Hi Andrew, >I recently received a tip from someone who stated that the surname >McAbistin is sometimes translated into English as Austin. Has anyone >heard of this name? Does it appear in any of the Irish surname books? When people tell you these things, you need to ask them their source. If they live in Ulster and say that's what people right here say, that's important. However they also may be identifying a local history that may be true (but unprovable) for folk of that surname in that townland -- and not for anywhere else on the planet. Ireland has a huge wealth of genealogical information -- but in order to be able to determine how likely some info is to be true or even helpful to you you must know the source. Austin and McAbistin are not among the 500 commonest names, so they are not in Bell "Book of Ulster Surnames". I checked Brian Mitchell "Surnames of Derry". This is an EVERY NAME book of all the names in the 1989 Foyle Community Directory: 1,860 unique names. Austin is there. He tells us there were 10 families and that the surname is English and Scots and has been in Ireland since the 14th century. No McAbistin. No name in Ireland that I can find like McAbistin, but I don't have every book, so search on. With a rare name like this, when you find it in a locale, you can be pretty sure you've found your relations (unless half of Tipperary has this name <grin>... nope, half of Tipperary is surnamed Ryan!). Linda Merle