I'm a female firefighter from America. I've read "fir na tine"= men of fire. Can that be changed to women? Lucht muchta dóiteáin, seems too politically correct. Any input will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
Kat

Fire fighter -> fighter of fire -> troideoir tine

I'd say the Irish language might have it's own unique word for it.

For example, the Irish for "rhino" is "srónbheannach". "srón" = nose, "beannach" = horn. Nosehorn. lol

-Phil

I think the usual term for a fireman is actually "fear dóiteáin".

And a quick search on http://www.acmhainn.ie/
leads to the term "comhraiceoir dóiteáin" for firefighter, at least according to An Choiste Téarmaíochta (the terminology development committee).

Nosehorn???? Thank you Phil and Risteárd.

Kat
lucht múchta dóiteáin is in common usage as well as fear dóiteáin, and precedes the PC era by decades.

However, if you wanted to talk about youself, I'd say bean dóiteáin is your best bet.

Is bean dóiteáin mé
or
Bím ag ceansú doiteáin - I control fires
or
Oibrím le lucht múchta dóiteáin - I work with the fire fighters

beir bua

Aonghus

Rhino = rhinoceros
In Greek
rhino = nose
ceros = horn

And it's also "neushoorn" = nosehorn in dutch for rhino. Makes sense, English is half latin/greek, many other languages try to make their "own" version for words. And it keeps Irish more Irish, so that's great.

It made me smile the first time I saw it in the dictionary. I was thinking about how they would change animal names into Irish, if they would just take the sounds and write them in Gaeilge or what. I'm not a great fan of taking a word from a language and just changing a vowel or a consanant maybe. But I thought "srónbheannach" was dead original and clever. It's good to come up with our own name that actually means something.

-Phil

Animal names in Irish depend on who introduced them, and when.

Since the Romans knew about Rhinoceri and Hippopotami, they have probably been in the Irish language for a long time as Srónbheannach and Dobhareach

English didn't exist back then, so the names probably came directly from Latin (Greek), and through people who knew what the latin(greek) meant!

Translation is an art, which relies on excellent knowledge of both the source and target languages.

Hippopotamus means river horse, and so does Dobhareach (almost)

dobhar [ainmfhocal firinscneach den chéad díochlaonadh]
uisce; díle.
each [ainmfhocal firinscneach]
capall.

Animals are a mixed bag. More of them were known to Northern Europeans long ago than we think but not all. Modern versions ("liopard") are often slightly modified versions of the old ones ("liobard" appears in an eighteenth century Irish poem.) Similarly, the "camhal" of old texts becomes "camal". I bet a couple of bucks (but no more!) that "grampar" for "killer whale" is a slightly too clever modernism.