What’s in a Word? #34 #cong24 #legacy

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1. Legacy in use as a noun since the 16th century but the computer industry turned it into an adjective in the 1980s.
2. The dictionary didn’t help much in defining what legacy means.
3. In Irish legacy opened up the whole new set of meanings and possibilities to better understand it.
4. Be careful of the tyranny of legacy

Liam is an engineer by profession and an innovator by vocation. Working with global banks on creating the bank of the future.

You can connect with Iain via email

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By Liam Ó Móráin

Legacy: what’s in a word? I found it a struggle to personalize the word or put context or meaning to it. I couldn’t own it or use it immediately on saying it. It terms of my work in IT, legacy is a lot of trouble and best avoided. In my personal life does I struggled to give it relevance: when is it appropriate to have a legacy or to think about legacy.

Merriam-Webster offered two definitions: in use as a noun since 1514 and as an adjective since 1984. As noun it is used to describe a bequest or gift, something transmitted or received from the past, or membership of an organization based on familial relationships. As adjective, it is related to older/outdated technology, systems, and processes. So unfortunately I found little to work on from M-W. Chat GPT wasn’t much help either in creating a meaningful mind map of ‘legacy’ that I could use.

Decided to see what the Irish equivalent of legacy offered and it came up with ‘legáid’ as in bequest and ‘oidhreacht’ to cover the IT world. From an anthropological perspective ‘oidhreacht’ opens up the whole world of heritage, nature, of place. This afforded agency and I began to formulate what legacy could potentially mean to me:

1) as a proud Mayo man knowing that the legacy of the All-Ireland in the 1950s plus the tyranny of that legacy over the 8-odd unsuccessful appearances in All Irelands in the this century means we are confident of the possibilities that the future holds and we never give up hope;

2) as an engineer, the depth and breadth the profession’s legacy affords to help solve problems and build a better future;

3) and a legacy in which we, through our day-to-day personal and professional interactions, leave the world in a better place for future generations to enjoy and thrive.