Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Names changing between generations

Options
  • 29-10-2014 1:07pm
    #1
    MargeS
    Registered Users Posts: 1,002 ✭✭✭


    I've gone back quite a ways with one side of my family. The surname is Whelan, but I've discovered that it seems to have started as Phelan.

    I know that Phelan is a known version of Whelan, but does this mean that the family consciously changed their name? It does seem to coincide with a move to another county but it seems like a big name change even with its sound, F to W.


Comments

  • Options
    #2
    campingcarist
    Registered Users Posts: 337 ✭✭campingcarist


    If you have found this in the early 1900s or eaelier, it could be poor writing and mistaking W for a Ph. I think I found this on census forms some time ago.


  • Options
    #3
    who the fug
    Registered Users Posts: 4,041 ✭✭✭who the fug


    MargeS wrote: »
    I've gone back quite a ways with one side of my family. The surname is Whelan, but I've discovered that it seems to have started as Phelan.

    I know that Phelan is a known version of Whelan, but does this mean that the family consciously changed their name? It does seem to coincide with a move to another county but it seems like a big name change even with its sound, F to W.

    My surname has a British Naval spelling, a very bad spelling of the Irish, and now has An O in front of it because some Englishman pissed off my 16 year old grandfather.


    Also seen it spelt the Nordy way, (No not north of the Blackwater up Ulster way)

    All this between 1850 and 1920.


  • Options
    #4
    Micilin Muc
    Registered Users Posts: 2,842 ✭✭✭Micilin Muc


    The family might have been known locally or identified themselves as Ó Faoláin, rather than Whelan or Phelan, but it could have been that the registrar in one county translated and entered it as Whelan, and the registrar in the other county translated and entered it as Phelan. This kind of discrepancy was very common in Irish-speaking areas, but could have been prevalent across the country.


  • Options
    #5
    Waitsian
    Registered Users Posts: 1,708 ✭✭✭Waitsian


    I've seen records of my Kerry ancestors variously spelt O'Dowd, O'Dodd, Dowd, Doud and O'Dowde; also a Cavan ancestor with her name spelt Denvir, Danaher, Dennifer and Denoir. A lot of people couldn't read or write their own name so various registrars or priests or anyone else taking down the name would have spelt it as they heard it, or guessed, especially unusual names or those not common locally.


  • Options
    #6
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,108 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    Micilin Muc wrote: »
    The family might have been known locally or identified themselves as Ó Faoláin, rather than Whelan or Phelan, but it could have been that the registrar in one county translated and entered it as Whelan, and the registrar in the other county translated and entered it as Phelan. This kind of discrepancy was very common in Irish-speaking areas, but could have been prevalent across the country.
    This. Or different members of the family could have anglicised the name differently.
    mod9maple wrote: »
    I've seen records of my Kerry ancestors variously spelt O'Dowd, O'Dodd, Dowd, Doud and O'Dowde; also a Cavan ancestor with her name spelt Denvir, Danaher, Dennifer and Denoir. A lot of people couldn't read or write their own name so various registrars or priests or anyone else taking down the name would have spelt it as they heard it, or guessed, especially unusual names or those not common locally.
    Also this. Standardised spelling of names (or indeed of anything else) is a fairly modern preoccupation. There are six surviving signatures from William Shakespeare, for example; one of them is abbreviated ("Willm Shakp") and in the other five he uses four different spellings of his surname (Shaksper, Shakspe, Shakspere, Shakspeare). The spelling we are familar with he did not use at all.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #7
    Taajsgpm
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 65 ✭✭Taajsgpm


    What is the difference between Mc and Mac ? Ive always wondered about that or is it really just the same thing?


  • Options
    #8
    Peregrinus
    Registered Users Posts: 26,108 ✭✭✭✭Peregrinus


    There's no difference. They are simply alternative anglicisations of the Gaelic Mac. You'll sometimes see claims that one anglicisation originates in Scotland and the other in Ireland, and thus it's a pointer to the remote origins of the family concerned, but there is no substance to this.


  • Options
    #9
    BigCon
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,836 ✭✭✭BigCon


    Phelan and Whelan were both called Whelan around here by the older generation (pronounced Whale-an).
    Now there's 4 ways of pronouncing the names (Fail-an, Feel-an, Whale-an and Wheel-an)!
    It wouldn't have been such a big name change back then as they were probably called Whale-an regardless of how it was spelled...


  • Options
    #10
    Qualitymark
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,824 ✭✭✭Qualitymark


    These can also happen when someone can't himself write, and says the name; Whelan and Phelan can sound alike in a western accent. It can happen when a clerk is taking notes for records, as in the Griffith Valuations, and takes a run at how names are spelled.

    The M', Mc, Mac thing came about through the banning of names with Mac and O; there were two workarounds - to call yourself Connell or to call yourself M'Connell. When this relic of slavery was abandoned from the 1890s onwards, people changed back the spelling of their names - a name often, as in my family, graduating from M'Donough to McDonogh to McDonagh to MacDonagh to Mac Donnchadha, with every variation in between.

    It makes it maddening reading many records; some aren't even searchable, of course, but the ones that are searchable need multiple searches for variant spellings.


Advertisement