Dave, Many thanks for your interesting insight into the history of the name Phibbs. And I agree with you, it does sometimes make it difficult if the name is unusual as records can then end up with many variants of the spelling. I had an experience with a very easy name being turned into something else recently. I had been trying to find a Marian Nolan (mentioned here http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=%22notice+to+marian+nolan%22) only to find that her name was actually Mary Ann. The problem was that her first Husband Dennis Nolan (who also variously went by the name Daniel Nolan, Dennis Daniel Nolan and Dennis Nowland) could not read or write so I'm assuming that he could not have easily corrected the spelling of names when he saw them in print and nor could he spell out the names. Just makes the job of researching more exciting! Pia. From: Dave H <[email protected]> Subject: Re: FERMANAGH-GOLD The name Phibbs, Ffibbs, Phillips Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 11:14:13 +0000 It makes it easier to trace and find records when the name is a little unusual but also difficult because of the various spellings used The earliest record of this family is found in a list of names of subscribers to a loan raised in 1589, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, to defray expenses incurred during the arming of the country at the time of the threatened Spanish Armada. The name there appears as Phillips, as it also does in the official list of High Sheriffs for co. Sligo, as , late as 1716, where Mathew Phibbs, of Templevaney, is styled Mathew Phillips. Of this family, two brothers came over to Ireland, as soldiers, about 1590. >From records now existing in Trin. Coll. Dublin, they are found on half-pay, 1616 and 1619, under the name of Phipps, a name that some of the younger branches of the family resumed about 1765. Of these two, William settled in co. Cork, in the south-west of which county the name still remains as Ffibbs. DH