Oh My Heavens - I'm Irish! Why Finding Your Irish Roots Used to Be So Difficult.

For a person delving into their Irish family tree
is that a good thing or a bad thing? For many genealogists
with Irish roots it "could" be a bad thing if you believe
what you may have been told about records that do not exist.

According to a 2006 survey there are over 35 million people
claiming Irish decent in the United States, and while only
second to people of German heritage the records available
are somewhat sketchy according to the major genealogical
sites.

Here is the good news. If you are of Irish decent and you
have not been able to pinpoint your family in Ireland there
may be a few reasons why.

Name Changes: A couple of interesting facts that are not
well known... The first being, that in Ireland the surname "English"
usually cannot be found in most written records. The surname used is
GOLLGOGHLY, or some variation thereof and for those of you
who don't speak Irish, who would have known?

The reason for this is the Irish translated the surname "English"
into the Irish translation for the WORD "english", which is Gollgoghly
in most of their written records.

Here is what can be confusing, the GOLLGOGHLY's when
coming to America in many cases used the English NAME
"English" because many were illiterate and could not read, write or
spell their own Irish names and saying them with their traditional
heavy accent did not help the people who were at the port of call
writing them down as they arrived.

The United States was a fledgling country at this time so used
people of many ethnicities with their own limitations with the
English language to write the records that we now rely on
to find our roots.

Another interesting little known Irish Names fact is in the
16th century England passed a law outlawing the use of "O"
or "Mc" or "Mac" before Irish surnames in an attempt to "civilize the
wild Irish", according to one researcher.

In 1896 this law was rescinded, and many Irish in England put
those prefixes back on their names.

So when searching for your Irish roots that came through the
ports of America or England keep in mind that you will want
to translated those names and/or that they may have dropped
and then added back common Irish prefixes.

Recently, an Irish records site has come online that does
some of this thinking for you, you don't need to translate
the name and once believed to be non existent records are
coming online. You can find it at http://www.rootsireland.ie

These records were only previously available by traveling to
Ireland and in many cases because they are church owned you
could not get access to them.

This is an all volunteer site transcribing the non-public
church records of Ireland. While they do charge to view the
actual transcriptions, to search is free and could possibly
unlock the door to your search for family in Ireland.

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