When Paul Joseph Rice was born on 12 April 1886, in Kilbricken, County Laois, Ireland, his father, Peter Rice, was 48 and his mother, Eliza Sheeran, was 46. He married Elizabeth McNamara on 14 September 1914. He died on 29 October 1961, in Mountrath, County Laois, Ireland, at the age of 75.
Welsh: Anglicized pronunciation of one of the most common Welsh personal names, Rhys, from a form originally meaning ‘rash, impetuous’, also spelled Rys and Re(e)s. See also Reese , with which it is interchangeable as a result of different Anglicized forms of the Welsh vowel y, and also compare Preece and Price . Initial R- in Welsh is voiceless and often spelled Rh-, but in English R- is voiced as in the Anglicized surnames Rees and Rice. Welsh y is a short back vowel /ɪ/. In the medieval period the English approximation of this vowel was either /i/ or /e/, lengthened to /i:/ and /e:/. Subsequent sound changes in English produced the alternative pronunciations represented in Rees, Preece and Rice, Price. The name has also been established in Ireland from an early date.
English: either a topographic name for someone who lived in or near a thicket (Middle English ris, rice, ris, from Old English hrīs, Old Norse hrís), or a habitational name for someone who came from a place called with this word, such as Rise (East Yorkshire).
English: perhaps a nickname from Middle English Rys(e) and Re(e)s which when without a preposition could derive from one or other of several Old French and Middle English words, including Anglo-Norman French ris ‘laughter, smile’, Middle English ris, res ‘stem, stalk’, in origin the same word as in 2 above, and Middle English ris, rise, rice, res, Old French ris, riz ‘rice’, perhaps a nickname for a rice dealer or a cook.
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