An Bord Altranais agus ?
Aug. 16th, 2009 03:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
squeefulfishBord Altranais (The Nursing Board, the regulatory body for my soon to be profession) is changing its name soon. This is cause for joy, along with my union also recognising that it is representing midwives who are not nurses. 1958 was the last time direct entry midwives were trained in Ireland but of course there aren't just Irish-trained midwives working in Ireland. In another year there will be about 100 midwives leaving the Irish education system who are not nurses. Some of us are rather vocal about not being nurses. Different job, different way of thinking though with some similarities.
There's a discussion going on elsewhere about what An Bord Altranais should adopt as the Irish translation of "midwives." And it has me stumped. I do not have the right amount of information on Irish, which, yeah, has me hanging my head in shame after 17 years of tuition in the language. Two of the three options being bandied about are descriptions of the person rather than the job - a woman helper, a woman who helps women. You may recall how angry I got at the criticism of Denis Walsh based on his sex rather than education and experience. Midwife. "With woman." Not a description of the person doing the job, but the job.
I want it to be right when the name changes, I don't want the very name to imply that it's a female only profession. So this leaves us with "agus cnáimhseachas." NUIG use cnáimhseachas, though it does have a touch of the obstetric about it. Yet obstetrics is just another way of saying midwifery. Stick a Latin name in instead of a common tongue one and you've got more medicalese; see the name change from "cake" to "placenta" in the 18th century to make it sound more medical around the time of the rise of obstetrics.
I don't know where I stand on this one. Choose a name that's female only - "bean chabhrach" nó "bean ghlúine" (and I have no desire to be called a woman who works on her knees!) - or once again claim back that word "obstetric/s" as my own with cnáimhseachas. I'm currently leaning towards cnáimhseachas, mostly cos I wanna see people pronounce it, especially the English/Scottish in my class. But that might not be a good enough reason. If anyone has a better term, I'd really love to hear it.
There's a discussion going on elsewhere about what An Bord Altranais should adopt as the Irish translation of "midwives." And it has me stumped. I do not have the right amount of information on Irish, which, yeah, has me hanging my head in shame after 17 years of tuition in the language. Two of the three options being bandied about are descriptions of the person rather than the job - a woman helper, a woman who helps women. You may recall how angry I got at the criticism of Denis Walsh based on his sex rather than education and experience. Midwife. "With woman." Not a description of the person doing the job, but the job.
I want it to be right when the name changes, I don't want the very name to imply that it's a female only profession. So this leaves us with "agus cnáimhseachas." NUIG use cnáimhseachas, though it does have a touch of the obstetric about it. Yet obstetrics is just another way of saying midwifery. Stick a Latin name in instead of a common tongue one and you've got more medicalese; see the name change from "cake" to "placenta" in the 18th century to make it sound more medical around the time of the rise of obstetrics.
I don't know where I stand on this one. Choose a name that's female only - "bean chabhrach" nó "bean ghlúine" (and I have no desire to be called a woman who works on her knees!) - or once again claim back that word "obstetric/s" as my own with cnáimhseachas. I'm currently leaning towards cnáimhseachas, mostly cos I wanna see people pronounce it, especially the English/Scottish in my class. But that might not be a good enough reason. If anyone has a better term, I'd really love to hear it.
