With Karlee Twiner
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Each month, we publish a request or two that comes addressed to our genealogy expert Karlee Twiner, to assist with ideas and strategies that might help dismantle an Irish by Ancestry member’s brick wall.
This request comes from Katie, who is seeking name clarification of ancestors who emigrated from Co. Cavan.
QUESTION:
Here is one of my brick wall ancestors. This is Mary, born in 1842 in Ireland. She is a potato famine survivor.
Now the problem is, I grew up thinking her name was Henchy or Hinchey. But I’ve also seen it spelled Hinshey, Henshey, and Hinch.
She married James Lackey, which is also spelled a bunch of different ways on different censuses. He was born in 1830 in Lattoon, Cavan, Ireland. They met in the U.S. after both immigrated.
My question is: What is the best guess on how they would spell both names in Ireland?
Thanks 🙂
Katie Lynch
ANSWER:
Hello Katie,
This is a common issue that many people run into with genealogy. The simple answer is that any of the spellings you mentioned could be used in Ireland. That in and of itself is not very helpful, so I will elaborate.
Name standardization didn’t really start to become a thing until rather recently. People weren’t concerned as much with the spelling of things, because they didn’t need to write down their names as much, and many were not literate in the way that we consider literate. They may have been able to read and write, but spelling was often done phonetically or just however the person writing wanted to spell it. There are regional spellings of names but again doesn’t mean that’s how your ancestors would have spelled it.
I would suggest searching on johngrenham.com as the website shows distribution of surnames around Ireland based on Griffith’s Valuation in the mid-1800s. It also gives you variations and a surname dictionary to tell you where the name comes from, how common it is, and sometimes an actual meaning behind the name. Based on what I saw on John Grenham’s website for you, I would say that Henchy is the most likely surname for your family, but that isn’t a guarantee.
The unfortunate answer in all of this is that the only way to truly do good research is to search on all of the variations of the name. Whether your family had a particular spelling that they DID use, they usually wouldn’t have been the ones writing down names in records. So even if your family does have a standard name, you should always be open to variants and search on them. Indexes also can cause issues in this regard, as sometimes the indexer or the handwriting recognition program doesn’t read the record correctly, so even if the actual record has the “correct” spelling, the information you’re actually searching to find the original record is not correct.
An example of this from my own family is that I have an uncommon last name (Twiner). I often will also search for “Turner” because that’s a more common name that indexers and even AI are more willing to accept when they’re putting together an index. Even though to me a record clearly says “John Twiner,” I may not find it unless I search for “John Turners.”
I hope this was helpful!
Karlee
Do you have a tough question for Karlee? Send your request with the subject line Ask the Heritage Help Desk to stories@byancestry.com, and yours could be chosen for next month’s column.
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