Was it common for Irish immigrants in the mid 1800's to change their names when moving to the Americas?

Question

My great great grandfather was Irish and moved to Canada in the late 1840's. My family has plenty of documentation on him and all of his descendants, as well as his brother (who came with him at the same time) and his descendants. The family did well after moving here, owned property and businesses, and became well known in the area so they are easy to find information on. The only problems is we can't find any trace of them in Ireland! All of his documents and records state Ireland as being his place of birth, as well as that of his brother, both their wives and several of their children

Is it possible they all changed their name for some reason when they moved? Both brothers were cobblers and they had an Irish last name. We've tried searching for all spelling variations and still nothing...

Answer 1

Sadly Irish records online are really lacking. I'm struggling to find a few Irish families.



You could try Geneological Societies or a Genealogical Researcher

Answer 2

I've done a lot of research on Irish immigrants into Canada and the U.S., and I don't think I've ever run across any of them making a drastic change to their surnames. But I have seen a lot of minor spelling changes, and many examples of families dropping the O' or the Mc from their names (often to pick it back up again later). It sounds like you've already considered those possibilities, though.



Ireland is a pretty big place. You'll have a lot more luck if you can determine where in Ireland your ancestors came from. In case you haven't already tried these, here are some records that might mention their hometown or home county in Ireland:



Naturalization records

Obituary

Tombstone inscription

Death Certificate

Birth or death certificate of the immigrant's children (lists parents birthplace)

Biography in local history books

Military records, if they served in the military

Answer 3

The best way to answer your question is to say that it was not UNCOMMON for name changes to occur. O'neil was changed to Neil; O'brian to Bryan or Brian,

The best way to research in Ireland is to research the parish records first, but that means you need to know where he was born and his parents names.

If you cannot find something through one on the many British Genealogy Sites going to Ireland without any information is a waste unless you just want to take a vacation to Ireland.

A Family History Center might be a good place to search, they have access to some of the British web sites and there is no fee to use the computers, the fee for copies is minimal.

Answer 4

Sometimes Irish surnames change their spelling particularly if spelled phonetically. For example, my great grandfather, John Dougherty, immigrated to Texas from Castlemore, Ontario, Canada, in the late 1880s. Both his parents and his grandparents came from Donegal, Ireland, and the family surname originally appears as Doherty.



I can find immigration records that indicate that John Dougherty's grandfather, Patrick Doherty, entered the United States in 1819 whereupon he petitioned the British embassy for permission to immigrate to Canada and then went back and collected his family, and they made the Atlantic crossing in 1821. However, I don't have any documentation of the family in Ireland.

Answer 5

I have run across the same problem. I have been to my great-great grandfathers home in County Leitrim and his surname was Doherty, but apparently all the children who came to America used the surname Dougherty. It drives me nuts too. There are a couple of possible reasons for this. One is that Doherty is more of a catholic name, where Dougherty is more of a Protestant name. Lets face it when our ancestors came to America they were looking for work and in America in the 1800 s it was still a very Protestant country and that could easily be the reason they changed their names. The other reason is the person writing their name down when they arrived at Castle Gardens wrote it the way he thought and it stayed that way or better still the person who wrote them up from where they came to America from. In my case my great-grandfather came from Innishowed and he left from Moville on the Innishowen Penninsula, but others left from Derry and the person writing them up could have written it Dougherty because the was the way they spelled it especially in a place like Derry.

Answer 6

No not really, but all records are not online, which is maybe why you are not finding them, they also may have been from the UK and took the ferry over to Ireland to take the boat from there or from Liverpool................ at the time of the famine there were many people who claimed to be Irish even though they may not have been as charities were paying their ship passages...it may not be the case for your ancestors but worth looking at UK records...again everything is not online which makes it difficult if you are not UK/Irish based............



During that time the islands of Britain and Ireland were all British people as Ireland was not a separate country , so you see it could easily be done,if they were born in Ireland anywhere on the island then their records will be in Dublin as Dublin was the UK second city and of course also in the church local to where they were born .........................



Add;As I said not all records are online and although family historians are transcribing in Ireland to get lots online they never will all be.....well not in our lifetime. I would suggest you get on some of the specialist UK/Irish forums where you can get specific help by researchers who live here, who are very helpful and unlike some of the huge American forums you are likely to get help within the hour, certainly within days as people will put details of the people you are looking for on their records office list and will even email you the scanned document. I'm English and now live in Ireland and have been transcribing records for near 20 years, so as I say they will not allbe online, the record mountain is high, with over 200 MILES of shelving of records in the National Archive in Kew alone, let alone Dublin Archives and PRONI...we are only just scratching the surface for online... a good site which has lots of UK/Irish links including UK/Irish forums is http://familytimeline.webs.com/apps/links/ look through them all as some are mixed in different sections and they have some transcriptions in the documents page too for both UK and Ireland........you know these ancestors of ours were really inconsiderate, so frustrating!!!



Passenger ship lists in the UK until VERY recently were just boxed, not in order,not indexed and they are just starting to index them now, it would take someone a 3 months full time in Kew just to look through them as you would have to look through them all and travel between mainland UK and Ireland is not documented even now.... I often wonder what someone looking at my life will make of it...sometimes I live in England and fill in the census there, sometime in Ireland and fill in that census...same as voting, working etc good job I write it all in my own 'history'