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

What if the foreigner did great things for Ireland?

Or if he was Irish descent ie JFK, Che Guevara, Bernardo O'Higgins.

There are not that many 'great' Irish people that would warrant a street being named after them.

I could get on board with Shop Street in Galway changing its name to Michael D Boulevard though

Are you being serious?

Skylinehead · 19-01-2017 12:26PM

Deleted User wrote: »

. Tomás an tSíoda Street? Aodh Mór Ó Néill Street? Aodh Rua Ó Dónaill Street? Eoghan Rua Ó Néill Street? Dáibhí Ó Bruadair Street? Aogán Ó Rathaille?

Every one of those is a mouthful so I'm opposed on that basis alone

Not Propaganda · 19-01-2017 12:26PM

No, keep them with their British names.

whisky_galore wrote: »

I couldn't care fcuking less about renaming streets etc. The way some go on and on about 'the Brits' you would swear they fought the Tans alongside Dan Breen...some of them weren't even around for the worst of the Trouble in NI.

We have far bigger things to worry about getting our house in order, our tanking health service/homelessness/Brexit....

Well of course we've bigger things to worry about but there's always something bigger to worry about.

It's not as if talking about this topic somehow stops anything being done about the things you've mentioned.

whisky_galore · 19-01-2017 12:46PM

Pawwed Rig wrote: »

Some of the Irish heroes must be turning in their graves when you see the shyteholes that we have 'honoured' them with. Padraig Pearse for example - a dingy street, a horrible train station and a load of dodgey pubs.

The power generated by all these rotating patriots could be a great renewable energy source.

Should Ireland rename places named after British people?

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