why are irish surnames not more common in america?

wonton · 15-05-2012 10:09PM #1

It is the second biggest reported ancestry in the USA, and everyone knows about the huge irish influence in america, but according to the us census the highest entry that is at least uniquely irish (moore and colllins are ahead of it) is murphy at 58.

now to me that just doesnt add up

its not like iceland for example that had huge female imports but not male.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America

I suppose the fact that slave owners were mostly english and german and thus took their names has a lot to do with it, but still, 58?

true · 15-05-2012 10:51PM

wonton wrote: »

and everyone knows about the huge irish influence in america,

not as huge as our propaganda would sometimes have us believe.

However did you know 7 or 8 Presidents of the USA came from the island of Ireland. ( from N of Ireland mostly ).
And Henry Ford, arguably the most famous car-maker in the western world, came from Cork.

dave2pvd · 16-05-2012 02:02AM

I agree. Irish media has overhyped the Irish imprint on the US and world for as long as I can remember.

From that great font of truth, Wikipedia:

"The majority of the 300 million people currently living in the United States are descended from European immigrants who have arrived in the past 400 years. Most Latin American immigrants are from Mexico and Central America of which about half are descended from indigenous peoples of those regions and Spaniards (mestizo). African American people, most of whom are descended from Africa and the slavery era, form the next-largest ethnic groups. American Indians now form a small minority in the population.

Major components of the European segment of the United States population are descended from immigrants from Germany (19.2%), Ireland (10.8%), England (7.7%), Scotland (5.8%), Italy (5.6%), Scandinavia (3.7%) and Poland (3.2%) with many immigrants also coming from other Slavic countries"

fasttalkerchat · 16-05-2012 02:08AM

wonton wrote: »

I suppose the fact that slave owners were mostly english and german and thus took their names has a lot to do with it, but still, 58?

That's what I would have put it down to. Cant find a source but I believe that the country with the most claims of decendancy in America is Germany.

dave2pvd · 16-05-2012 02:16AM

Also keep in mind that the figures are somewhat skewed. For whatever reason, so many people in the US claim Irish ancestry, often despite having family names on both parents' sides that are not remotely Irish.

Second reason: many Americans of African origin have English surnames.

Third: lots of non-English speaking European stock in the US Anglicized their names.

Killer Wench · 16-05-2012 02:37AM

How many of the Irish that emigrated during the peak periods were literate?

Victor · 16-05-2012 02:41AM

One reason is bigotry and discrimination. Whether on arrival at the immigration or later, many immigrants of all nationalities changed their names so they could fit in better. Other had their names changed for them on official documents.

There are something like 85 different English spellings for my mother's Irish maiden name (Lenihan, an Irish name), but only four for my father's maybe-Irish, maybe-English name (Moore, looks English, but most likely Irish). That would put Moore well ahead of Lenihan in the rankings.

dave2pvd wrote: »

Also keep in mind that the figures are somewhat skewed. For whatever reason, so many people in the US claim Irish ancestry, often despite having family names on both parents' sides that are not remotely Irish.

Simply because the Anglicized / Englishised name was adopted before their parent's time. Cultural marriage and reproduction patterns aside, there is a pattern that minority names are lost over generations.

Also , they might have English names, but Irish ancestry. Their ancestors might have never had Irish names - many of the early Irish in North America were protestants, who might have had English or Scottish ancestry perhaps 100-300 years previously.

Second reason: many Americans of African origin have English surnames.

Agreed.

Third: lots of non-English speaking European stock in the US Anglicized their names.

Agreed, however, that doesn't necessarily mean they adopted English names - they may have simply gone for a shorter version of their own name. As above, some had English names imposed on them.

dmcronin · 16-05-2012 08:13AM

wonton wrote: »

It is the second biggest reported ancestry in the USA, and everyone knows about the huge irish influence in america, but according to the us census the highest entry that is at least uniquely irish (moore and colllins are ahead of it) is murphy at 58.

now to me that just doesnt add up its not like iceland for example that had huge female imports but not male.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America

I suppose the fact that slave owners were mostly english and german and thus took their names has a lot to do with it, but still, 58?

Wasn't there a 'tradition' that the girls were sent over to the US to go into domestic service and the like, being more reliable than males for sending any surplus income back home?

owenc · 16-05-2012 09:07AM

wonton wrote: »

It is the second biggest reported ancestry in the USA, and everyone knows about the huge irish influence in america, but according to the us census the highest entry that is at least uniquely irish (moore and colllins are ahead of it) is murphy at 58.

now to me that just doesnt add up its not like iceland for example that had huge female imports but not male.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America

I suppose the fact that slave owners were mostly english and german and thus took their names has a lot to do with it, but still, 58?

Because of the Anglicisation of their names to english aswell as intermarriage. There are more germans and british people in america anyway.

cormacocomhrai · 16-05-2012 09:22AM

dave2pvd wrote: »

Also keep in mind that the figures are somewhat skewed. For whatever reason, so many people in the US claim Irish ancestry, often despite having family names on both parents' sides that are not remotely Irish.

Even in Ireland names that look Anglo are often Gaelic in origin. Mistranslation by state officials etc. or a desire to appear more respectable led to the origins of a lot of names obscuring. This happened all over the country.
In Galway Judge is the same name as Brehony. In Tipperary Greene is the same name as Fahy. You also have names like Canavan became Whitehead, Gormally became Blueman, Maguire became Pinkman, McGowan became Smith. As far as I know a branch of the O'Neills became Johnsons, Ó Dorchaí became D'Arcy, Ó Coileáin became Collins. There are a hundred examples of that kind of thing.
My own name Ó Comhraí has been anglicised as Corry (the version in my family) but also Curry, O'Curry and Corry. A couple of generations in America and people would be told categorically that their ancestry must have been Scottish with the name Corry.
Is mise
Cormac Ó Comhraí

pedroeibar1 · 16-05-2012 02:45PM

Don’t get hung up on the surname. It is the ancestry that is referred to, so an Irish granny provides Irish ancestry, even if she was married to a German and her son/daughter married an Italian. Anyway, the top four names on the list - Smith, Brown, Lee & Wilson - would certainly contain Irish families (McGabhann, de Brun, Laoi and McWilliam). Added to the mix is an infusion of Irish descendants of English Planters of the same names so who knows?
While surnames were known in Ireland before the Act of Edward V in 1483 (can’t remember which one, but he had very few, poor fellow) , they became more common from that date. Subsequently many Irish families took the English form of their name – e.g. Smith for McGabhann, and later again reverted to its Irish form, a bit like people again using the O’ prefix in the late 1800’s. Smith is possibly the most common name in the world, e.g. Schmidt in German, Ferrante/Ferrari in Italian, Kovacs in Slav, Kowalski in Polish, etc. A 19th c. Anglo-Irish General changed his name to Magowan from Smith – there are roads named after him in India.

The anglicization I love of O’Cathain, which is Keane or Kane but Coen in Galway.

Numerically in the US German names are far greater than Irish because they went there in big numbers from an earlier date (e.g. the huge Palatinate emigrations which accounts for the Pennsylvania Dutch/Deutsch). By the late 1700’s there were proposals in some states to have official papers also printed in German.

Cork boy 55 · 16-05-2012 02:48PM

The Top 100 list is too small a sample of surnames
17.11% of Americans have a surname among the top 100
You need to aquire a top 1,000 list at least if not more and then graph
those names that are clearly Irish and then those than could
be or have been altered and so on. and then add them all up

I sure research has been done on this somewhere.

African-American adopted surnames further complicate the question
for example
going by your wiki link
46.72% of all williams are black not the desendents of English williams
"Names such as Williams, Jackson, Robinson, Harris, Davis, Brown, and Jones are common among
blacks"
Many blacks and hispanics(how many USA films have a character called Rodriguez) have similar surnames which skews the top 100 list
as does immigrants from Germany, sweden and so on changing their names to English verisons.

If all the Irish-ameircans who declare themselves as such do not have Irish surnames
then how do they know they are Irish???

Need more data IMO

Edit
there is a top 1000 list here at link
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html
click on File A
enjoy
file B contains all 151,671 names that occur 100 times or more

Gurgle · 16-05-2012 02:57PM

dave2pvd wrote: »

"The majority of the 300 million people currently living in the United States are descended from European immigrants who have arrived in the past 400 years."

"Major components of the European segment of the United States population are descended from immigrants from Germany (19.2%), Ireland (10.8%)..."

10.8% from a population pool representing <1% of Europe?
Second biggest group after Germany.
That is a lot.

pinkypinky · 16-05-2012 03:18PM

true wrote: »

not as huge as our propaganda would sometimes have us believe.

However did you know 7 or 8 Presidents of the USA came from the island of Ireland. ( from N of Ireland mostly ).
And Henry Ford, arguably the most famous car-maker in the western world, came from Cork.

Actually, it's 20 US Presidents that have some level of Irish ancestry - 11 before 1900ish and then all since JFK excluding Gerald Ford.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/dir/pres.htm

dave2pvd · 16-05-2012 03:32PM

http://genealogy.about.com/od/surname_meaning/p/brown.htm

Gurgle wrote: »

10.8% from a population pool representing <1% of Europe?
Second biggest group after Germany.
That is a lot.

Oh, I don't think anyone disagrees that as an immigrant group it's a lot. In relation to the 'sending country', it's staggering. But overall, it's not as much as perhaps some would think. Especially among Americans who claim to be Irish!

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Don’t get hung up on the surname. It is the ancestry that is referred to, so an Irish granny provides Irish ancestry, even if she was married to a German and her son/daughter married an Italian.

Right. that's the point I was trying to make. Americans like to be Irish. Even today!

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

The Top 100 list is too small a sample of surnames
17.11% of Americans have a surname among the top 100
You need to aquire a top 1,000 list at least if not more and then graph
those names that are clearly Irish and then those than could
be or have been altered and so on. and then add them all up

I sure research has been done on this somewhere.

African-American adopted surnames further complicate the question
for example
going by your wiki link
46.72% of all williams are black not the desendents of English williams
"Names such as Williams, Jackson, Robinson, Harris, Davis, Brown, and Jones are common among
blacks"
Many blacks and hispanics(how many USA films have a character called Rodriguez) have similar surnames which skews the top 100 list
as does immigrants from Germany, sweden and so on changing their names to English verisons.

If all the Irish-ameircans who declare themselves as such do not have Irish surnames
then how do they know they are Irish???

Need more data IMO

Edit
there is a top 1000 list here at link
http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html
click on File A
enjoy
file B contains all 151,671 names that occur 100 times or more

Excellent analysis.

Consider just how many nationalities Anglicized their names. Brown from BROWNE, BRAUN, BROUN, BRUEN, BRUUN, BRUAN, BRUN, BRUENE, BROHN, etc. See here.

dave2pvd · 16-05-2012 03:46PM

pinkypinky wrote: »

Actually, it's 20 US Presidents that have some level of Irish ancestry - 11 before 1900ish and then all since JFK excluding Gerald Ford.

http://homepage.eircom.net/~seanjmurphy/dir/pres.htm

Of course ancestry and came from are 2 different things.

cormacocomhrai · 16-05-2012 04:46PM

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Anyway, the top four names on the list - Smith, Brown, Lee & Wilson - would certainly contain Irish families (McGabhann, de Brun, Laoi and McWilliam).

That's the very point I was trying to make in the post immediately before yours.

The anglicization I love of O’Cathain, which is Keane or Kane but Coen in Galway.

I'm not sure about that one. I think Coen is actually Ó Cadhain which is the same name as Kyne, Coyne and Barnacle.

Cork boy 55 · 16-05-2012 07:25PM

here is a good website looks accuate
it breaks down the surnames
by number /frequnecy/rank

and then ranks them in list's
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica][FONT=arial, Helvetica]Rank: 1 - 1000 | 1001 - 2000 | 2001 - 5000 | 5001 - 8000
8001 - 12000 | 12001 - 16000 | 16001 - 100000

You can also filter by race,state and others

http://names.mongabay.com/most_common_surnames.htm

[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica][FONT=arial, Helvetica][FONT=arial, Helvetica]All data is derived from David L. Word, Charles D. Coleman, Robert Nunziata and Robert Kominski (2008). "Demographic Aspects of Surnames from Census 2000". U.S. Census Bureau.
[/FONT][/FONT][/FONT]

wonton · 16-05-2012 07:50PM

interesting replies lads !

ye so I think the biggest thing is the inconsistent spelling of irish names and different versions.

probably influenced by the fact of low literacy rates with the immigrants and possibly the officials in america taking their names not being familiar (or maybe caring that much) and thus various spellins arouse, along with people themselves anglicising them.

Just looking at the list above an example of this connor,donahue, mcginnis,shea,dougherty which are obviously come from the more common irish forms o'connor, o'donoghue , mcguinnes, o' shea and o 'doherty.

purplepanda · 16-05-2012 11:28PM

A lot of those US supposed English names are very common in Wales. There's a dozen or more in the list.

I know that many freed Black former slaves took Welsh names due to Welsh nonconformist support for the abolition of slavery & many early black minister & churches were influenced by Welsh christian denominations.

Many names on that list are common enough in Ireland , King, Taylor, Moore, Martin, White, Harris, Clarke, Allen, Green, Hill, Campbell, Turner, Morris.

dubhthach · 17-05-2012 06:31PM

Surnames can "daughter out" after all. Look at Mark Wahlberg he's more Irish then his swedish surname lets on. This is why he would be classed as Irish-American (Father is half swedish, half irish -- mother has some Irish ancestry). In his case his Irish surnames are all on female lines.

dave2pvd · 18-05-2012 01:20AM

So just how many Americans that claim Irish descent are Scots-Irish? With names like Andrew Jackson. So many 'Irish' in the part of the US that I live in are this breed of Irish. Granted, some are O's or Mc's, but few and far between. Many of their ancestors came in the late 18th century and settled in the Appalachians. Many were Presbyterian. Back then, the majority of Irish immigration was Protestant.

owenc · 18-05-2012 12:00PM

dave2pvd wrote: »

So just how many Americans that claim Irish descent are Scots-Irish? With names like Andrew Jackson. So many 'Irish' in the part of the US that I live in are this breed of Irish. Granted, some are O's or Mc's, but few and far between. Many of their ancestors came in the late 18th century and settled in the Appalachians. Many were Presbyterian. Back then, the majority of Irish immigration was Protestant.

Loads. Americans seem to take the irish side of things when it comes to this probably because they are a little ignorant of these things. I have 2nd cousins in america and they put themselves down as irish when they really aren't. I think they arrived in the 19th century though.

dave2pvd · 18-05-2012 12:07PM

owenc wrote: »

Americans seem to take the irish side of things when it comes to this probably because they are a little ignorant of these things.

Why do you say that?

wonton · 18-05-2012 01:00PM

dave2pvd wrote: »

So just how many Americans that claim Irish descent are Scots-Irish? With names like Andrew Jackson. So many 'Irish' in the part of the US that I live in are this breed of Irish. Granted, some are O's or Mc's, but few and far between. Many of their ancestors came in the late 18th century and settled in the Appalachians. Many were Presbyterian. Back then, the majority of Irish immigration was Protestant.

about 2% of the population report scots irish, but in states like georgia where american is the biggest reported ancestry a lot of them are scots irish but since they have been there so long dont identify with it

pedroeibar1 · 18-05-2012 02:40PM

cormacocomhrai wrote: »

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

The anglicization I love of O’Cathain, which is Keane or Kane but Coen in Galway.

I'm not sure about that one. I think Coen is actually Ó Cadhain which is the same name as Kyne, Coyne and Barnacle.

Thanks for that CO'C, it makes more sense.
P.

cormacocomhrai · 18-05-2012 04:18PM

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

cormacocomhrai wrote: »

Thanks for that CO'C, it makes more sense.
P.

No worries. I'm not fully sure of it though. I'd have to check it out and I can't find my copy of de Bhuilbh's Sloinnte Gael is Gall.

cormacocomhrai · 18-05-2012 04:29PM

dubhthach wrote: »

Surnames can "daughter out" after all. Look at Mark Wahlberg he's more Irish then his swedish surname lets on. This is why he would be classed as Irish-American (Father is half swedish, half irish -- mother has some Irish ancestry). In his case his Irish surnames are all on female lines.

at the risk of derailing the thread
Bruce Springsteen is the same, a strong Irish influence through his father despite the name.
Gregory Peck was very closely related to Thomas Ashe who died after force-feeding while on hunger strike in 1917.
Martin Short the Canadian actor is of Crossmaglen stock.
Robert de Niro is the same.
Muhammed Ali is a Clareman and Che Guevara a Galwayman of course.

More seriously the names Folan and Powell from Galway have become Foley and Power in Connemara after sojourns in the States.

tac foley · 18-05-2012 08:58PM

cormacocomhrai wrote: »

More seriously the names Folan and Powell from Galway have become Foley and Power in Connemara after sojourns in the States.

'Foley' is said to have been derived from the Old Irish 'foghláda/foghládha - 'raider' or 'plunderer' - a clear pointer to Viking/Norse/Danish inroaders.

And of course, we must not overlook the present US president - Bairác Ó Bamheadhe.

tac

Cork boy 55 · 18-05-2012 09:11PM

How many people in the USA have an O'x in their surname?
it seems to be very few, Although characters with o'x names do seem tp appear in many hollywood movies.

dubhthach · 19-05-2012 12:33AM

tac foley wrote: »

'Foley' is said to have been derived from the Old Irish 'foghláda/foghládha - 'raider' or 'plunderer' - a clear pointer to Viking/Norse/Danish inroaders.

And of course, we must not overlook the present US president - Bairác Ó Bamheadhe.

tac

Foley can also be from Mac SEARRAIGH

Mac SEARRAIGH—IV—M'Sharrie, MacSharry, MacSherry, Sharry, Sherry, and, by translation, Feley, Foley; 'son of Searrach' (foal, flighty); an old Breifney surname; found in the 16th century in Leitrim, Cavan and Sligo, where it is still common; now also in Armagh and Donegal. There was also a family of the name in Co. Down which cannot now be traced unless changed to Ó Searraigh (which see), which is not improbable. Searrach signifies a foal, hence the translated forms Feley (Filly) and Foley, the latter common about the town of Sligo.

of course the only way to prove scandinavian origins would be to do a Y-Chromosome test. Generally there quite different proportions of Haplogroups (sub-groups of Y) in Scandinavia then in Ireland.

why are irish surnames not more common in america?

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