The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book Finding Your Irish Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, coming soon from Ancestry Publishing.In Ireland, the practice of inheriting family names began more than one thousand years ago, earlier than in most European countries. The surnames (family names) of Ireland have rich and impressive histories. You can learn a lot about your Irish ancestors by becoming familiar with the history and origin of their names. You may even be able to use your emigrant ancestor's surname to narrow down where the family lived in Ireland. Surnames are one of our best links to the past.
Years ago, children usually lived in the same place as their parents and grandparents. When a family settled in a new area, they put down roots, established a livelihood, occupied a plot of ground, and became part of the community. Their children tended to stay in the neighborhood even after they were married. This means that many family names are densely clustered in specific places. This is especially true in Ireland, where some families have occupied the same land for over a thousand years.
Learn all you can about your Irish surname. Learn the origin and meaning of the name. Learn the history of the name, including where the name is common in Ireland. You can see how your ancestors' surnames are distributed across Ireland and use the information to narrow your search considerably.
Surname Origins
Most Irish surnames are ancient, typically of Gaelic or Anglo-Norman origin. English and Scottish surnames are also common in Ireland, especially in the northern counties.Gaelic surnames derive from many sources, such as:
Given names (e.g., O'Brien, son of Brian)
Occupations (e.g., O'Riordan, from riogh bhard--royal bard)
Plants (e.g., MacDarragh, from dair--oak)
Animals (e.g., Whelan, from faol--wolf)
Places (e.g., Desmond, from deas--south, Mumhan--Munster)
Personal attributes (e.g., Kennedy, from ceann--head, eidigh--ugly)
Anglo-Norman surnames derive from similar sources. Some of these surnames in modern Ireland were anglicized, thus obscuring their past. For example, some Smiths were originally MacGowans. Many Anglo-Norman names preserve their original form mostly intact, such as Browne, Fitzgerald, Power, and Ferriter.
English names such as Wilson, Spenser, Hughes, and Anderson have been very common throughout Ireland for many centuries. Many Scottish surnames such as Stewart, Graham, and Ferguson were introduced into Ireland in great numbers during the Plantation of Ulster in the seventeenth century. Quakers, French Huguenots, Palatine Germans, and Jews have also woven their names into the tapestry of Irish surnames.
Surname Localities
Many surnames are identifiable with specific locations in Ireland, often having their origins in early Gaelic clans or Anglo-Norman families. If you do not know where your ancestor lived in Ireland, but his or her surname was concentrated in a particular geographic area, you may be able to find the ancestor by focusing your search in that area. Certain uncommon surnames are localized to a single Irish county or parish.
For example, the surname Ferriter originated in the town of Ballyferriter, near the western tip of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. This ancient, Anglo-Norman family has occupied Ballyferriter for over seven hundred years. In the 1850s there were twenty-one Ferriter households in Ireland, nineteen in County Kerry. The Kerry Ferriter's all lived on the Dingle Peninsula, mostly in and around Ballyferriter. A search of the 2000-2001 phone book for this part of Ireland shows that fourteen of the fifteen Ferriter families in present-day Kerry still live on the Dingle Peninsula, a century and a half later. If you have a Ferriter ancestor who immigrated to America from Ireland, it is highly likely that the family originated in the Dingle Peninsula.
So how can you identify the distribution of your ancestor's surname in Ireland? If you are looking for living relatives, search a modern phone book. A number of phone books for Ireland are searchable online, including:
www.goldenpages.ie/extra/phonebook.html
www.11850.ie
If you are looking for the location of families in earlier times, try using Griffith's Valuation, a land record from the mid-1800s. You can search this name list to find the distribution of a surname across all of Ireland or within a county or parish.
Relatively common surnames may still be concentrated in just a few parishes of a particular county. Let's say you know only which county your ancestor lived in, and his surname was rather common in Ireland. By searching modern phone books and Griffith's Valuation within the county, you can see how common the surname seems to be within the county. If you are fortunate, you will see most people with that surname clustered in one or two areas of the county. Although this does not guarantee that you've pinpointed your ancestor's residence, at least you have a starting point for your research.
Surname Spellings
Your ancestor may be named differently in different records. Do not assume that your family name was always spelled exactly one way. It almost certainly has been spelled many ways over the years. The concept of a fixed surname spelling is largely a phenomenon of the twentieth century.
Most Irish surnames have a variety of creative spellings. You may expect to find many curious name spellings as you search the original records. Most spellings of a particular name will sound almost the same when spoken. Name spellings in original documents often reflect how locals perceived the sound of the name. For example, some letters have similar sounds and are therefore interchangeable. The letters "c," "k," and "g" are often substituted one for another, as in the name Patrick (or Padric or Padraig). You may also find a number of transcription errors as people prepare name indexes for historical records and mistake one letter for another.
Name spellings changed over time for many reasons. Some names were anglicized when the Irish emigrant arrived in America. Some Irish emigrants intentionally dropped the 'O' prefix to avoid any stigma associated with being Irish in their newly adopted homes. Even in Ireland the 'O' and 'Mac' prefixes went in and out of fashion and may or may not appear in any particular record. Regardless of the reason, we need to be aware that surname spellings have not always been as rigid as they are nowadays.
Here are four typical examples of name changes you might see in Irish records:
- Margaret O'Connor's name may be written "Maggie Connor" on her birth certificate.
- Bridget Lysaght's name may be written "Delia MacLysaght" on the census.
- Michael Sullivan's name may be written "Ml. O Suilleabhain" on his marriage certificate.
- William O'Rourke's name might be written "Gulielmus Rorke" in a Catholic parish register.
Your ancestors' names are full of meaning. Since many surnames are rooted in particular localities in Ireland, you can often focus on the place where the surname is concentrated to find your ancestors. This is especially true if you already know an ancestor's county of origin. Modern phone books, land records, censuses, surname dictionaries, and other historical records may help you identify specific localities where your ancestors' surnames occur most frequently. Remember to keep an open mind about the spelling of any surname, as the name may have been spelled many different ways over the years.
David Ouimette is a genealogical researcher and lecturer with over twenty years experience in French-Canadian, New England, and Irish research. This September you can find him at the Federation of Genealogical Societies/Utah Genealogical Association Conference, where he will be speaking on Finding Your Irish Ancestors. His book, Finding Your Irish Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, will debut at the conference as well.