Erin go Bragh

March 17, 2025 @ 8:18 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Slogans, Translation

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I've been saying "Erin go Bragh" my whole life and knew that it meant roughly "Ireland Forever!".

It's actually an anglicized version of the Irish language phrase "Éire go brách" or "Eire go bráth," which may be translated as "Ireland till doomsday".

The term brách is equivalent to "eternity" or "end of time", meaning the phrase may be translated literally as "Ireland until eternity" or "Ireland to the end (of time)". Éire go Bráth (or Éirinn go Bráth) is also used in Irish and means the same thing. Go is a preposition, translatable as "to", "till/until", "up to".

(Wikipedia)

go brách

Alteration of go bráth (literally “until Judgment [Day]”), from go (“until”) + bráth (“judgment, Judgment Day”), from Proto-Celtic *brātus (“judgment”); compare Welsh brawd. Cognate with Scottish Gaelic gu bràth and Manx dy bragh.

(Wikipedia)

Happy St. Paddy's Day, everybody!    <Pádraig

 

Selected readings

 

March 17, 2025 @ 8:18 pm · Filed by under Etymology, Slogans, Translation


6 Comments

  1. S Frankel said,

    March 17, 2025 @ 9:18 pm

    Éire is nominative case. Éirinn is dative case, so "for Ireland until doomsday."

  2. Victor Mair said,

    March 18, 2025 @ 7:02 am

    From Stephen Murphy, a true Dubliner:

    Yup Happy PaDDys day, it's funny the first time I heard the phrase Erin go Bragh was in the US…We usually just say Lá Fhéile Pádraig (Happy St Patricks day).

  3. J.W. Brewer said,

    March 18, 2025 @ 10:05 am

    In AmEng the final -gh which is apparently /x/ in Irish pronunciation is typically silent, so you get /ˌɛrɪn ɡə ˈbrɑː/. When combined with the existence of "Erin" as a female first-name in the U.S. (probably most popular among Irish-Americans but not necessarily exclusive to them, with its rate of use peaking for years of birth 1976 through 1985), this in my experience predictably leads to the vaguely lurid wordplay "Erin Go Braless."

  4. Rodger C said,

    March 18, 2025 @ 10:57 am

    "Erin" for Ireland in English is, IIRC, borrowed from a dialect that used the dative for the nominative, as sometimes happened with toponyms that were usually used with words meaning "in, to, from" etc. It's standard in Manx.

  5. Killer said,

    March 18, 2025 @ 7:28 pm

    @Victor Mair Did you mean to say "and *never* knew"?

  6. Victor Mair said,

    March 18, 2025 @ 8:18 pm

    No.

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