Distortion Of Irish Surnames (cont.)

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. - 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.