This issue’s Roots column is slightly different from the traditional format. Instead of looking at a single surname, or different but etymologically related surnames, I examine three unique but phonetically and geographically related family names. This is in part practical – the names are relatively uncommon compared to our usual surnames, so information on them is scarcer – … [Read more...] about Roots: The Macs
February March 2015 Issue
Photo Album: John Harrington
My great-great-grandfather John Harrington’s family had probably been in the Beara peninsula of southwest Ireland for many generations before he emigrated in 1848, during the Great Hunger. In Irish, the ancestral name was probably Ó hIongardail (anglicized to Harrington for ease of entry into tenant logs after the land seizures of the 17th century), a name associated with an … [Read more...] about Photo Album: John Harrington