A new city motto for Dublin? You voted and the results are in

Last month, we published an article by Shamim Malekmian about the history of Dublin city's motto, and efforts over the years to change it.

For more than 400 years, it's been “Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas” which roughly translates to “Obedience of citizens makes a happy city”. 

Some Dublin city councillors think it's time for a change – maybe obedience isn’t the right thing to focus on in 2025.  

So we asked for your ideas, made a shortlist, and then put that up for a vote. The results are in.

First place: 34 percent of voters picked “Participatio Civium Urbis Felicitas”, which means, roughly, “Participation of citizens makes a happy city”.

We narrowly missed a Boaty McBoatface situation, as “We will in our hole” came in second, with 19 percent, tied with “Cad é an Scéál?”, meaning “What’s the story?”

“City of Solidarity” came in third place with 16 percent of votes, and “You must be this rich to live here: (Insert ever increasing figure here)” came in last, maybe because of the obvious logistical difficulties of updating the figure constantly.

Other entries

To get the short list, I took most of the suggestions from readers and asked our Dublin Inquirer team to vote on those and chose the top five vote getters. 

Just for fun, here’s a few of the suggestions that didn’t make that short list:

• I suppose a ride’s out of the question?
• Carrots don’t belong in coddle
• Scarlet for everything outside the M50
• Five in a row
• Incipisne? Ita, tu, ille cum capite [Are you starting? Yes, you, with the head.]
• Videbimus te in Coppers [We'll see you at Coppers]
• Fáilte
• All hail the seagulls
• Did you need the car for this journey?