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 Carai