Nice Bill! Variant forms of names were used all over the place. Try mine Moore. Heck with 13 different lines from different country's. Whew!  I could be German, French, english, Scottish, heck even Irish. Then what happens if by chance someone married a Moore who was a Muir or Moar, but spelled their name Moore. Someone say DNA. O'Sulliban? Slan Seamus --- On Fri, 7/17/09, Bill Mulligan <billmulligan@murray-ky.net> wrote: From: Bill Mulligan <billmulligan@murray-ky.net> Subject: Re: [BEARA] O'Sullivan or Sullivan? To: beara@rootsweb.com Date: Friday, July 17, 2009, 10:06 AM Until quite recently, individuals answered a census taker's questions and the census taker recorded their answers.  Usually one person per household was consulted and in some cases neighbors supplied the information.  The individual being "counted" did not write on the form. The census takers were almost always middle class men.  I have seen census forms in the US where areas with a heavily Irish population were marked --"too dangerous to canvas" in the nineteenth century.  I have also seen the O in Irish surnames recorded as a middle initial with a period after it on census forms in the US and on other official forms in the US and the UK.  This is also why names, both surnames and forenames are often spelled in variant forms from form to form and people sometimes gave inaccurate information, especially about ability to read and write and marital status. They wanted to avoid embarrassing themselves by admitting illiteracy, for example, to a well-dressed, middle class and possibly condescending census taker. The census schedules are not perfect -- just track people's ages from census to census and you'll be convinced.    Sometimes the presence or absence of O and Mac, in its variant forms, can be a hint as to when emigration took place because there was a time when the use of O and Mac was dropped and people would have had a practice of using the "legal" form with officials.  Resumption began with the rise of the Gaelic league in 1893, but was uneven.  Edward MacLysaght's various books on Irish surnames discuss this and are very useful.  If you trace far enough back there are a variety of English forms for Gaelic names.  O Maolagain, for example, can also be Milligan, Molohan, or Baldwin. (O Maolagain is generally translated as descendant of the Maol (bald one).) claiamhain isteach had a mildly pejorative meaning.  Bill Mulligan William H. Mulligan, Jr., Ph.D. Professor of History Graduate Program Coordinator Murray State University Murray KY 42071-3341 USA Office: 1-270-809-6571 Fax: 1-270-809-6587 ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to BEARA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message