A recent article by New York Times columnist and linguist John McWhorter deals with the way Black American English is becoming a language option available to everyone, of whatever ethnic background. (True that, John). In the course of the article he mentions in passing that regional accents are very weak in the US in comparison to elsewhere.
Irish regional accents, on the other hand, are one of the glories of humanity. The late actor June Whitfield, well known for her facility with accents, was once asked to sound Ulster, so she took on the Antrim burr common in north Belfast. The director then asked her to soften it to something from Bangor in Co. Down. She asked ‘Which street in Bangor?’
All of which led me to realise that Irish regional accents must also be one of the banes of pre-literate record-keeping, and that Americans researching Irish records are unlikely to be aware of the extent to which accents may have coloured and distorted what they’re looking for.
Just as “tea” becomes “tay” in the West, Keane becomes Kane, Deane becomes Dane, Heaney becomes Hayney… As eggs are laid by “hins” in south Roscommon, so Lenihan becomes Linihan and Grenham, Grinham. Slavin becomes Slevan and Sugrue becomes Shoughroe and Geehan becomes Guiheen and in Belfast, Lane becomes “Leayen” and Strain becomes “Streayen”.
I could go on. One thing almost all these distortions have in common is that the culprits are vowels, because vowels are where most accents live. So to get a sense of what’s possible, take out the vowels from the surname you think your ancestors had and substitute them with wildcards. Have a go here.
A Belfast newsreader on Ireland’s RTÉ gives me a little thrill every time she says “reayin”. Given the weather here, she has to say “reayin” a lot. Lucky me.
We did a bicycle trip along the western coast from northern Donegal to Cork City, what is now considered the Wild Atlantic Way quite a few years ago before it was a thing. In Kerry, a lady sitting in her car in her front yard beckoned us in and we camped in her back yard. She was really friendly and hospitable but we never understood a single word she said the whole time we were there. So in our experience the Kerry accent exceeds the Cork accent. And they say the Australian accent/lingo is hard to understand!
Talking about RTE weather forecasters, what about Jean Byrne back in the day…phwar!!!
Ouch for poor Jean, you qualified it with back in the day! They are all grand girls (and a few grand fellas).
Good article and a super relevant topic at the moment. Regional dialect I’ve found is incredibly helpful in targeting locations and accurate spellings, as well as understanding how words were pronounced historically.
I’m currently working on three volumes of the inquests of County Monaghan coroner, William Charles Waddell (1789-1878) for the Irish Manuscripts Commission. In doing the transcriptions of 1,223 inquests (plus 200+ inquiries) that provide witness testimony describing the circumstances surrounding each death, the scribe (sometimes the coroner, sometimes an assistant) takes down the language often phonetically. This is particularly helpful with townlands and place names – Lisluncheon [correctly spelled Lislynchahan] or Ballanure [Ballynure] to get a better understanding of what the Monaghan regional dialect sounded like in the 19th century. Found some Irish words written down as well – like Lare [correctly spelled, Lár] which means ground, middle or centre (of the road…in this instance) and several others.
Michelle McGoff-McCann, PhD.
Author of ‘The Irish Coroner: Death, Murder and Politics in Co. Monaghan, 1846-78’ (Four Courts Press, 2023)
https://irishhistorians.ie/members/mccamic/
Gives some insight into why the O’Dochartaigh surname of Inishowen, Co. Donegal has 300+ variants! We pronounce “Doherty” as “Dorty” and there is indeed a surname variant in the US with that very spelling as well as the obvious spelling evolutions such as Dougherty, Daughtery and Darity. Great article as always, John
The pronunciation Bangor in Maine USA is the subject of a joke only appropriate if told in a locker room.
John, you are so right and your advice about substituting the vowels is invaluable. My grandmother was called Cecilia Collins. I eventually located her in the 1901 Census of Ireland recorded as ‘Shelia Colons’… and her religion as ‘R Cathlock’!
That explains alot as I peruse Irish marriage and death records in County Galway Ireland and the spelling of place names.
My second great grandmother was Mary Aide. I’ve seen Aid, Aide, Aede, Ayde, Eade, and Heade in records.
I do recall, still quite vividly, seeking help at a petrol station in Mallow, north of Cork. In the back of our rental Escort Wagon was our luggage all clearly tagged with the Canadian flag. I spoke with the young lad that came to assist, and his reply was completely incomprehensible to me and he realized from the puzzled look on my face. He then spoke, at perhaps quarter speed, and I was able to comprehend every word. He mentioned seeing the luggage and the look on my face as the hint he needed to slow down and speak clearly.
My mother’s maiden name is McElveen. Yet, when I peruse the US census records going back to the beginning of time 😉 in Georgia and South Carolina, I find as many variations as previous responses have with their names. And mine has only to concern an A or no! And an E or an I or how many Es! It all has to do with those silly vowels. My dad had the Burns/Burnes/Byrns and the Craig variations. As always, your post inspires!
If it helps, try reading parish records in the local accent ~ if you are familiar with it.
Accents vary from town to town, even every few miles. What about the long I of the Déise [West Waterford] where Geary changes to Guiry, Christina to Christ-eyena (as in tie-dye), Kelly or Keely to Kiely, and Eamonn is pronounced to Yamun and often written that way. That long I was also found in parts of Limerick and Kilkenny. And there are so many other local accents.
But my favourite is the Cork accent only 30 miles away and quite different~ think of “The Young Offenders.”
Home Sweet Home.
John, You spoke at an Irish family history conference in Waltham, Mass. in 2014, which I attended. You said in one lecture, ‘Leave out all the vowels’ and I have done that ever since with great results. Just one example: One of my names in Bruton, with unending mis-transcribed versions and so hard to search. But search ‘B*T*N’ and miracles happen. Yes, a lot of wrong hits but many successes as well. Thank you, as always.
My Mann ancestors from Kilclonfert Co Offaly are in the church records along with the name Maughan. Then there is the name Mahon close by. So Mnn and Mghn and Mhn. Hmm, there is reason for confusion when I consider the Y DNA test has my original ancestor as Scandinavian. Yes, Viking-Irish. So I have tentatively concluded that Maughan and possibly the local Mahon spelling variant are very likely corruptions. Kevin Mann
Your article reminds me of our visit to Ireland from New York back in January. We had the most hilarious exchange with the agent for a car rental company at the Dublin Airport. He went on for ten minutes showcasing his version of many of his favorite dialects from across Ireland. These things must be so recognizable to you native Irish and must be the grist for many stand-up comics!
Oh, I have a story on this one – myself a 3rd generation (or 4th? not sure about the counting) Irish-American whose main Ireland travel was more than a half century ago, age 21 and hitching around the island, loving the sing-song lilt in Cork, excitedly asking a couple of fellow-hostelers on the Ring of Kerry what language that was the farmers were speaking over the fence, and the two Dublin sisters, on their way home from a spell in the Gaeltacht, listening closely and shaking their heads in confusion.
I have a thing for accents and language (love John McWhorter) and had noticed the Keane/Kane and Healy/Haley effect on the records, but the revelation came through the struggle to find our McNerney ancestors in Bristol. My great-grandmother’s parents had made it out of SW Clare, for sure undernourished and traumatized, right after the Great Hunger, got themselves to Bristol, labored away and died fairly young of “exhaustion.” Only one or two records popped up in ancestry.com searches, til the day I decided to go through the Catholic registers of Bristol, page by page. Hang on – there’s my great-grandmother Bridget’s baptism in 1861, everything right except the surname McKnarhny. I’m tsking at the English incompetence with Irish names, continue searching Bristol records and turn up over time: McNaghty, McMerckney, McNenkeney, and after 1871 McNerney and McAnerney. Slowly it came to me that these misspellings were not the idiocy of English clerks (and in the churches the names were probably written by Irish priests), but rather they attested to the very best transcription of what the writer was hearing. Our Co. Clare McNerneys weren’t literate, but I can almost hear them repeating their name several times until the recorder got it. (When you think about it the clerks could have done so much worse and just dropped in McInerney, better known, but not really what they were hearing.) I’d have to get myself to SW Clare (Kilmihil, Lissycasey area) to check it, but I think I’d hear not only these vowel sounds, but also the strong gutteral that gets rendered with a Kn or gh or ck, and also that little extra syllable that we hear when the Irish pronounce fil-um. (As an Irish student I was delighted to hear it yesterday on Raidio na Gaeltachta in the lovely word “borb.”) There it is, that little schwa syllable, in several of the McNerney spellings, between the r and n consonants. The “misspellings” revealed a small world to me. Having spent years teaching English language learners, I also realized the poignancy that by the time the children were school-age, the spellings improved, as they were probably the ones to negotiate conversation with officials who came to the door, including census takers.
Thanks so much for bringing this issue into focus. For me these records opened the door into the past a bit wider, and the spellings I’d mocked I now treasure.
I’ve struggled for years searching for a connection between the late 1600s-early 1700s folks in Northern Ireland with surname Douthart, Dowther, Douthard, etc. and my late 1700s ancestors in Virginia and Kentucky with the name Douthard/Douthat/Dowthit/Douthitt. Thank goodness for wildcards!
My illiterate Healys were Haleys in all the records presumably transcribed from their pronunciation of the name (census, local tax etc.) for the first ~20 years in Canada (1841+). The first son and his descendants became/are Healeys, the second son and his, Healys . No idea their Irish place of origin.
My Haley / Healy / Hely ancestors were from Abbeydorney, near Tralee, Kerry.
The seven known siblings born between 1824 – 1845 all eventually settled a few miles north of Macon, Missouri by ~ 1870.
The youngest of the seven spelled his surname “Healey”, but the other six stuck with “Healy” … mostly.
Their father eventually followed them to the US, and died in Missouri; his surname was spelled “Haley” on his tombstone.
My grandmother, Bessie Honora Healy, informed us that her dad was known as “Bill HAY-lee” in Missouri, but became “Will HEE-lee” when he finally married and began farming in Washington State.
Indeed my family search was disabled for several decades as I searched for a Limerick ‘Raleigh’ in the RIC only to crack the case when ‘Soundex’ searches emerged and I discovered ‘Rawly’, ‘Rawley’, ‘Rahilly’ et al and ultimately found that said Constable described himself and his children by several variations of that spelling in multiple public records. Rather, the administration clerk in the relevant office recorded a particular spelling of the name according to what they thought they heard, filtered through regional accents, from the speaker and the listener.
Sadly, the second generation of my ancestors to America in the late 19th century, the Hoares, had to change their name to their mother’s maiden name. No need to explain why I guess.
“vowels are where most accents live” – fabulous article John. Love your work.