Fun With Irish Surnames!

Recently, I discovered a wonderful book titled Varieties and Synonymes of Surnames and Christian Names in Ireland for the Guidance of Registration Officers and The Public in Searching the Indexes of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Just a little light reading.

Published in 1901, the book was created to aid those searching Ireland's national indexes for birth, marriage, and death records—the collective Holy Grail of genealogical research. This book is an amusing yet stark reminder to those researching their Irish ancestors of just how many surname variations they may need to search under to find them.

The author Robert E. Matheson notes, "There is, unfortunately, no complete record of the surnames in this country." Apparently, in 1851 they tried to create a list, but eventually they gave up.¹

He proposes that, "Our national Indexes of Births, Deaths, and Marriages for the last thirty-six years probably contain almost all the surnames in use in the country."² The book includes first-hand reports from various registrars about the random and sometimes perplexing name variations in their jurisdictions.

As any family historian will attest, variations on Irish surnames can be exceedingly numerous and frustratingly diverse. Among the trends that Matheson reported on in the book are:

• variations not only in spelling and form, but entirely different names used synonymously by the same person or by members of the same family
• translation of Irish names into English, or vice versa
• equivalents, modifications, or corruptions of names
• frequency and variation of spelling and form due to illiteracy.³

There are a plethora of Irish ancestors in our Gilbride and Casey families, so I scanned the book for applicable points and looked up some variations on our ancestral names. This is what I do for fun.

Here's what I found, and some examples from our family:

Substituting Initial Letters—According to Matheson, substitutions of initial letters were very common. Among those frequently substituted were G and K. This is true in our Gilbride line, where Kilbride was the surname used on the ship manifest when James Kilbride and his family arrived in the United States in 1850.⁴ Kilbride appeared occasionally in documents after that, but Gilbride soon became the standard form.

Section of passenger manifest listing James Kilbride (line 2 "Jas").

Dropping Second Letter—Also common was dropping the second letter of a name when the letter was a vowel, such as the "i" in Aiken, which became Aken. This concept is true of the surname of Bridget Eagen, a third great grandmother who married James Gilbride. Her death certificate records her father's name as Egan, though on her headstone it is show as Eagen.⁵

Headstone of James Gilbride & Bridget Eagen in Cathedral Cemetery in Scranton.

 

Anglicised Irish Names—Some English and Irish names were used interchangeably, translated from one language to the other, or were translations of words similar in sound. A good example is the surname of Maria Jane Darrah, a second great grandmother in the Cassidy line. "Darragh" is an Anglicised version of "oaks" or the Irish word "dair" for "an oak."⁶

Abbreviations different than the Original Name—It seems for no particular reason, the following could be used for some familiar family given names:

• Nancy and Nanny for Anne
• Cassie for Catherine
• Polly and Molly for Mary
• Peggy for Margaret.⁷

Different names used interchangeably—In one example, the names "Delia," "Bedelia," and "Beesy," could be used for "Bridget." This was the case for Bridget McAndrew, the sister of our great grandmother Margaret McAndrew Gilbride. Bridget first married Thomas McGarry, and on his passing, she married Carl Ellis. She also went by the name Delia. So, imagine the difficulty of trying to find information on Bridget McAndrew when by the end of her life she was Delia Ellis.⁸ It happened! 

Bridget McAndrew McGarry Ellis' obituary incorrectly identifies her maiden name as McGarry.

I also see this at play in Grandpa Gilbride's nickname for my decidedly not Irish mother Anna Kozlina Gilbride—who was Slovak and Croatian. He called her Beesy all the time. This might have been his way of "Irish-izing" her into a "Bridget"—a common nickname for an Irish woman—and then using the nickname Beesy for her. 

Now to a list of other surname variations to be found in our family:

Interestingly, I did not find McAndrew among the names in this book. But that's a puzzle for another day.

If you would like to read up on your own Irish surnames, the book is freely available on the Internet Archive HERE. Go on. Have some fun!

Until next time...

 

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NOTES 

¹ Robert E. Matheson, Varieties and Synonymes of Surnames and Christian Names in Ireland for the Guidance of Registration Officials and The Public In Searching the Indexes of Births, Deaths, and Marriages (Dublin: Alex. Thom & Co. (Limited), 1901). 7; digital image, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/varietiessynonym00math/page/n6/mode/1up?view=theater : accessed 2 December 2022), citing Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

² Ibid.

³ Ibid., 8.

⁴ Ibid., 13. Also: John Eldridge, Master, S. S. Liverpool passenger manifest, arrival date 3 April 1850, port of New York, line 212, Jas Kilbride, 45; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-559C-74 : accessed 2 December 2022); citing National Archives and Records Administration microfilm publication M237 (Washington D.C.: , n.d.); FHL film 004678741, image 607.

⁵ Matheson, Varieties and Synonymes, 18. Also: Ancestry, Find a Grave (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/189952817/bridget-gilbride : accessed 2 December 2022), memorial 189952817, Bridget Eagen Gilbride (1836-1906), grave photo by T. Schweikert, 2018. Also: Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, Certificate of Death No 117950, Bridget Gilbride, 26 December 1906; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/5164/images/41381_2421401696_0834-01384 : accessed 2 December 2022); citing Pennsylvania Department of Health, Record Group 11, Series 11.90, Pennsylvania Death Certificates 1906–1968, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Harrisburg.

⁶ Matheson, Varieties and Synonymes, 21.

⁷ Ibid., 27.

⁸ Ibid., 28. Also: B.S. Shuta, transcriber, Holy Rosary Church (Scranton, Lackawanna, Pennsylvania), Baptismal Register 1860-1887, p. 259, entry for birth of Bridget McAndrew, b. 17 Nov. 1880; transcribed from digital images, "Teresa M. McAndrew Memorial Catholic Record Collection," Northeast Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Also: Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Application and Return 76644, Thomas P. McGarry and Bridget I. McAndrews, 7 November 1911; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1876/images/32365_225711-01035 : accessed 2 December 2022); citing Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriages Records, 1810-1973, reel 43, County Archives, Cleveland; Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Application and Return 200594, Carl W. Ellis and Delia McGarry, 8 May 1925; digital image, Ancestry (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/1876/images/32365_225745-00772 : accessed 2 December 2022); citing Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriages Records, 1810-1973, reel 77, County Archives, Cleveland. Also: "Ellis, Delia," Cleveland Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 2 May 1936, p. 20, col. 5, Death & Funeral notices; digital image, Newsbank, provided by Cleveland Public Library Main Center for Local and Global History.