BAY RIDGE — What’s in a name? William Shakespeare asked that question in “Romeo and Juliet.” In Bay Ridge’s Irish American community, the answer is … plenty.
To mark the 30th annual Bay Ridge St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 23, Frank Petric, a deputy grand marshal in this year’s march, collaborated with The Tablet to create a map of the neighborhood that includes the surnames of its Irish families.
The names are placed at the approximate locations where the families reside. Known as a surname map, it served as a two-fold fundraiser for the parade. People paid $25 to list their family surname on the map, and T-shirts with the map emblazoned were also sold.
“It’s a hot item,” said Brendan Moloney, corresponding secretary of the parade committee, adding that the committee sold out several batches of T-shirts at fundraisers ahead of the parade.
Click the images below to view the full map of Irish surnames in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn:
Hundreds of people signed up to have their family’s name immortalized on the map when the project was announced last summer, Petric said. As a result, the map is peppered with surnames, including Delaney, Gillen, McCabe, O’Neil, McDonald, Kilbride, and Fitzpatrick, along with dozens of others.
The idea was inspired by the traditional maps of Ireland that list surnames alongside the counties where the families originally came from. The maps, which have been popular for centuries, are often used by people to trace their Irish lineage.
“It’s one of those things that you used to always see, especially in Irish gift shops. You would see them in bars or sometimes in your grandparents’ basement,” said Petric, who traces his Irish roots on his mother’s side to County Cork and County Galway.
“It was usually on a poster but sometimes it was on needlepoint,” he added. “It was always a really cool thing to see, and we said, ‘Why don’t we do this for the neighborhood?’ ”
For Petric, who remembered watching the parade as a kid and was “blown away” when he got the phone call telling him he would be a deputy grand marshal, the map was a way to give back to a community he loves.
“Bay Ridge is the greatest place on earth,” he said, “and anytime I can celebrate it, I like to.”
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After The Tablet offered assistance in creating the map, all that was left was to fill in the surnames. The parade committee spread the word about the map at community events — like a summer concert in Shore Road Park in Bay Ridge — and online through social media and with the creation of a video. Moloney said the project was met with a great deal of enthusiasm.
“We had the form available where you would just fill out the street where you grew up and the location of your house,” he recalled. “Before you knew it, almost 200 names came through.”
The map is not only fun to look at, it’s a way to trace one’s local roots, said Moloney, who traces his Irish roots to counties Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, and Leitrim.
“It’s a testament, when you look at it, to all the different families that contributed to the history of this neighborhood and the legacy of what the Irish were able to do for the city and for Brooklyn,” he explained.
Petric said the next step will be to print images of the map on posters and distribute them to businesses that have financially supported the parade “as a token of our appreciation.”