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Hearne and Heron

Hermy · 2015-03-04 12:19:32

Still struggling to establish the broader picture re my g-g-grandparents John Hearne and Margaret Smith [see previous thread] I'm researching another Hearne family who like mine also have a Sylvester or two in their midst in the hope that they may be related. However, the surname changes between Heron and Hearne over time…

04-03-2015 12:19pm

#1

Hermy

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Still struggling to establish the broader picture re my g-g-grandparents John Hearne and Margaret Smith [see previous thread] I'm researching another Hearne family who like mine also have a Sylvester or two in their midst in the hope that they may be related.

However, the surname changes between Heron and Hearne over time and between civil and church records. I'm wondering is this down to literacy levels or more likely a surname that was evolving from one form to another?

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#2 04-03-2015 12:57pm

shanew

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I would think of them as variations rather than an actual change. I've a few like that in my own lines, but also come across this on many other searches. Much of the time the record you see is written by a priest or registrar etc, so it's entirely up to him how to spell it - so the same family can have different spellings at different time. I've even seen several cases where a surname spelt two different ways on the same document.

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#3 04-03-2015 2:44pm

P. Breathnach

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I have seen Hearne as a variant of Ahearn(e).

Where you are tracing people who might have had low literacy levels, the spelling of a name is the work of a clergyman or a registrar.

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