But it is the last sixty years that have made most havoc with our Milesian names. It seemed as if the people were possessed with a mania for changing them to something--anything at all, only to get rid of the Milesian sound. "Why," said O'Connell, once talking to a mass-meeting of Lord Chancellor Sugden, "you wouldn't call a decent pig Sugden." Yet he never uttered a word of remonstrance at the O'Lahiffs, O'Brollahans, and MacRorys becoming under his eyes Guthrys, Bradleys, and Rogerses. It is more than a little curious, and a very bad augury for the future independence of Ireland, that men of education and intelligence like Carleton the novelist, or Hardiman, author of the "History of Galway" and the "Irish Minstrelsy," should have changed their Milesian names, one from that of O'Cairellan, who was ancient chief of Clandermot, the other from the well-known name of O'Hargadain. In Connacht alone I know scores of Gatelys, Sextons, Baldwins, Foxes, Coxes, Footes, Greenes, Keatings, who are really O'Gatlies, O'Sesnans, O'Mulligans, O'Shanahans, MacGillacullys, O'Trehys, O'Honeens, and O'Keateys. The O'Hennesys are Harringtons, the O'Kinsellaghs, Kingsleys and Tinslys, the O'Feehillys Pickleys, and so on. O'Donovan, writing in 1862, gives a list of names which had recently been changed in the neighbourhood of Cootehill, Co. Cavan. These Irish names of MacNebo, MacIntyre, MacGilroy, MacTernan, MacCorry, MacOscar, MacBrehon, O'Clery, Murtagh, O'Drum, &c., were becoming, or had become, Victory, Victoria, Callwell, Freeman, King, Nugent, Gilman, Leonard, Godwin, Goodwin, Smyth, Golderich, Golding, Masterton, Lind, Crosby, Grosby, Crosse, Corry, Cosgrove, Judge, Brabacy, Brabazon, Clarke, Clerkin, Cunningham, Drummond, Tackit, Sexton, and Mortimer[20]--not a bad attempt at West-Britonising for one little town!
Numbers of people, again, like Mr. Davitt or Mr. Hennessy, drop the O and Mac which properly belong to their names; others, without actually changing them, metamorphose their names, as we have seen, into every possible form. I was told in America that the first Chauncey who ever came out there was an O'Shaughnessy, who went to, I think, Maryland, in the middle of the last century, and who had twelve sons, who called themselves Chauncey, and from whom most of or all the Chaunceys in America are descended. I know people who have translated their names within the last ten years. This vile habit is going on with almost unabated vigour, and nobody has ever raised a protest against it. Out of the many hundreds of O'Byrnes--offshoots of the great Wicklow chieftains--in the city of New York, only four have retained that name; all the rest have taken the Scotch name of Burns. I have this information from two of the remaining four, both friends of my own, and both splendid Gaelic scholars, though from opposite ends of Ireland, Donegal and Waterford. Of two brothers of whom I was lately told, though I do not know them personally, one is an O'Gara, and still condescends to remain connected with the patron of the Four Masters and a thousand years of a glorious past, whilst the other (through some etymological confusion with the word Caraim, which means "I love") calls himself Mr. Love! Another brother remains a Brehony, thus showing his descent from one of the very highest and most honourable titles in Ireland--a Brehon, law-giver and poet; the other brother is John Judge. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Irishmen prefer to drop their honourable Milesian names, and call themselves Groggins or Duggan, or Higgins or Guthry, or any other beastly name, in preference to the surnames of warriors, saints, and poets; and the melancholy part of it is, that not one single word of warning or remonstrance has been raised, as far as I am aware, against this colossal cringing either by the Irish public press or public men.