Planters surnames?

DEFTLEFTHAND

Adams, Stanley, Featherstone, Loftus.

Please add more, I'm researching planter families for a project on the plantations of Ireland.

RayM

Stroll through any old Church of Ireland graveyard and you'll see plenty of planter surnames (and quite a few soupers too).

maisiedaisy

Graham, Richardson, Deane, Burns, Beamish, Jennings, Salter, Tanner, Hyland, Fisher, Ferguson, Johnson, Johnston, Abbott, Chapman, Roycroft, Allen. Vary with location, the idea of walking through a local COI/Methodist graveyard isn’t a bad one.

Not all Protestant names are necessarily planter names though. Anything that sounds French is probably of Huguenot extraction, they were refugees as opposed to planters. There’s a few other similar minoroties, the Palatines in Limerick are ones that spring to mind.

lazybones32

The first planters here (where i am) were Welsh and there are still a lot of Walsh/Walshes and a few Jones'. Very few Smith's.

gozunda

You could be at it a while. There are many many names on record. Try the 1641 depositions which gives names and locations

See:
http://1641.tcd.ie

Some ones I'm familiar with ...
Aallan
Bennett
Blackburn
Dawson
Kincaid
Sampson
Richardson



Best of luck ...

fepper

Down here in Kerry it would be crosbie,latchford, blennerhasset,mccowen,gleasure.

Buford T. Justice XIX

Mod Note: Please note the change of forum as rules differ between forums.

I've moved this thread to History & Heritage as it appears the most suitable forum for the subject.

Buford T. Justice.

donegaLroad

maisiedaisy wrote: »

Graham, Richardson, Deane, Burns, Beamish, Jennings, Salter, Tanner, Hyland, Fisher, Ferguson, Johnson, Johnston, Abbott, Chapman, Roycroft, Allen. Vary with location, the idea of walking through a local COI/Methodist graveyard isn’t a bad one.

Not all Protestant names are necessarily planter names though. Anything that sounds French is probably of Huguenot extraction, they were refugees as opposed to planters. There’s a few other similar minoroties, the Palatines in Limerick are ones that spring to mind.

French sounding surnames can also be Norman. The French arrived in England with the army of William the Conqueror, and eventually were granted areas of land here during the Norman invasion of Ireland.

Full list of Ulster plantation surnames here OP

server down

donegaLroad wrote: »

French sounding surnames can also be Norman. The French arrived in England with the army of William the Conqueror, and eventually were granted areas of land here during the Norman invasion of Ireland.

Full list of Ulster plantation surnames here OP

That’s just all common surnames.

As for the French names of the Normans - they are relatively well know. All the Fitzs for instance.

donegaLroad

server down wrote: »

That’s just all common surnames.

As for the French names of the Normans - they are relatively well know. All the Fitzs for instance.

yes, and Britton (Bretton), Harvey, Joyce, Tobin, Purcell and Beamish are all French Norman. So is my own but Im not going to disclose it here.

gozunda

Del.Monte wrote: »

What about the majority of them (down here anyway) who keep their heads down and get on with their lives? Who are the 'real' Irish anyway? By the time you have removed everybody who arrived here from 1170 onwards, or who intermarried with them, you won't have many left?

Yup - always thought I was a melange of Viking, Norman, Irish etc - until I did the Ancestry DNA test for ethnicity. Looks like my lot going back not only stayed genetically in roughly the same geographical location but also stubbornly avoided marrying or mixing with any of the successive waves of new inhabitants - made for some interesting reappraisal of what was thought to be the family story ...

tabbey

Most surnames not of Milesian heritage, or Viking / Norman /Huguenot etc. In other words names that are self explanatory in English;

Occupational names : Baker, Carpenter etc,

Descriptive names : Long, Short, Stout, Thynne, Brown, White etc.

Geographical names : Hill, Forrest, Waters, Lancashire, Cardiff etc.

Finally the English equivalent of our patronymic names : Johnson, Jackson, Wilson (son of William), Watson (son of Walter) etc.


It must not be assumed that someone with an English name is descended though the paternal line from an Englishman. He could have adopted such a name for ease of mixing with other people in an English speaking area, He could have been obliged under statute, if living within the Pale, to take such a name, he might have become known by his master's name, or in the 17th and 18th centuries, his name might have been altered by official record keepers to something intelligible. The numerous Smiths in Cavan come to mind.

Most Irish people with traditional Irish names assume they are pure bred Irish, but in their ancestry, they will generally find English names

Peregrinus

tabbey wrote: »

It must not be assumed that someone with an English name is descended though the paternal line from an Englishman . . .

Still less that he is descended from a planter. The great majority of people who came to Ireland from Britain and settled here did not arrive as part of any plantation.

We have plantation records, and from those we can identify the names of planters who came over. But someone today who shares that name is not necessarily descended from a planter, since other people of the same name may have come over independently of any plantation, and he could be descended from them.

tabbey wrote: »

Most Irish people with traditional Irish names assume they are pure bred Irish, but in their ancestry, they will generally find English names

At this stage pretty well everybody has mixed Gael and Gall heritage. For most of the time the two communities intermarried quite freely.

pedroeibar1

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

Adams, Stanley, Featherstone, Loftus.

Please add more, I'm researching planter families for a project on the plantations of Ireland.

Get a copy of Burke's Irish Landed Gentry. Pick out what you want and then research what families suit your project, noting that not all families were granted land, many of them bought it. As others have said the surnames on their own do not necessarily mean 'planter'.

FredFunk

lazybones32 wrote: »

The first planters here (where i am) were Welsh and there are still a lot of Walsh/Walshes and a few Jones'. Very few Smith's.

Walsh(e) came in with Strongbow.
Planters are either up north or Laois/Offaly

Ipso

Anyone know if many Catholics would have come over in the Plantation? There's a good chance my male line came over in the Plantation (or right before it), I'm Catholic and I'm not aware of any non Irish ancestry (granted that doesn't mean much for Irish people).

tabbey

Ipso wrote: »

Anyone know if many Catholics would have come over in the Plantation? There's a good chance my male line came over in the Plantation (or right before it), I'm Catholic and I'm not aware of any non Irish ancestry (granted that doesn't mean much for Irish people).

Due to Ne Temere etc, the great majority of offspring from mixed marriages during the last two centuries have ended up catholic.

Peregrinus

tabbey wrote: »

Due to Ne Temere etc, the great majority of offspring from mixed marriages during the last two centuries have ended up catholic.

Ne Temere only came in just over a century ago; it can't account for anything that happened earlier than that. And, in fact, its main purpose was not to ensure that the offspring of mixed marriages were raised Catholic; it was to ensure that mixed marriages did not happen in the first place, in which it was remarkably successful, up to about 50 years ago. I've argued elsewhere that the effect of this was not to erode the minority Protestant population, but to sustain it.

Catholics did come over in the plantations; the first systematic plantation was of (what is now) Laois and Offaly and it happened under Mary Tudor, when being Catholic was eminently acceptable to the English authorities, and (I suspect) Catholics would have been positively favoured as planters. They certainly would not have been excluded. However the plantation wasn't notably successful. It took decades before the native Irish could be, um, pacified, and the planters were mostly clustered in settlements around English military installations. There would have been strong incentives to identify with the government, and with the Elizabethan reformation I'd be surprising if any Catholic planters did not conform. But I don't actually know.

Later plantations took place under a Protestant English establishment, but I don't know that there was any formal or systematic ban on Catholics taking up land. Essentially the plantations were franchised out; wealthy "undertakers" took up large tracts of land, and it was then up to them to find large numbers of settlers to occupy and farm them. It wasn't easy finding settlers, and the undertakers wouldn't have welcomed restrictions on who could be settled, so they wouldn't have favoured a "no Catholics" rule.

pinkypinky

OP: what are the terms of reference for your project? Which plantations? Any name that might have been a planter name would be massively diluted now.

tabbey

Peregrinus wrote: »

Ne Temere only came in just over a century ago; it can't account for anything that happened earlier than that.

Ne Temere was merely a restatement of existing policy.

Jimbob1977

Names like Switzer and Bovenizer would be Hugenot and Palatine.

If planter is from the Plantation of Ulster, you'd be talking about Scots and English Protestant names like Campbell, Cameron, Craig, Wilson, Jackson, Wright

Ipso

I think Campbell could be from an existing gaelic name that got anglicised. I can't remember it but it meant crooked mouth, something like Ceath Beal (I also heard that the Laverty in its Gaelic form sometimes got anglicised to Armstrong).
Campbell is also supposed to be associated with the Redshank mercenaries who arrived prior to the plantation.

Peregrinus

Ipso wrote: »

I think Campbell could be from an existing gaelic name that got anglicised. I can't remember it but it meant crooked mouth, something like Ceath Beal (I also heard that the Laverty in its Gaelic form sometimes got anglicised to Armstrong).
Campbell is also supposed to be associated with the Redshank mercenaries who arrived prior to the plantation.

Lots of Scottish names come from Gaelic names - Scots Gaelic. So, yeah, there are Gaelic-origin names among the Ulster planters. "Campbell" is one of them.

Peregrinus

tabbey wrote: »

Ne Temere was merely a restatement of existing policy.

I don't think it was. The previous canon law on the subject, in the decree Tametsi, did not require a commitment to bring up the children of a mixed marriage as Catholics, or an acknowledgement from the non-Catholic partner. Actual practice varied widely; some bishops/priests required this before they would celebrate a marriage (or allow it to be celebrated) others did not. What Ne Temere did was to take the practice which had prevailed in some dioceses, elevate it into a legal rule, and apply it universally.

But, as already pointed out, it's practical effect was not mainly that the children of mixed marriages were raised Catholic; it's principal effect was that there were very few mixed marriages, with the result that Protestants mainly married other Protestants, and their children were raised as Protestants.

pedroeibar1

pinkypinky wrote: »

OP: what are the terms of reference for your project? Which plantations? Any name that might have been a planter name would be massively diluted now.

Autosomal DNA would show a big mix/dilution Pinky, but Y-DNA would remain the same, and that is the critical one, as the surname follows the male line. McLysaght wrote that there were about 250 Irish surnames mistranslated into English, so Y-DNA would be the most appropriate route shouold there be a question over origin.

The OP seems to have lost interest as he has made nine posts elsewhere since his last visit here. His question also is not very precise, naming the Fetherstone family as Planters, when in fact the Irish lot in general descend from Cromwellian soldiers who would best be described as ‘Settlers’. There also were ‘Adventurers’ who advanced cash to the Commonwealth in the expectation of being repaid in Irish land when hostilities ceased.

I would be closer to Tabbey’s views and differ slightly from the views of Peregrinus on RC’s being part of Plantations (and certainly in the Cromwellian era they could not have been.) The anti-papist sentiment in England was to the fore during the reign of Elizabeth, who was trying to impose the English language, customs and the Protestant faith in Ireland. The aristocratic recusants in England already were under pressure in her reign. I can think of only one Planter family of that era that was RC – the Brownes (Kerry), the others were Anglican. I cannot see how many English RC’s could be allowed to settle in Ireland when the purpose was to stamp out disloyalty to the Crown and spread the Anglican faith. It is possible that a Protestant planter could bring across some RC workers from his English estate, but that would be the exception. At that time most ‘local’ Catholics were allowed remain on the land but only as servants. The reason was well-explained during the Commonwealth by Colonel Ingoldsby, Governor of Limerick who wrote that "They were useful as earth-tillers and herdsmen” and "Deprived of their clergy, and living among the English settlers, they would become, eventually, Protestants, and loyal subjects to the Parliament.”)

I also disagree with Peregrinus on intermarriage. In the period after 1650 interfaith marriage was much more frequent that admitted, despite being banned and subject to various penalties under the Penal Laws. The main reason was either remain celibate or marry a RC. Younger sons had little to gain under primogeniture and thus little to lose by marrying a Catholic girl. Other factors were a lack of Established Church girls of marriageable age, a surfeit of male Settlers and a lack of RC men. In addition to the huge losses of life due to the rebellions/wars from 1640 onwards, there was a mass exodus of young Irish males. For example we know that about forty thousand Irishmen went into the services of the Kings of Spain, France, and Poland, and served with distinction in the lowcountries and elsewhere on the continent. Given the population of Ireland of the era, that was a huge chunk.

My earliest ancestor in Ireland came from a staunchly Protestant family (split Royalist / Roundheads) and his grandson, my direct ancestor married a Catholic, was disinherited and struck from the pedigree. By the 1750’s there were several other lines in the family that had converted as a result of intermarriage. There are no C of I branches of my family extant in Ireland and the ‘founder’s’ only Anglican descendants live in the US, having gone there in the early 1800’s.

We had a discussion on Names HERE

riffmongous

Mod Note: Since the thread is still going and the quality has improved dramatically, I've gone through the thread and deleted any off topic or After Hours style posts to try clean it up.

Peregrinus

Just to be clear, Pedro, my comment about Ne Temere reducing intermarriage does in fact relate to the period when Ne Temere was in operation, which basically is 1907 to 1970. During that period rates of Catholic/Protestant intermarriage were extremely low.

I entirely accept that, in earlier times, they were much higher, but it wasn’t necessarily or normally the case that in a mixed marriage all the children were raised Catholic, and church law did not require it. I think what mostly happened is that things played out in one of two ways:

(a) One of the parties would convert in order to marry, so that the marriage would not, strictly speaking, be a mixed marriage. The children would then be raised in what was now the faith of both the parents. You have to reckon that, earlier on, with the legal and social advantaged attached to Anglicanism, it might be the Catholic spouse that converted to Anglicanism but, as the relative advantages of Anglicanism/disadvantages of Catholicism were eroded the Catholic aversion to conversion would assert itself more and more strongly, but I don’t know that we have any hard figures on this. Like you, I have a traditionally Protestant surname, but my family has been Catholic for several generations. An ancestor converted in the first half of the nineteenth century in order to marry a niece of the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore (and in those more enlightened times there was no question of his being disinherited for doing so) and since then the Catholic branch of the family has thrived, while the Protestants are all but extinct.

(b) The spouses would maintain their separate religions, with the children being raised the faith of the parent of their sex - girls in the mother’s faith, boys in the father’s. That’s the state of affairs depicted in one of Trollope’s Irish novels, Phineas Finn, where the protagonist comes from a family in this situation. Trollope presents it as a completely unremarkable state of affairs in Irish society at that time, giving rise to no disapprobation even from the Catholic bishop (who is a minor character in the novel) and not one that requires detailed explanation to his (largely English) readership.

As regards Catholics in the plantations, I completely agree with you about the Cromwellian plantations. As regards the Elizabethan planations, yes, the government would have wanted Protestant settlers, but such was the difficult in finding anyone to be a settler at all that I think Adventurers might have been a bit lax about enforcing that rigorously. But all I’m saying there is that there might have been some Catholic settlers; the great bulk would have been Protestants. Only in the Marian settlements would Catholics have been welcome or encouraged, and many of those would have conformed during the Elizabethan period anyway.

Tl;dr version: anyone descended from a planter who is now a Catholic, it’s almost certainly the result of conversion/intermarriage since the plantation, rather than because of descent from a Catholic planter.

server down

I’ll try find a link but I too remember reading that Ne Temere caused intermarriage to drop off a cliff.

Prior to that intermarriage was common enough and bringing up the children of such marriages as catholic was also common although this probably was an agreement between the couples not something imposed on high. This diluted the number of Protestants. If we assume that women got to choose the religion and the surname was patrilineal then you’d get English Protestant names inherited by catholic children. (And to a lesser extent vice versa. Gerry Adams for instance)



This clearly must have been the case, my surname is English (not Norman etc.) and my research (which has a huge gap) indicates the earliest Irish records of that name in my fathers ancestors homelands are Protestant.

When the records pick up again we are catholic.

This is true of many English originated names i Ireland and not all of them would be old English.

tabbey

One branch of my ancestry dating back to a marriage in a Church of Ireland 1790, appears to have been a mixed one with catholic daughters and protestant sons. Both the surnames suggest both sides were C of I a generation earlier. By the following generation this family seem to be all RC. I cannot be certain because there are gaps in baptismal registers about this time,and some boys may have remained protestant.

A similar situation is topical this year. Father John Sullivan SJ, who was beatified earlier this year, was the product of a mixed marriage, and raised as a protestant. He then became catholic and entered the Jesuits. Presumably the influence of his catholic mother and sisters played a role in this conversion.
Because catholics were a substantial majority of the population in most of Ireland, unless fairly well off, it was difficult for a protestant living in many parts of Dublin, to completely avoid being influenced to some degree, by the religious persuasion of their neighbours.

Peregrinus

Mixed marriages, with the children being raised 50/50 in each faith, will always tend to undermine the minority community.

Suppose you have a society divided 80:20 between Tabbists and Peregrinists. Each mixed marriage involves one Tabbist and one Peregrinist. A moment's though will show that the rate of mixed marriages among Peregrinists will be four times higher than amount Tabbists; if 12.5% of the Tabbists are entering into mixed marriages, then 50% of the Peregrinists are.

Assuming that all marriages are equally fertile, with that intermarriage rate in any generation 6.25% of the children born to Tabbists are raised as Peregrinists, but 25% of the children born to Peregrinists are raised as Tabbists. You can see how this will play out over a few generations.

But you don't have to model it in hypothetical terms; The Republic in the 20th century in fact provides a controlled experiment. During the Ne Temere years you have a vanishingly small rate of intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants but, among Protestants, a high rate of intermarriage between different denominations. And, low, the minor Protestant denominations - the Presbyterians, the Methodists -
decline steeply, because so many of their children are raised as Anglicans. Whereas the Protestant community as a whole holds up much better, albeit that it becomes increasingly mono-Anglican.

The phenomenon works even faster than the maths would suggest, because in the real world the propensity to raise children of a mixed marriage in one denomination or the other is not, in fact, 50/50. In many cases the couple may end up going to, e.g, an Anglican rather than a Methodist church, and sending their children to an Anglican rather than a Methodist school, simply because while they are equally open to doing either there are many more Anglican churches and schools than Methodist ones, and the one that is convenient for them is likely to be an Anglican one. Plus, of course, not all denominations/traditions do take a neutral attitude to conversion across denominations; for a Catholic to become a Protestant, or a Protestant to become a Catholic, is generally a much bigger deal than, say, for a Methodist to become a Congregationalist.

Long-term, the best survival strategy for a minority community is not to intermarry. (Which explains the extraordinary persistence of minority Jewish communities over many generations in many countries across the world.)

DEFTLEFTHAND

Actually took notice of the poster RayM here and took a look at some of the gravestones at my local COI churchyard.

Some beauitful names both Christian and sur. Jerimiah Hastings was my fav, he died in 1972.


God rest them all.

dubhthach

server down wrote: »

That’s just all common surnames.

As for the French names of the Normans - they are relatively well know. All the Fitzs for instance.

Except for Fitzpatrick, which is actually a case of taking on a 'fancy foreign air' so as to keep land, actually two distinct surnames adapted it as anglo version of their name:

Mac GIOLLA PHÁDRAIG—IV—M'Gillephadrick, M'Gillapatrick, M'Kilpatrick, MacGilpatrick, MacIlpatrick, MacIlfatrick, MacElfatrick, MacIlfederick, MacElfedrick, Gilpatrick, Kilpatrick, Kirkpatrick, Fitzpatrick; 'son of Giolla Phádraig' (servant of St. Patrick). The principal family of this name are the MacGillapatricks, or Fitzpatricks, of Ossory, who took their name from Giolla Phádraig, son of Donnchadh, lord of Ossory, in the 10th century. In early times they ruled over the entire of Co. Kilkenny and part of the present Leix, but after the Anglo-Norman invasion they were greatly encroached upon by the Butlers and other English settlers in Kilkenny, and their patrimony was limited to the barony of Upper Ossory. Branches of the family settled in Clare, Cavan, Leitrim, and other parts of Ireland. In 1541, Brian Mac Giolla Patrick was created Baron of Upper Ossory. There appears to have been also a Scottish family of this name.

--

Ó MAOLPHÁDRAIG—I—O Mulfadricke, O Mulpatrick, (?) Fitzpatrick; 'descendant of Maolphádraig' (servant of St. Patrick); once a common surname, especially in Cavan and Cork. In the year 1602, Conor O Molpatrick, 'chief of his name,' was included in a list of pardons for Co. Cavan. Though the name has disappeared, the family was too numerous to have died out, and the probability is that, like the Mac Gillapatricks of Ossory, they have anglicised it to Fitzpatrick.

There was also once the name of Fitzdermot which was a native Leinster name (related to the Byrnes and O'Toole's) but has since died out.

21Savage

I watched the Story of Ireland and to contradict what an earlier poster said about 'most Irish being a mixture of Gael and Gall' the show reported that like 85 per cent of Irish people are descendant from the original native Irish(or the pre Christian Irish anyway) I reckon anybody along the Eastern and southern coast has some foreign(and by that I mean Norman, French, English, Welsh, direct Viking) blood.

I have two pretty English(Norman?) surnames, Tongue and Rawle. I've seen Rawle written with an Irish translation but assuming that's just enforcing gaelic on an anglo name.


On the topic of surnames, why are a lot of Norman names not found in France? Why no Fils de gerald? What happens to certain names that they got lost in time? Why is there not more crossover between France and Ireland with regards surnames?

Peregrinus

21Savage wrote: »

I watched the Story of Ireland and to contradict what an earlier poster said about 'most Irish being a mixture of Gael and Gall' the show reported that like 85 per cent of Irish people are descendant from the original native Irish(or the pre Christian Irish anyway) I reckon anybody along the Eastern and southern coast has some foreign(and by that I mean Norman, French, English, Welsh, direct Viking) blood.

85% are descended from the native Irish, but not exclusively so. The Normans, remember, became "more Irish than the Irish themselves", and intermarried quite freely.

21Savage wrote: »

On the topic of surnames, why are a lot of Norman names not found in France? Why no Fils de gerald? What happens to certain names that they got lost in time? Why is there not more crossover between France and Ireland with regards surnames?

Two things. First, remember that the Normans were foreign invaders in France. They were Norsemen. They were never a particularly large community.

Secondly, the Normans didn't have surnames at all until quite late in the piece. It was well after the Norman conquest of England (1066) and invasion of Ireland (1170) that they started to adopt surnames. Thus what we identify as "Norman names" did not originate in Normandy, but in Britain or Ireland. Normans who stayed in Normandy would at some point also have developed/adopted surnames, but entirely different surnames. But in fact they remained a very small community in France, with a high propensity to emigrate, and eventually the remnant was absorbed into the general French community. You could say that they became more Frankish than the Franks themselves.

21Savage

Interesting insight. Guess that explains why there is no 1000 year old Fitzgeralds in England either. Never really thought of that. Surnames weren't really a thing until much later. Beaumont could be a contender of one such name that prevails throughout England, France and Ireland. However, I don't know how common the name is. Probably not at all in Ireland except for the hospital. I notice there are a lot of Petits in Ireland relatively. Not sure how much in England though.

Ipso

One of the most popular surnames is Walsh which derives from the Welsh contingent that came over with the Normans. Given it's frequency today there were probably many reasons it was adopted; prestige, non parental events etc

Nekarsulm

Where would Horsburgh originate from?
I came across it probably 20 years ago when I bought some sheep from a venerable old lady somewhere near Naas!
Never encountered it since.

21Savage

Looks to be English. Sounds like it could be Danish or German.

Peregrinus

Ipso wrote: »

One of the most popular surnames is Walsh which derives from the Welsh contingent that came over with the Normans. Given it's frequency today there were probably many reasons it was adopted; prestige, non parental events etc

I'm guessing that it was not so much adopted as conferred. Walsh was known as "Walsh" not because he chose to be, but because his neighbours called him that, because he was from Wales, or his father or grandfather was.

Peregrinus

21Savage wrote: »

Interesting insight. Guess that explains why there is no 1000 year old Fitzgeralds in England either. Never really thought of that. Surnames weren't really a thing until much later. Beaumont could be a contender of one such name that prevails throughout England, France and Ireland. However, I don't know how common the name is. Probably not at all in Ireland except for the hospital. I notice there are a lot of Petits in Ireland relatively. Not sure how much in England though.

Beaumont Hospital is not called after anyone named Beaumont, but after Beaumont House, the property which stood where the hospital now stands. And Beaumont House was so called because it stood in, and was the principal house in, the townland of Beaumont. The name was apparently given to the place by Arthur Guinness, who lived there, because it was an area of higher ground with (at the time) fine views of Dublin Bay - so, a beautiful hill.

pedroeibar1

Surnames in Ireland arguably date to post Battle of Clontarf and were not universal until a couple of centuries later (see my earlier post ). In France, there were surnames – or more correctly patrilineal names – in use in the Roman era. However, hereditary surnames there obtained a ‘fix’ when King Louis XI in 1474 by edict forbade changing a surname without royal permission. The change had to be accompanied by letters patent granted by the authorities who subsequently published the change in the Journal Officiel. Obviously when dealing with the aristos and peasantry the rules differed!

A law of King Francis 1st in 1539 required that births, marriages and deaths be registered by the local curé. (In Ireland it was the 1860’s!). Further changes were also introduced at the time of the Revolution and also by Napoleon. (Livret de famille, etc.) I've done some French genealogical work going back to the mid 1700's for a family of cobblers and had little difficulty , which is unheard of in Ireland.

Most French family names (noms de famille) are locative i.e. after a place, either where they lived (Jean Delaroche, Pierre Delaporte, Paul Moulin) or were born (Mattieu Paris) or from a trade [ Michel Ferrante (Smith) or Paul Masson (Mason) ] and generally are not patrilineal, although there are some (surnames Paul, Martin, etc.) Some are from ‘appearance’ - Jean Leroux, (the red) Phillippe Legrand (the great).

‘Surnom’ means ‘nickname’ (Charlemagne was son of Charles, and the 'magne' was from the great deeds he achieved. So in short they differ from the Irish in not having an equivalent of Fitz-, O’ – or Mc but get by quite adequately without them.

Peregrinus

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

‘Surnom’ means ‘nickname’ (Charlemagne was son of Charles, and the 'magne' was from the great deeds he achieved. So in short they differ from the Irish in not having an equivalent of Fitz-, O’ – or Mc but get by quite adequately without them.

Nitpick: Charlemagne was not the "son of Charles"; his was the son of Pepin the Short. He was called Charles le Magne or Carolus Magnus to distinguish him from other Charleses, and particularly from his grandfather Charles Martel ("Charles the Hammer"), but this practice only arise after his death; nobody called him that during his life.

He had several sons, one of whom was also called Charles; that son was known as Charles the Younger.

dubhthach

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

. In France, there were surnames – or more correctly patrilineal names – in use in the Roman era.

Well fixed surnames might indeed only come into use in Ireland from 10th century onwards (with bulk of major ones in existance by 1100), however there did exist what one could call 'kindred names' which are glossed in latin as 'gens' eg. equivalent to Roman concept of gens.

In case of the bould Brian Boru he belonged to the Uí Thairdelbaig of the Dál gCais.

In the Annals of Ulster the we see the Cenél Eogain and the Cenél Conaill been referenced as such:

U727.2

Bellum Droma Fornocht inter Genus Conaill & Eugain ubi Flann m. Aurtuile & Snedgus Dergg nepos Mrachidi iugulati sunt.

U727.2

The battle of Druim Fornocht between Cenél Conall and Cenél Eógain, in which Flann son of Aurthuile and Snédgus Derg, descendant of Mrachide, were killed.

Of course what's even more fun there, is both the Cenél Conall and Cenél Eógain regarded themselves as Uí Néill and ultimately as been members of the Dál Cuinn / Connachta

If we look at a character such as Muiredach Muillethan who was King of Connacht until his death in 702 we can break down his name/genealogy as follows:

praenomen: Muiredach
agnomen: Muillethan (broad-crowned)
gens: Uí Briúin of Dál Cuinn/Connachta

of course his descendants (O'Connor's, McManus, McDermot, McDonagh, Geraghty, O'Teige, Concannon etc.) than basically had the cognomen of Síl Muireadaig to denote descent directly form him within the wider Uí Briúin Aí lineage.

pedroeibar1

dubhthach wrote: »

Well fixed surnames might indeed only come into use in Ireland from 10th century onwards (with bulk of major ones in existance by 1100), however there did exist what one could call 'kindred names' which are glossed in latin as 'gens' eg. equivalent to Roman concept of gens.

In case of the bould Brian Boru he belonged to the Uí Thairdelbaig of the Dál gCais.

In the Annals of Ulster the we see the Cenél Eogain and the Cenél Conaill been referenced as such:
Of course what's even more fun there, is both the Cenél Conall and Cenél Eógain regarded themselves as Uí Néill and ultimately as been members of the Dál Cuinn / Connachta

If we look at a character such as Muiredach Muillethan who was King of Connacht until his death in 702 we can break down his name/genealogy as follows:

praenomen: Muiredach
agnomen: Muillethan (broad-crowned)
gens: Uí Briúin of Dál Cuinn/Connachta

of course his descendants (O'Connor's, McManus, McDermot, McDonagh, Geraghty, O'Teige, Concannon etc.) than basically had the cognomen of Síl Muireadaig to denote descent directly form him within the wider Uí Briúin Aí lineage.

Well that sort of proves my point really (although I think we have disagreed on this before):). The bould Brian was known as Brian Boru and not as Brian Ua Thairdelbaig, nor even as Brian mac Cennétig, his father, who was styledCennétig mac Lorcain, His descendants eventually were known as Ua Brian, or as McMahon, depending on their line of descent. (Is there any genetic evidence that the Kennedys are connected?)

In the Annals the long names are more for precision rather than in use as a surname, as the ollamhs wanted to ensure that the reader understood that it was a particular Conal. Also the “Snédgus Derg, descendant of Mrachide” who was killed” was Red Snédgus and not Snédgus ua Mrachide. The Eogain and Conaill of the two groups surely is more of a cognomen rather than a surname, in the manner of the old Romans?

I agree with gens/ genus / ‘kindred’ as it denotes familial relationship, more accurate than tribus/tribe which has suggestions of social and political grouping.

tabbey

dubhthach wrote: »

Well fixed surnames might indeed only come into use in Ireland from 10th century onwards (with bulk of major ones in existance by 1100),

The bulk of major surnames may well have been in existence by 1100 AD, but I suspect the majority of the population did not have them until later, and many of those became known by the surnames of their feudal masters.

Peregrinus

We didn't really do "feudal masters" in Ireland. The Normans and various later English kings did try to introduce feudal tenure/feudal relationships, and from time to time various Irish leaders would be induced to do homage, swear fealty, etc, but the concept never really percolated downwards, and the majority of the population had no feudal relationships to anyone. If peasants adopted the same surnames as local leaders it wasn't because of any feudal relationship but because the peasants were, or believed themselves to be, kindred of the leaders.

Fake News

I visited the Aran Islands during the Red Bull Cliff Diving Competition in 2015 and discovered that most of the islands inhabitants are descended from an English garrison who inhabited the island during Cromwell's era.

Ipso

How did you figure that?

Fake News

It's written on tourist information boards.

dubhthach

I'm not sure how accurate that is. I had a look at the 1901 census for the DED of Inishmore (which includes the whole Aran Islands) I see:

Population: 2,922
Catholic: 2,784 (95.27%)

Interesting the Church of England number (42) was double the Church of Ireland figure (21), though Presbyterian (17) was higher than Church of Scotland (4).

Anyways here are some of major surnames:
Conneely: 402
Flaherty: 422 (Flaherty: 362, O'Flaherty 30, OFlaherty 30)
Dirrane/Derrane: 277 (Dirrane: 233, Derrane: 44)
Faherty: 170
McDonagh: 111 (McDonagh: 94, MacDonagh: 3, McDonough 14)
Mullin: 128
Millane: 24
O'Donnell: 70
Costello: 38 (Norman)
Concannon: 28
O'Brien: 28
Dillane: 29
Donohue: 18
Burke: 23
Walsh: 17
Joyce: 96

Obviously that list includes Cambro-Norman surnames such as Burke, Walsh and Costello, Joyce but an initial run through on just above makes up 63.4% of surnames found in 1901 Aran census, all of those are pre-Cromwellian and are associated with Conamara as well (particulary Joyce, Walsh and Costello). Again the list above is only from a cursory glance and about 15minutes of eyeballing the returns (and using search function to spit out the raw numbers). What should also be remember is that the sub-dialects of Irish spoken on Aran veer towards Munster Irish and extinct sub-dialects of North Clare in some ways, which is reflective of connections to Burren etc.

What perhaps would be better term is that most Aran Islanders have post Cromwellian period ancestry eg. they have ancestry from Connemara or North Clare. The interconnection between Aran and Connemara in particular is well known throughout the 20th century with people moving between the two.

The high levels of Conneely and Flaherty in particular reinforces the link to the 'Iar Connacht' lordship of the O'Flaherty's during the late middle ages.

pedroeibar1

Ipso wrote: »

How did you figure that?

Emmmmm......did you not look at the poster's name and the other stuff posted by him/her/it?