Hi everyone! I am considering getting a new tattoo. There are two options. This first is getting my grandparents names (but the Irish Gaelic version) tattooed. The tattoo would be "Mary and Charlie". The second option is a quote by my favorite book, the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck translated into Irish Gaelic. The quote is “How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?” If anyone could translate these to be that would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

“How can we live without our lives?" -

"How will we know it's us without our past?” - Cén chaoi ar féidir linn a bheith cinnte gur muid féin atá ann gan an aimsir atá caite.

But it's just a suggestion, I'm sure others will make a much better job of it.

Well, names don't really get "translated" between languages. They usually stay the same in translation, unless the two languages have a different writing system, in which case they are transcribed.

Sometimes people adopt an Irish (or English) nickname and come to be known by it, but that isn't really the case with your grandparents, so Máire agus Séarlas wouldn't really mean much to them or to anyone who knew them.


I like that Bríd.

Here's some other possibilities:

Cén chaoi a bhféadfaidh muid maireachtáil gan scéal ár saol againn? “How can we live without our lives?"
Cén chaoi a mbéas a fhios againn gur muid féin atá ann gan ár startha againn? “How will we know it's us without our past?"

Await further input ...

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Múinteoir Gaeilge - Irish Teacher
My "specialty" is Connemara Irish, particularly Cois Fhairrge dialect, but I can also speak Ulster and Munster Irish with native-level pronunciation.
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), Gaeilic Uladh (GU), Gaelainn na Mumhan (GM), agus Gaeilge an Chaighdeáin Oifigiúil (CO).

For me, I will put my favorite quote.

[Edited to remove spam link]

I agree, but the Irish forms are close enough to their English equivalents (indeed, neither is of English or Gaelic origin) that it wouldn't hurt to use Irish/Gaelic equivalents. In fact, while the formal name Charles is of course of French origin (and earlier from either the Latin Carolus or the German name Karl -- I'm not sure which came first), I think the diminutive "Charlie" may actually come from the Scottish Gaelic form Searlaich (nowadays also Tearlaich, which emphasizes the "ch" sound), so if you want to do both names in Scottish Gaelic you'd have:

Màiri 's Searlaich [note that in Gaelic the accent runs in the opposite direction to that in Irish]
Màiri 's Tearlaich
Mary and Charlie

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