Pádraig

Pádraig is the Irish form of Patrick, from the Latin Patricius, meaning a member of the patrician or noble class. It replaced a much older Irish borrowing of the same name, Cothraige, which shows the early Irish habit of swapping a Latin p for a c.

The name belongs to Saint Patrick, the fifth-century Briton who became Ireland’s chief patron saint. In his own writings he tells how Irish raiders carried him off as a teenager and kept him as a slave for six years. He escaped home, then returned to Ireland as a missionary. The link with the shamrock is a later tradition.

Because the CSO did not record fadas before 2018, older figures count Pádraig and Padraig together. The name had the most babies in 1981, with 193 boys, and reached number 50 in 1987. In 2025 the two spellings together came to number 158, with 31 boys; Pádraig with a fada was number 185 on its own. In Northern Ireland it was number 90 in 2025.