McGrath , listen to how Dublin northsiders say the word "brother" - it comes out as budda . Buddy is used in Dublin working class circles all the time to mean friend .I used to think it came from listening to too many James Cagney movies ,but then wondered where Cagney got it from . Then I wondered where bhuda came from -a sanskrit word for brother perhaps ?
There's an irish word "bhul" - or something like that which means to hit or to beat .I've heard people from the west of Ireland talking about the "booly bucks" by which they mean hard cases ,I don't know if there's any connection with bully .
I find it interesting the way words sometimes seem to derive from different sources .Does anyone know if there' s a word for this phenomenenom? A friend told me once that the word "shanty " (as in shanty town ) derived from the Irish shan ti meaning old house . This seemed to make sense but when I looked the word up in Collins dictionary there was a different etymology .