Hello!

So this a long shot and slightly embarrassing a couple of weeks a ago I was i Ireland and got to talking to a very interesting man, due to a friend of mine becoming sick I had to leave rather suddenly :

As i understood him he(and his friends) had a set of gaelic/irish name and a set of english name. I only got his gaelic surname, and I remember his surname sounding very much the like of "baldr" /"Baldfir" or something like that. Is there any hope of finding what his english surname is? is there a common irish surname with a pronunciation that is similar to that "baldr" /"Baldfir"?

Any help would be great

I'm not familiar with anything sounding quite like that, except that there was a Norse god named Baldr (there are various ways to spell it). That name probably existed at some point among the Norse-Irish, but of course it would have been a first (given) name.

Just a guess, but since non-Irish speakers often mishear sounds in Irish, one possibility which occurs to me is the Norman-Irish surname [de/le] Bútléir, which is usually anglicized as Butler. The family has a huge number of descendants, scattered over various parts of Ireland, especially in the West, though many are "disguised" by branches of the family having later assumed different surnames, such as the McAndrew's in County Mayo (who are among my ancestors).

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

I suspected that I heard the name wrong. Thank you for responding! I will try to do some social media stalking and see what pops up

I can't think of an Irish name that would sound like that. Maybe that's the English version of the name you're thinking of.

Balfe (in English) Balbh (in Irish)

I realise that it might be a long shot, but when I saw this I thought of - baile - are there any Irish surnames that would start with that?