Variations of the Name "Burnie"

For the most part, the North American connections have been fairly consistent in  spelling the name as it appears above. However, some have opted to spell the name with an "ey" (i.e., Burney), which may revert to an older spelling. Nonetheless, they are all fairly consistent.

It appears, however, that this may not be the case in Ireland, where surnames have been notoriously changed, amalgamated, shortened, translated, etc., over the centuries. The Gaelic spelling of "Birney, or Birnie" is "Biorna" (pronounced Burnay). In addition, there are a large contingent of "Mc" and "Mac" prefixes, particularly in Ulster, i.e., McBirney, McBirnie, McBurney, McBurnie, MacBirney, MacBurney, and MacBurnie. Even the names "Burns" and "Byrne" are said to be variations.

The use of "Mac" and "Mc" as prefixes fell into general disuse in the 18th and 19th centuries, so it is no surprise not to find them today. Nor is it surprising to find so many spelling variations, probably as a result of the anglicisation of Biorna, or phonetic rendering of the name. However, it is impossible to know which of these variations apply to the present family, until we find some record of John Burnie in Ireland. Hopefully some record exists, and that it will soon be found.

If you are interested in pursuing a more in depth study on the topic of name changes in Ireland, I have included two scholarly articles on the subject, as follows:

Mac and O in Irish Surnames

 The successive invasions of Ireland from Strongbow to Cromwell, culminating in the final destruction of the Gaelic order and the long drawn out subjection of the Irish  people under the eighteenth century penal code, together with the plantations of foreign settlers and the more peaceful infiltration of Englishmen in the commercial life of the country, have made Irish surnames more mixed than those of a nation with a less disturbed history. The situation can no doubt be paralleled in several mid-European states, but there is nothing comparable to it in any of our nearer neighbours such as England, France, Germany, Holland or Spain, where foreign names are exceptional and native ones are seldom hidden under alien guise. This latter is a phenomenon which is extremely common in Ireland.

 It has often been stated that surnames were introduced into Ireland by King Brian Boru. Though this cannot be accepted as historically accurate it is a fact that Ireland was one of the first countries to adopt a system of hereditary surnames or perhaps it would be truer to say that such a system developed spontaneously. At any rate the Macs and O's were well established as such more than a century before the Cambro-Normans or, as they are more usually called, the Anglo-Normans, came.

 It is hardly necessary to state that these prefixes denote descent, mac (son) indicating that the surname was formed from the personal names, or sometimes calling, of the father of the first man to bear that surname, while O names are derived from a grandfather or even earlier ancestor, o or ua being the Irish word for grandson, or more loosely male descendant.

 Many instances occur of Mac names and some of O names in the Annals, lists of bishops and other records relating to the centuries between the time of St. Patrick and that of Brian Boru. These, however, were not hereditary surnames, but merely indicated the father (or grandfather) of the man in question. Thus to take, by way of example, two successors of St. Patrick in the see of Armagh, Torbac MacGormain (d. 812) and Diarmuid O Tighearnaigh (d. 852), these were not members of families called MacGorman and O'Tierney, but were respectively son of a man whose baptismal name was Gorman and grandson of one who was christened Tierney.

 Prior to the introduction of surnames there was in Ireland a system of clan-names, which the use of surnames gradually rendered obsolete except as territorial designations. Groups of families, many of them descended from a common ancestor, were known by collective clan-names such as Dál Cais (whence the adjective Dalcassian), Ui Máine (or Hy Many), Cinel Eoghain, Clann Cholgain, Corca Laidhe. The expression "tribe-names", used by John O'Donovan in this connection, is perhaps more expressive, though a more modern authority, Professor Eoin MacNeal, objected to this term as misleading. In some cases the tribe-name did subsequently become the surname of a leading family of the clan or tribe, but as a rule this did not happen and, as the tribe name was usually identical with the surname acquired by some quite unrelated sept in another part of the country, confusion is apt to arise. Thus the Clann Daly embraced the O'Donnells and other northern septs, Clann Cahill became O'Flanagans etc., Munter Gilligan was chiefly composed of the O'Quins of Annaly and Hy Regan was the tribe name of the O'Dunns.

 The first of the major invasions of Ireland in historical times (1169-1172) resulted in the formation of a new set of surnames belonging to the Norman families which in due course became 'Hiberniores Hibernicis ipsis' (more Irish than the Irish themselves). The old Latin cliché is applicable to the names as well as to the people who bore them, for no one to-day would regard Fitzgerald or Burke as any less Irish than O'Connor or MacCarthy.

 Names in this category are numerous and widespread in Ireland, and most of them have in the course of time become exclusively Irish, as for example Burke, Costello, Cusack, Cogan, Dalton, Dillon, Fitzgerald, Keating, Nagle, Nugent, Power, Roche, Sarsfield and Walsh. Some of them, of course, like Barry and Purcell, though generally regarded as Irish, are found in England also since the twelfth century. Today, no doubt, almost all the Norman-Irish surnames which are increasingly common in England became established there as a result of nineteenth century and particularly of recent emigration from Ireland.

 The second great upheaval, five hundred years later, was of a more devastating character. In the seventeenth century the dire effects of conquest were intensified by religious persecution, and the three main events of that century resulting from military aggression - the Plantation of Ulster, the Cromwellian Settlement and the Williamite forfeitures - followed by the Penal Code which was at its severest in the first half of the eighteenth century, inevitably led to a lack of accord between the new settlers and the old inhabitants of the country. The natural process of assimilation was thus retarded, indeed it is not too much to say that it was deliberately prevented. Thus the Elizabethan immigrants and those that followed them in the next century did not become hibernicized as the Normans had.

 A feature of the degradation of the Gael and the inferiority complex it produced was the wholesale discarding of the distinctive prefixes O and Mac. Nor was this confined to the downtrodden peasantry. The few Catholic gentry who managed to maintain to some extent their social position, while keeping their O's and Macs within the ambit of their own entourage (usually in the remoter parts of the country), were so deeply conscious of belonging to a conquered nation that they frequently omitted the prefixes when dealing with Protestants, not only in legal matters but also in ordinary social intercourse. Thus we find Daniel O'Connell's uncle, that picturesque figure universally known as "Hunting Cap", signing himself Maurice Connell as late as 1803 when approaching the Knight of Kerry to enlist his influence in a court case while MacDermott, Chief of the Name, though ranking as a prince among his own people and himself a prominent banker in the middle of the eighteenth century, invariably signed himself simply Anthony Dermott.

 It has been stated that one of the causes of the disuse of the prefixes Mac and O in the eighteenth century was the inclusion in the Penal Code of a provision to that effect. I can find no such clause in any of the relevant Acts. No legislation dealing with this question was ever passed except in so far as the Statute of Kilkenny (1367) affected the Irish of the Pale. This indeed had no bearing on the use of Mac and O but it did, no doubt, mark the beginning of the practice of translating Irish names into English, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries became widespread and, I may add, proved more often to be mistranslation than translation. Nevertheless pressure was exerted in other ways to bring about the degaelicization of surnames. For example, even two generations before the Penal Code was in full force we find O'Conor Roe entering into a composition in which he binds the Irish chiefs under his influence to "forego the customs and usages of their Brehon Law . . . and to give up prefixes to their surnames" (5 January 1637. This quotation taken from Genealogical Office MS. 178, p. 293, is by no means an isolated case). We may be sure that this undertaking was made by O'Conor with his tongue in his cheek and that it was ignored, but it serves to indicate the official outlook in this respect.

 I may refer here to the widespread belief outside Ireland that Mac is essentially a Scottish prefix. To us this idea is absurd, for many of our foremost Irish families bear Mac names such as MacCarthy, MacGuinness, MacGrath, MacGillycuddy, MacKenna, MacMahon, MacNamara and so on. evertheless, it is a fallacy widely held. It is true, of course, that many Mac names in Ulster are Scottish in origin, having come in with the seventeenth century planters and these tended to retain their Gaelic prefix when those of Catholic Ireland fell into disuse. In any case the Scottish Gaels are originally of Irish stock and Scotland herself took her name from the word 'Scotia' which in Latin was at first used to denote the land inhabited by the Irish race.

  At the beginning of the present century under the growing influence of the Gaelic League a general reversal of the process began to be perceptible. Yet even today there are scores of Gaelic names with which the prefix is seldom, if ever, seen, e.g. Boland, Brophy, Connolly, Corrigan, Crowe, Garvey, Hennessy, Kirby, Larkin, to mention a few of the commonest. The extent of this resumption can best be illustrated by the mere fact that while in 1890, according to Matheson's calculations, there were twice as many Connells as O'Connells, today, (judging by such texts as directories) we have nine O'Connells for every Connell. I do not know the present proportion of O'Kellys to Kellys, but I am sure it is very much higher than it was in 1890 when the official estimate for all Ireland was 55,900 Kellys and only a mere 400 O'Kellys.

  I will pass now to another class of Mac surnames which is of considerable interest. This is the assumption by Norman families of surnames of a Gaelic type and the formation under those designations of what practically amount to septs or sub-septs on the Gaelic model. The majority of these, such as MacSherone ex Prendergast and MacRuddery ex Fitzsimon, are nearly extinct today, as are the various off shoots of the Burkes, though no doubt some of their descendants did revert to their original surnames. Berminghams, however, survive under the name of MacCorish or Corish, Stauntons as MacEvilly, Archdeacons as MacOda or Coady and Nangies as Costello (formerly MacCostello). Woulfe says that the latter was the first Norman Mac name. Not all such Norman name assumptions retained a Gaelic form, for d'Exeter, first gaelicized as MacSiurtain, eventually became Jordan (now a common name in the West) and the Jenningses, formerly MacSeoinin, were originally Burkes.

  This practice of forming sub-septs was not confined to Norman families. Among the offshoots of O'Brien were MacConsidine and MacLysaght. MacShane stemmed from  O'Neill: in due course this was turned by translation into Johnson and as such is found in that numerous class of concealed Gaelic surnames. So the name MacShera, now rare, was adopted by some of the Fitzpatricks. MacSherry (whence the place name Courtmacsherry) on the other hand was a Gaelic patronymic assumed by the English family Hodnett. MacSherry, it should be noted, is also an indigenous Gaelic surname in Breffny. 

Fitzpatrick, which up to the seventeenth century was MacGilpatrick, is in a class by itself, being the only Fitz name which is Gaelic: otherwise Fitz (from French fils) also denotes a Norman origin. It is possible, however, that some of the Fitzhenrys may originally have been MacEnery. Unless we adopt an exclusive and doctrinaire attitude we must admit Fitzgerald, Fitzgibbon and Fitzmaurice as Irish. As I have already remarked many other Norman surnames are among our best known surnames today. It would be ridiculously pedantic to regard these as anything but Irish. Not only have they been continuously in Ireland for seven or eight centuries, but they are also not found in England except, of course, when introduced by Irish settlers there. The Norman name Power, indeed, holds first place for County Waterford.

  One of the most striking and interesting of the phenomena to be observed in a study of our subject is the tenacity with which families have continued to dwell for centuries, down to the present day, in the very districts where their names originated. This obtains in almost every county in Ireland. Thus, according to Matheson's returns, the births registered for the distinctive Kerry names of Brick, Brosnan, Culloty, Kissane, MacElligott and MacGillycuddy, to take more or less random examples, are entirely confined to that county.

  In many cases local association has been perpetuated in place names. Indeed it is a characteristic of Irish place names, particularly those beginning with Bally, Dun, Clon etc., that a large proportion of them are formed from personal names. Ballymahon, Lettermacaward, Drumconor, Toomevara are a few examples to illustrate this point. It is dangerous to jump to conclusions and easy to make mistakes in this field: thus Kilodonnel in Co. Donegal is the church of O'Toner, not of O'Donnell as would appear at first sight. Similarly Doonamurray has nothing to do with the surname Murray, being a corruption of Dún na móna: nor has Drumreilly any etymological connection with the sept of O'Reilly. Of course the association, especially in the case of the Kil words, is often ecclesiastical rather than genealogical, for many are formed from the names of pre-surname saints and hermits, and so have no interest for the student of surnames. Those place names beginning with Bally and other Irish words were almost all formed before the seventeenth century and too often when a family was thus distinguished it has ceased to exist or has almost died out in the immediate neighbourhood of the particular townland so designated, but in many cases they are still numerous there. Nearly and such are Gaelic or Hiberno-Norman family names. There are, however, some exceptions such as Ballybunion and Ballyraddock which are formed from the English surnames Bunyan and Maddock.

  After the 1602 debacle, as we must regard the battle of Kinsale, place names with the prefix Castle and Mount or the suffix Town and Bridge like Castlepollard and Crookstown, and occasionally a combination of both like Castletownconyers, began to be used. For the most part these names honoured planter families, with whom must be classed renegade Gaels who forsook their own people and religion and backed the winning side though where they represent translations from older Irish place names, as in the case of O'Brien's Bridge and Castledermot, this of course does not apply. This aspect of our subject can be dismissed without further examination: it can be studied by anyone interested in it by a perusal of a map or gazeteer, or better still the Index of Townlands, Parishes etc. officially published in connection with the decennial censuses of the nineteenth century.

  Of more interest to us here is the converse, i.e. those surnames which were actually formed from places. In England they constitute one of the most numerous classes in Ireland they are comparatively rare: so much so indeed that all of them that I know can be enumerated here. Apart from Anglo-Irish names taken from places in England like Welby, Preston etc., the only Irish place names so used I have met are Ardagh, Athy, Bray, Corbally, Finglas, Galbally, Sutton, Rath, Santry, Slane and Trim, some of which are very rare. Dease (and Deasy), Desmond, Lynagh, Meade, and Minnagh, formed from extensive territories, may also perhaps be included. Not all place names found as surnames can be accepted in this category. Cavan for example is not taken from the town but is a synonym of Keevane or occasionally an abbreviation of Kavanagh: Navan is Mac Cnaimhin, Limerick is O Luimbric, Kilkenny is Mac Giolla Choinnigh and Ormonde is found in County Waterford oddly enough as a corruption of O Ruaidh. The most numerous of these in Ireland today is Galway or Galwey. It does, it is true, derive from a place, but the place is Galloway in Scotland.

  Deasy, mentioned above, might be placed in the class which we may call descriptive. It indicates "a native of the Decies ', as Lynagh means "a Leinster man", Moynagh ."a Munsterman" and Meade (with its earlier form Miagh) "a Meath man". These have a topographical significance, as have Spain, Switzer, Wallace, Brett, London. Quite a number of descriptive surnames, which at some period must have superseded a normal family surname, are formed from adjectives such as Bane (white), Begg (small), Crone (brown), Creagh (branchy) Duff (black), Gall (foreign), Glass (green), Lawder (strong), Reagh (brindled). Phair or Fair is also one of these, but it has been subjected to translation, being the Irish adjective fionn.

  Akin to adjectives are names in the genitive case, of which a few are found among genuine Irish surnames, e.g. Glenny (sometimes Glenn) for a' ghleanna and Maghery for an mhachaire. Here also the process has in some cases been carried a stage further, an chnuic becoming Hill and an mhuillinn Mills but when met today Hill and Mills are more likely to be of English origin.

  Everyone knows the old rhyme which ends with the lines "And if he lacks both O and Mac no Irishman is he". Like most general statements this is not wholly true for, disregarding the undoubted claims of the Burkes, Fitzgeralds etc., we must admit Creagh, Deasy, Crone, Maghery and the other descriptive surnames as genuinely Gaelic. Indeed two of the best known and essentially Irish names, Kavanagh and Kinsella, have neither O nor Mac, for they are the descriptive type. Both of these, however, sometimes have an O tacked on to them erroneously. There are some curious instances of this error. A' Preith (meaning "of the cattle spoil") is well known in County Down for generations under the anglicised form of O'Prey. Gorham was formerly credited with an O in Co. Galway. De Horseys became O'Horseys before ever the influence of the Gaelic League revival brought bogus O's and Macs into being. Two of the most remarkable, not to say ridiculous, of these mistakes are to be found in Limerick city and county where Mackessy (in Irish O Macase and recte O'Mackessy in English) appears as McKessy and Odell, a purely English name, as O'Dell.

In this connection, I should refer to those Mac names which through long usage in the spoken language have become O's. The best known of these are O'Growney and O'Gorman.

 We have already noticed instances of the subdivision of the great septs and the consequent formation in the middle ages of new surnames like MacConsidine. This arose for various reasons, not the least of which was the desirability of readily distinguishing between a number of people of the same name. For a similar reason a system of nomenclature exists today, particularly in the western counties, whereby the father's christian name is added to a man's legal name. Thus in Clare, where there may well be several Patrick O'Briens in a single townland, they are known as Patrick O'Brien John, Patrick O'Brien Michael and so on. This is not merely a colloquial convenience, for these designations are used in ordinary business transactions such as completing an order form or supplying milk to a creamery, and they appear very frequently in the official voters' lists. A similar practice, very much in vogue in Limerick in the seventeenth century, has misled some writers unfamiliar with Irish conditions. The normal method was to add the father's name, as in the example given above, but with the prefix Fitz. Thus, to take a well known Limerick surname, John Arthur son of Stephen Arthur was almost invariably described as John Arthur FitzStephen, so that to the uninitiated the man's surname appears to be FitzStephen.

  There are many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth century records of persons whose names as set down therein are a veritable genealogy. John MacMahon MacWilliam MacOwen MacShane was, of course, John MacMahon whose father's christian name was William and his great grandfather's was Shane. Ignorance of this practice on the part of the enumerators probably accounts for the extraordinary number of MacShanes and MacTeiges returned as surnames in such records as the 1659 census all over the country. According to this there were large numbers of MacWilliams, MacEdmunds, MacDavids MacRichards etc., and in the same way Fitzjames (sometimes alias MacJames) appears as a common surname. The prevalence, according to the returning officers, of Oge as a surname bears out this assumption. Similarly Bane is given as a common surname, though there is little doubt that it was in fact, like Oge, merely an epithet. Bane does exist as a modern surname, Oge, however, does not, though it may have occasionally survived by translation, as Young. The Ormond Deeds, especially those of the sixteenth century, contain a great many names formed by prefixing Mac to a christian name. Besides those mentioned above, MacNicholas, MacPhelim, MacRory, MacThomas and MacWalter are of most frequent occurrence. Of all these names the only two to be found in any considerable numbers as surnames today are MacShane and MacTigue, as it is now spelt. The latter has in some places been shorn of its Macs and is written Tighe.

  In this connection it must not be forgotten that a not  inconsiderable number of people in the lower stratum of society did not use hereditary surnames even as late as 1650. In examining family documents I have met with cases of this: a witness signs himself James MacThomas, whom we know to be the son of Thomas MacTeige - or more probably being illiterate he makes his mark beside the name. Nevertheless it can safely be stated that the great majority even of the labouring class did have hereditary Mac and O surnames at least from the middle of the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth, of course, the cottier and small farmer class had come to include a considerable pro-portion of the old Gaelic aristocracy.

From: Irish Families (Their Names, Arms & Origins) by Edward MacLysaght. Pub: Irish Academic Press. ISBN 0-7165-2364-9. First Edition 1957, Fourth Edition 1985.

The Distortion of Irish Surnames

  Even in Ireland, where there is a genealogical tradition, it is quite common for people to be uncertain of their ancestry for more than three generations. Consequently a man in these circumstances whose name is, say, Collins or Rogers, to take two common in Ireland, cannot assert with certainty that he bears a native Irish surname. However, if he is a Collins, born and living in Dublin perhaps, whose people came from West Cork the odds are very strongly in favour of the true name being the Gaelic Ó Coileáin. Smith, the commonest surname in England, comes high up in the Irish list - fifth in that given by Matheson. There can be no doubt that many of our Irish Smiths are the descendants of English settlers and traders, but it is equally probable that at least eighty per cent of the Smiths of County Cavan are of native stock, being MacGowans or O'Gowans who, under pressure of alien legislation or social influence, accepted the translated form and have used it ever since.

Many of the dual origin surnames are translations, like Smith and Oaks, or more often pseudo-translations such as Kidney and Bird. Some indeed of the latter are very far-fetched, even ridiculous, as for example the grotesque transformation of Mac Giolla Eoin into Monday from a fancied resemblance of the last part of that name to the Irish word "Luain".

  So far we have been considering English names which in Ireland may conceal those of genuine Gaelic families. In a smaller number the converse obtains. Such names as Moore, Hart, Hayes and Boyle, which are, of course, genuinely Irish and are often regarded as exclusively so, are also found as indigenous surnames in England. So here again there is no certainty in the absence of an authentic pedigree, or at least of a well-founded tradition, as a guide. It has been pointed out for example that Guinness, which stout has made world-famous as an Irish name, and is in that case probably rightly derived from Magennis or MacGuinness of County Down, occurs in English records of some centuries ago in the rural county of Devonshire.

  Probably the most reliable and scholarly work on English surnames is that of Professor Weekley. Yet he includes in his lists, without any mention of Ireland, several like Geary, Garvin, Grennan and Quigley: typical Gaelic-Irish surnames which, while they are no doubt occasionally found with the French or Anglo-Saxon background he indicates, when met in England at the present time are much more likely to have been brought there by Irish immigrants.  

Apart from these surnames of possible English origin there are many indisputably Irish surnames not indigenous in England which assumed in their anglicised form a completely English appearance. What, for example, could be more English in appearance than Gleeson, Buggy, Cashman, Halfpenny and Doolady, to cite only a few examples. All of these are genuine Gaelic surnames and surprisingly numerous.

Once again the converse of this is also true. No one unacquainted with the subject would doubt that such very Irish sounding names as Gernon, Laffan, Gogan, Henebry and Tallon, and even O'Dell, all quite common in Ireland, are Irish, yet none of them is of Gaelic origin. This list, however, is not so long.

Some Gaelic surnames in their modern anglicised form have acquired an equally un-Irish guise but have a foreign rather than an English look. Coen, a variant of Coyne, and Levy, a common abbreviation of Dunlevy, suggest the Jew; I know a Lomasney who is always refuting the erroneous belief that he is of French origin, and I expect Lavelles and even Delargys and Delahuntys may have the same difficulty; Hederman and Hessian have rather a German sound, while Nihil, well known in County Clare, and Melia, synonym of O'Malley, might be Latin words. Most of this class, however, are occasional variants, such as Gna and Gina for (Mac) Kenna or Manasses for Mannix, or rare surnames like Schaill, Thulis and Gaussen.

In some cases the anglicisation process has had very unfortunate results. The beautiful name Mac Giolla Íosa, for example, usually rendered as MacAleese, takes the form MacLice in some places. The picturesque and heroic Ó Dathlaoich in County Galway ridiculously becomes Dolly and the equally distinguished Sealbhaigh which is anglicised Shelly in its homeland (Co. Cork) is Shallow in Co. Tipperary. Schoolboys of these families, unless they use the Irish form, need no nicknames; Grimes, too, is a miserable substitute for its Gaelic counterpart Greachain, which has also Grehan as a more euphonious anglicised form.

  These corruptions, of course, are due to the influence of the English language, the spread of which in Ireland was contemporary with the subjection and eclipse of the old Catholic Irish nation: names of tenants were inscribed in rentals by strangers brought in to act as clerks, who attempted to write phonetically what they regarded as outlandish names; in the same way Gaelic speaking litigants, deponents and witnesses in law cases were arbitrarily dubbed this and that at the whim of the recording official. It was not until the nineteenth century that uniformity in the spelling of names began to be observed, but the seventeenth century was the period during which our surnames assumed approximately the forms ordinarily in use in Ireland today.

  The corruptions we have noticed above have been cited as examples of the tendency to give Irish names an English appearance. Most of them have at least some phonetic resemblance to their originals or else were frankly translations or supposed translations. There is, too, a large class of Irish surnames anglicised in a way which makes them quite unrecognisable. Often these distortions are aesthetically most unpleasing, as Mucklebreed for Mac Giolla Bride and Gerty for Mag Oireachtaigh.

  Citing only official registrations with the Registrar-General, Matheson notes a particularly flagrant example, viz. a family of O'Hagans in County Dublin who have actually become Hog, which in the absence of his testimony one would naturally assume to be simply the well-known English surname of Hogg (O'Hagan is unlucky in this respect. According to Woulfe the very English and plebian-sounding Huggins is one of its synonyms in Ireland). Rather less cacophonous is Ratty for Hanratty. Forker for Farquhar (in County Down) may perhaps be regarded as comparable to the contraction in England of Cholmondeley to Chumley and Featherstonehaugh to Fanshawe in less aristocratic circles, these of course being phonetic spellings. The most curious instances of phonetic abbreviation recorded by Matheson is the birth registration of a Dalzell child at Dundalk "tout court" as "D.L.", that being the peculiar pronunciation of Dalzell in its native Scotland. The commonest of all Irish surnames, though not aesthetically objectionable, is a good illustration of decadence, for Murphy is a far cry from MacMurrough and 0'Morchoe, as is Dunphy from its synonym O'Donoghue. My own name, which I am glad to say is a true Dalcassian (Co. Clare) one, is an excellent example of the distortion we are considering, for no one would readily connect MacLysaght, especially when shorn of its Mac, with Mac Giolla Iasachta. The seventeenth century officials did at first render it as McGillysaghta, etc. in documents in English, but this proved too much of a mouthful to last long.

  This name is also an example of that fairly numerous class in which the initial letter (excluding the prefix) is misleading. The L of Lysaght and of Leland derives from the gioLLa. The origina1 L of Lally on the other hand is to be found in the MaoL of the original. In the same way the C of Clancy, the K of Keogh and the Q of Quaid are from MaC; the G of Gaynor and Gorevan from the MaC prefix (Mag is a form of Mac frequently used with names beginning with a vowel), while the Il of Ilhenny can again be traced to the gIOLla of the Gaelic form.

  Another tendency in the anglicisation of Irish surnames is the absorption of uncommon names in common ones. Blowick, for example, tends to become Blake, Kildellan is merged in Connellan, Cormican in McCormick, Sullahan in Sullivan, Kehilly and Kilkelly in Ke1ly, and so on. Certain well-known family names such as Courtney, Conway and Leonard have gobbled up in the course of time, not one, but half a dozen or more minor ones. We must presume that this was a result of the general Gaelic depression, part of the same indifference and hopelessness which acquiesced in the lopping off of the Mac and O from so many old Irish surnames.

  I have said that the mutilation and corruption of Irish surnames took place in the seventeenth and to a lesser extent in the eighteenth centuries. It must be admitted, however, that even today, fifty years after the foundation of the Gaelic League, the gradual re-gaelicization of names resulting from its influence is to some extent counterbalanced by the opposing forces of de-nationalisation. This is found more in pronunciation than in spelling: though even in this official registration age pronunciation does tend to affect spelling. A notable example of what I have in mind is the internal H. The English seem unable to cope with this sound which presents no difficulty to an Irishman: for Mahony they say Mah-ney (or, as they would write it, Marney, since the internal R is also dead in England). Now Dublin and suburbs with over 650,000 people contains more than one fifth of the population of the Republic and one seventh of the whole country; and Dublin for all its genuine political nationalism is in most ways more English, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, more cosmopolitan, in character. The contrast between Connacht and Dublin is as marked as that between Dublin and England. Of course the good old Dublin accent has lost none of its distinctive raciness, but it is only to be heard in the mouths of one section of the citizens. The gradual disappearance of regional Irish accents is much to be deplored: it is due to a number of causes including the B.B.C., the cinema, the much increased intercourse with England resulting from the recent mass emigration to that country, and perhaps I may add the "refinement" aimed at in convent education. However, I must not allow myself to go off at a tangent on this interesting topic, which is irrelevant except in so far as it is concerned with the pronunciation of surnames.

  In America the distortion of the name Mahony takes a different form, for it is often mispronounced Ma-honey, just as the wrong vowel is stressed in Carmody and Connell. In Ireland one does not hear Ma(r)ney for Mahony or Clossey for Cloghessy, but boggling at the internal H has come to Dublin now. I know a family in Dublin named Fihilly: the parents insist quite rightly that there are three syllables in the word, but the younger generation are content to answer to "Feeley" and so pronounce the name  themselves; Gallaghers in Sydney, after a long losing battle with Australian philistinism, have had to accept "Gallagger" with the best grace they could. This, however, may be partly due to the ocular influence of the middle G. There is another difference in these two cases, besides the fact that the Fihilly deterioration took place in Ireland itself: Feeley has actually become a recognised way of spelling that name. Similarly there are Dawneys who were originally Doheny.

  The surnames Hehir and Cahir in Thomond are still dissyllables, but the latter when denoting the town of that name in Co. Tipperary has become immutably "Care". This again prompts a long digression on place names: but that subject, so full of pitfalls for all but the most learned, would be out of place in this text.

  The internal H is not the only stumbling-block for English people and anglicised Dubliners. They pronounce Linnane as Linnayne and Kissane Kissayne. Our "ane" sound, which is intermediate between the English "Anne" and "aunt", is not heard in English speech. Similarly O'Dea is called O'Dee. These emasculated pronunciations sound like affectation to people who come from the places where those names originated and still abound. This is not to deny that there is actually a name O'Dee, but that is not a Clare name, as O'Dea emphatically is.

  Some English inspired innovations fortunately do not last. During the first World War a neighbour of mine in Co. Clare named Minogue joined the British army; in due course he returned as Capt. Minogue - Captain "Minnow-gew", if you please, not "Minnoge"! He may have got the idea from the mistake of a fellow soldier but he adopted the monstrosity and even insisted on it.

  One of the most irritating of the examples of capitulation to English influence is the adoption of the essentially Saxon termination "ham" for the Irish "ahan", "ann", etc. This is not confined to surnames: the Gaelic word "banbh", called bonnive in English in the less anglicised counties, is bonham in most places. Rathfarnham, recte Rathfarnnan, is the best known place so anglicised; while on our own ground we have the very English-looking Markham, a Clare surname of which the normal version should be, and indeed formerly was, Markahan (cf. the place name Ballymarkahan in Co. Clare).

  In the same way, but less noticeably, the final S so dear to English tongues degaelicizes Higgin(s), while the addition of an unnecessary D has somewhat the same effect on Boland. This D seems to have been a matter of chance for Noland is almost as rare as Bolan.

  Quite often the anglicisation of a Gaelic surname resulted in the adoption in English, whether consciously or not, of one which carried a certain social cachet like D'Evelyn for the usual Devlin, Molyneux for Mulligan or Delacour for Dilloughery. Montague for MacTadgh or Mactague probably arose in the same way, the sound Montag at some period giving way to Montagew through the ocular influence of the spelling. The cognate Minnogew for Minogue was just "swank". We may assume that the good captain's descendants have gone back to plain Minnoge, as it is only a matter of pronunciation in their case.

  There are other examples of this tendency which cannot be shed so easily. When Mulvihil has thus become Melville and Loughnane Loftus, resumption of the true patronymic necessitates (in practice, though not in strict law) certain legal formalities. I am told that there are people whose name was originally Mullins (Maolain) using the form de Moleyns. I have not met a case myself. According to Burke's peerage the best known family of the name, the head of which is Lord Ventry, are not true Irish Mullinses at all, and they presumably had justification for assuming the form de Moleyns in place of Mullins, a step which they took in 1841.

  Some people with Mac names insist on the Mac being written in full, others prefer Mc, and formerly M' was quite usual. It is hard to understand why any objection should be taken to Mc or even M', since these are simply abbreviations of Mac. The practice of some indexers, notably in the Century Cyclopaedia of Names, of differentiating between Mac and Mc is to be deplored, since the reader must seek the name he wants in two places - in the Macs, which are interspersed among such words as Maccabees and Macedonia, and in the Mcs many pages further on. It is impossible to differentiate satisfactorily. Take MacGillycuddy for example: it appears in the work in question as MacGillycuddy's Reeks, yet the Chief of the Name always subscribes himself McGillycuddy of the Reeks. The idea that Mac is Irish and Mc Scottish is just another popular error. Mcc, however, may fairly be called an affectation, being merely the perpetuation of a seventeenth century scribe's slip of the pen.

  The most prevalent of peculiarities in the spelling of names - the use of two small f's for a capital F - would seem to have arisen not through snobbery but from ignorance: the originators of this now carefully treasured blunder were probably unaware of the fact that in seventeenth century documents the normal way of writing F was ff, a symbol almost indistinguishable from f f.

(From: Irish Families by Edward MacLysaght. Pub. Irish Academic Press ISBN

0-7165-2364-7)

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