Surnames and Locations from Parish Newsletter

This research was made possible by a generous grant from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Virtually all Irish Travellers are Catholics and virtually all of them mark the great turning-points of life (birth, marriage, death…) with church ceremonies. Their mobility may keep them outside standard parish-based structures, in which they may also feel unwelcome or misunderstood. Territorially-defined parishes are complemented by The Parish of the Travelling People, a Dublin-based outreach service. It issues a newsletter which, in addition to its coverage of spiritual themes and Parish-organised events such as pilgrimages, also carries death and marriage notices, and includes many photographs of weddings, first communions and confirmations, all of which may or may not have been handled by the Parish. I have examined as many issues as I could access, spanning 1991-2006, noting surnames and locations as well as which surnames are paired in marriage (covered separately as “Who marries who”).

In the newsletter, locations are sometimes given in minute detail, as an individual estate, site or even street (all of these are in the greater Dublin area). I felt that putting that much detail on the worldwide web would invade people’s privacy, so the compromise has been to divide Dublin into City Centre, Northside, Southside and Dublin West (“Dublin east” is the Bay). Under each of these area headings I note the placenames that have cropped up in it, then surnames in alphabetical order followed by a number indicating how many different places within the area each was mentioned in – but not which ones. Note that how many different places a name crops up in doesn’t tell you how often it crops up.

At the other end of the scale, placenames are sometimes vague (“England”) – I pass them on for what they’re worth. Where no location was mentioned, I have not included the surname.

Thanks to Father Stephen, Geraldine, Kyron and everyone else in the Parish office who helped me class obscure Dublin locations. They also identified some unusual surnames as nonTraveller (e.g. the summer 2002 issue covers the funeral of DTEDG/Pavee Point founder John O’Connell, attended by many people from both communities) and these have not been included. Where I am not certain whether an unusual surname refers to a Traveller, I include it followed by a (?). Some of these may be typographical errors: for example I was surprised to see neighbours listed as “Mochan” when the whole family spells their name “Maughan”.

Please bear in mind that this information comes from as far back as 1991, and only includes people who had christenings, weddings etc. during this period, that came to the attention of the Parish. The list is neither up-to-date nor exhaustive, but it is interesting.