Hi,
My wife and I both have Irish Ancestors. All along we have assumed that the given/surname they used in Ireland was the same as the one they use when they settled in the US. Can anyone help us understand how or if their surnames and given names might have changed after they arrived? The names are: John Dinan, Mary Megrath, (Arr between 1855 and 1860) and Timothy Martin Ryan and Elizabeth Corkin (Arr before 1854).
Thanks, Jim Bouck
Irish names
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smcarberry
- Posts: 1289
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- Location: USA
Re: Irish names
Without a specific location and time included in your inquiry, I am supposing that you are thinking about the subject in a very general way and not to tackle a particular research dilemma. I have found more than two dozen spelling variations of my family's Carberry surname in U.S. records, and an additional half-dozen family names that are similar to Carberry but which are distinct Irish septs. So, I believe the primary reason for an Irish surname to have various spellings in the U.S. is confusion on the part of the person making the record. I have documented this in Wisconsin in which the Irish name Nash is preserved in a RC record made by a German speaker as Nesse. Many of the Irish entering the U.S. in the 1840s and '50s were largely unschooled, with those from the western counties perhaps mainly speaking Irish, thus perhaps unsure how to spell their surnames in English. In later years, there was more of a trend to take control of one's new life and exercise choice in the spelling of one's own name. By the 1900s this trend extended to given/first names, so that even women were changing Mary to Mamie or using "concept" names like Charity or Grace (it happened in my family). One of my families had sons who all chose to use their middle names when they became of age.
Since I have the name Connell in my line, I also know that immigrant Irish families readily dropped or added the prefixes of "O" and "Mc" and you likely already realize that "Mc" has its own spelling variations, such as "Ma" and "m" followed simply by an apostrophe (which can readily get lost to the eye of a later transcriber, so that Michael McGrath can be preserved as Michael M. Grath). I still chuckle when I see a census listing of something like "Connell, Robert O." as the chances of the middle name being Oliver are slim. You also already know that an Irish name can give rise to totally different spellings, as with McGrath and McGraw. The more vowels involved, the more likely that the English spelling differs widely from the Irish one.
With the exception of Corkin, each of the surnames you have listed likely has considerable research already done on the sept name. Here are links to fine work on McGrath:
http://mcgrathsearch.com/files/McGraths ... ton_01.pdf
and
http://mcgrathsearch.com/files/Version01_A.pdf
Since Corkin shares a phonetic similarity to Carberry in the first syllable, I recommend being on the lookout for any combination of letters that produces a similar sound, including "car" plus "cra" and also simply "ca." You may also find the "r" is misread and preserved as "s" or "n." The '"c" could be misspelled as "k" or "g."
Sharon Carberry
USA
Since I have the name Connell in my line, I also know that immigrant Irish families readily dropped or added the prefixes of "O" and "Mc" and you likely already realize that "Mc" has its own spelling variations, such as "Ma" and "m" followed simply by an apostrophe (which can readily get lost to the eye of a later transcriber, so that Michael McGrath can be preserved as Michael M. Grath). I still chuckle when I see a census listing of something like "Connell, Robert O." as the chances of the middle name being Oliver are slim. You also already know that an Irish name can give rise to totally different spellings, as with McGrath and McGraw. The more vowels involved, the more likely that the English spelling differs widely from the Irish one.
With the exception of Corkin, each of the surnames you have listed likely has considerable research already done on the sept name. Here are links to fine work on McGrath:
http://mcgrathsearch.com/files/McGraths ... ton_01.pdf
and
http://mcgrathsearch.com/files/Version01_A.pdf
Since Corkin shares a phonetic similarity to Carberry in the first syllable, I recommend being on the lookout for any combination of letters that produces a similar sound, including "car" plus "cra" and also simply "ca." You may also find the "r" is misread and preserved as "s" or "n." The '"c" could be misspelled as "k" or "g."
Sharon Carberry
USA