All right, here's an Irish-themed question I bet no one can answer...

[GaYellowDawg]

On Ellis Island and many other immigration sites, lots of immigrants' names and surnames were Anglicized.

I've got a friend whose last name is O'Dell. I've told him that he's not Irish, he's English. The spelling of the name was originally Odell, a county in England, but someone at some point thought that it was an Irish name like O'Donnell and stuck the apostrophe in there. He doesn't believe me and continues to claim St. Patrick's Day as a holiday. OK, fine, wear the shamrock, etc. He's not hurting anyone.

My real question is this: if making a name more English is Anglicizing it, what do you call making a name more Irish? I'm hoping for a straight answer amongst all the "Guinnessizing" type answers.

[unpossibles]

1. Eirizing? Limmericking? Shillelaghcizing? n/t

[skygazer]

2. Eireating

You have to admit, it's better than "Guennessizing."

[GaYellowDawg]

5. That may be the single funniest thing I've ever seen on DU.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Richard Steele]

20. That's fricking BRILLIANT!

Should the occasion ever arise, THAT's the word I'm using!
Webster can get over it!

[JoDog]

3. I think

It would be "Gaelicizing" after Gaelic, the language of Ireland and the Gaels, the Celtic inhabitants of Ireland and Scotland.

Jodog--whose Irish family name survived immigration, but the Swedish side wasn't so lucky.

[SteppingRazor]

4. Irishize. As in the phrase "When Irishized are smiling"

:D


Man, I'm on a roll today.

Seriously, though, I think JoDog's right.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

6. Celtization

[Gormy Cuss]

7. Setting aside your real question, let me address two other commnets.

"Changed at Ellis Island" is a common myth. Ellis Island and other gateways received ship's manifests and accepted the name as it appeared. In the case of the Irish, the change was made at the originating port in Europe. If a passenger was not asked to spell the name and was not able to read the written record, the name may have retained that spelling in the U.S. Most family stories of Ellis Island changes are really distorted memories of how the change came about. The surname simplification or Anglicization was made after arriving in the U.S.

Second, your O'Dell friend who insists he's Irish and your explanation that his surname is English can both be correct. There are non-Gaelic surnames among the Irish. He may have had a long lost English ancestor or the family assumed the name for some other reason but if they lived in Ireland for more than a generation after that chances are quite good that they married Irish women.

[JoDog]

8. Both happened to my ancestors

I'm a quarter Irish and a quarter Swede. The rest of my lineage is made of many delightful European locations and one American Indian tribe.

My Swedish great-grandfather made the crossing in 1906. Originally, his surname was spelled "Kollander" with the stress on the first syllable "kol". In Swedish, the name was 2 words smooshed together--"kol" (black) and "lander" (from the land, of the land) and was pronounced as such. Somewhere on his way to becoming an American, it was changed to "Collander", pronounced like the strainer "colander".

By Bavarian ancestors changed their name themselves. When they immigrated in the 1830's, the name was "Maas." By the 1850's, it was "Morse", the name the family has to this day.

[GaYellowDawg]

25. Both good points. Thank you!

I'll pass it on to him, and confine my St, Patrick's Day comments to advice not to drink too much green beer! :thumbsup:

[Beer Snob-50]

9. Does anyone know what the irish sit on in the summer?

Patio furniture.

[AllegroRondo]

10. I worked with a man named O'Preska, but he was Dutch.

The family name was originally just Preska. When his family came over from Holland, they were on a ship of mostly Irish immigrants. But when they signed the ships manifest, they saw all the other names like "O'Reily" and "O'Connor" and thought thats what you did when you came to the US - you put an "O" in front of your name. So the name became O'Preska.

[Phillycat]

11. Gaelicizing?

[idgiehkt]

17. that would be my guess.

:shrug:

[Orsino]

12. "Perfecting." n/t

[Aristus]

13. Someone did that to an ancestor of mine.

His name was John O. Gwynne and he was from Wales. After his arrival in the States, it was changed somehow to John O'Gwynne.

[evlbstrd]

14. Gaelicizing.

[LibertyLover]

15. When my grandfather emigrated to the US from Ireland

his family name was MacCostello (original Gaelic is mac Oisdealbhaigh). He came through Boston, not Ellis Island, and in the process, the "mac" was dropped. We pronounce the name with the emphasis on the first sylable, COS te lo, rather than the Italian pronounciation of cos TEL o. Of course, the original name was derived from the Norman French name of Jocelyn, so go figure.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

16. Gaelicisation

St. Patrick was originally from Britain(1) anyway, so one can still be English and celebrate the holiday anyway. Although one doesn't need to be Irish to enjoy St.Patrick's Day, it's just a nice party holiday.

(1)There is dispute amongst historians whether St. Patrick originated from Wales, or in fact from south-western England.

[Bridget Burke]

27. Neither "Wales" nor "England" existed in Patrick's day.

England was not "England" until the Anglo-Saxons (which the Irish & Scottish sometimes call "Sassenach") arrived.

The Anglo-Saxons, in turn, labelled the Romano-British as Walha, meaning 'foreigner' or 'stranger'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wales

Patrick was probably a real person, although much legend became attached to his name. He was not the only--or even the first--Christian missionary to the Irish.

Of course, all this is quibbling--but some of us love this sort of quibble!

[idgiehkt]

18. My family name was anglicized too

On the paternal side it used to be LLoyd, which was Scottish. They changed the spelling to Lyde because that was how it sounded when it was spoken with their accents.

[Left Is Write]

19. My family name ends in "son", but it may actually have originally been "sen" and changed

when my great-grandfather came to the U.S. My dad had some paperwork that makes it appear to be the case.

[Solon]

21. Here's an interesting one...

My Mother's maiden name is Roche, oddly enough, through my Dad's Genealogy project, we found out the name comes from Ireland, not France, or, its probably more accurate to say the name is from both. , our family, back in the 12th century immigrated to Ireland, then part of the family moved to America. The name, in Ireland, was originally, "De la Roche" then was changed to just "Roche" when immigrated to the United States.

Ireland is one of those nations where immigrants end up "going native" really quick, or, I should say, they end up "More Irish than the Irish".

My Dad's name, though, is simpler in origin, its both Irish and Scottish.

[Kutjara]

22. The religious struggles of the Reformation and Counter Reformation...

...shifted large portions of the European population around. For that reason alone, surname is not necessarily a good guide to nationality.

My family name is Guerin, yet we're Irish going back umpteen generations. Seems some of our ancestors were Hugenots, fleeing some persecution or other, and ended up in Ireland. Quite a few Irish names are actually French. Another significant group are Spanish (some of the Armada survivors didn't return to Spain).

[Solon]

23. That's true...

Europe, for various reasons, was a place where people moved from one nation to another for various, differing, reasons. Though, in the case of the Roche family, it wasn't the Reformation, but the Anglo-Norman invasion that they followed.

[JoDog]

26. A friend's family has a similar story

She is descended on her mother's side from Jewish soldiers who were hired by the British to suppliment their troops in Ireland sometime in the 17th or 18th centuries. They took the English name of "Swords" after their armaments and the town they settled. They went native after they were granted land near where Swords castle now stands. They stayed Jewish, but the women of the clan also practiced native Irish magic. (I'm not sure how that worked). A branch of the family emigrated to Louisiana in the late 18th century.

[deucemagnet]

24. Hiberniation?

:shrug: