Someone on another forum has asked a question that has struck me before - a manager (as we all know) is - bainisteoir and a wedding or rather the celebration that takes place after the religious ceremony is called - bainis. Is there any relationship between the two words? - Did a bainisteoir know how to organise a wedding?
And while I'm about it, as Lanigan's Ball on Focal.ie is given as Bainis Uí Lonagáin, does this song originally come from the Irish? and did bainis mean a dance rather than a wedding celebration? (and do they ever call it a wedding breakfast as Gaeilge?)

This was precisely the explanation I was first given by my teacher when I was taught the word.

bainis "wedding feast"
bainisteoir "manager", i.e., someone who knows how to arrange a big complicated party.

(In contrast, English "manager" comes from "someone who knows how to organise their ménages 'affairs'", teehee. (Just joking))
I don't think so. Many Irish tunes (Lannigan's Ball is also a jig) have been given Irish names retrospectively, and sometimes different Irish names by different people.

I'm not sure why they chose "bainis" in this case as it is actually a party thrown by Jeremy Lanigan "to friends and relations who did not forget him when come to the wall". Nothing to do with a wedding in this case. I don't think the Irish traditionally got married that early in the day, and if they did, the celebrations would last longer than just the morning.

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WARNING: Intermediate speaker - await further opinions, corrections and adjustments before acting on my advice.
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect.
Is fearr Gaeilge ḃriste ná Béarla cliste, cinnte, aċ i ḃfad níos fearr aríst í Gaeilge ḃinn ḃeo na nGaeltaċtaí.
Gaeilge Chonnacht (GC), go háraid Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge (GCF), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

Actually when they say a wedding breakfast - and the men come in 'morning suits', they really mean the afternoon - I've no idea why. Anyway I've had a look at the etymology (yes I can just about spell that) of a manager and it comes from the word manage (you don't say) which comes from the Italian word (in the 1560's) maneggiare - to handle or control a horse (influenced by the French word manège)

I wonder if it comes from the practice of not eating before receiving the Eucharist...so the wedding party would literally be "breaking their fast" when receiving communion at the wedding (?)

Redwolf

That makes sense. When I was very young, Catholics had to fast from everything but water for three hours before mass, in order to be eligible to take communion, and in my mother's generation they had to fast from midnight the night before (I learned later that the custom varied from country to country). There was no Saturday mass back then which counted for one's Sunday obligation (in North America at least), so that made a meal right after mass very popular, i.e. brunch (although I think that name came later). Since Catholic weddings were traditionally nuptial masses (at least once the church got involved in marriage -- many people don't realize that for the first thousand years or so, marriage was purely a civil thing), the same custom would apply if people were going to communion, and so the meal right after mass would be in order (as noted above) to break the (pre-mass) fast. Thus, a wedding breakfast.

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Looking for a 'that's very interesting' smilie!

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On the other hand, when you consider the eclipsis mbainisteoir and the fact that the lenition bhainisteoir could just as easily come from "mhainisteoir", I wonder if this isn't originally just a loanword from English manager that got its m- changed to a b-. Another example is bomaite, which is cognate with moment.

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