This comes up every now and then. The different spellings were for most part phonetic spellings of the same name as they moved to different areas and spelt it according to the local dialect pronunciation. On top of that when people moved to America in those days the customs and immigration would do the same thing or shorten a complicated name to make it pronounceable. Bernstein's were changed to Burns at customs so they would have had no trouble with Bierne to Burns. Chris Burns ----- Original Message ----- From: "Francine G. Weeks" <fifi36@comcast.net> To: <BURNS-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2003 11:20 AM Subject: [BURNS] the Irish BURNS families? > My Burns ancestors, from Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland, was originally BEIRNE, which was also spelled BERNE, BEIRN & BERN back in the old country. > I can only trace this family as far back as 1812, when my great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth BEIRNE, was married at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Boyle. > When her son Robert, my great-grandfather, married Mary LYNCH in Boston, MA in 1859, Elizabeth's maiden name appeared on his marriage certificate as Elizabeth BURNS. From that, I'm assuming that other Irish families with the surname BEIRNE also adopted the Americanized name of BURNS. > Does anyone know anything about this? > Fran Weeks > > > ============================== > To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: > http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237 >