So I‘m looking for names that were popular in [name_f]Ireland[/name_f] during the 1890 decade. I searched on Nameberry, Behind The Name and on Google but couldn‘t find anything except one short list of female names. But I still need two male names. Could you help me out with that? If you don’t know either just some old fashioned Irish mal names would suffice too. I also planned to use the names [name_f]Muriel[/name_f], [name_f]Maude[/name_f] and [name_f]Molly[/name_f] on a mother and her two daughters but then the third daughter and my main character would be left out because I don‘t have a M name for her. Would that still work?
I can’t find much, but, from what I could find, [name_m]John[/name_m], [name_m]Patrick[/name_m], [name_u]James[/name_u], [name_m]William[/name_m], [name_m]Joseph[/name_m], [name_m]Matthew[/name_m], and [name_u]Michael[/name_u] were pretty common in multiple decades.
For your main character, I would think [name_f]Margaret[/name_f], [name_f]Maggie[/name_f], or [name_f]Mary[/name_f] would work. Maybe even [name_f]Martha[/name_f]. I like [name_f]Mae[/name_f] / [name_f]May[/name_f], which, like [name_f]Maggie[/name_f], is a diminutive of [name_f]Margaret[/name_f], but I don’t know if it was used in [name_f]Ireland[/name_f] at that time.
I found an 1911 Ireland Census and a webpage on popular names in 1864 Ireland. I totally get that they’re not the decade you’re looking for, but I noticed there’s a lot of overlap with these lists, which tells me that naming trends remained fairly consistent for a long time.
Here’s also a website on Gaelic names that you might be interested in (the webpage I linked is on names starting with M).
If anything, [name_m]John[/name_m], [name_u]James[/name_u], and [name_f]Mary[/name_f] are fairly reliable when it comes to historical names.
@nic_blondie ooh thank you the list from 1863 is lovely because I forgot to mention that two characters are born earlier so that‘s what I needed!