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Cork / Re: WHONOHAN, HOUNIHAN or HOUNAHAN, what do I use?
« on: Tuesday 23 September 08 04:55 BST (UK) »
The Irish form of the name of the Cooneys in my database of 5 parishes south of Cork City is certainly Ó Cuanacháin, not Ó Cuana. It is clear that the parish priests were perplexed by the non-Cork name, so much so that a couple of the priests simply left a blank. Another recorded the name differently for each of 6 infants baptized, even including 'Owens' and 'Cunningham'. All you can do in your case is to choose a form of the name that you want to regard as the standard or ideal. In my 5 parishes, I suspect that a priest early on decided on Cooney, and that the bearers of the name who could write were happy to adopt any spelling. It is possible that none of them before, say, 1880 ever pronounced the name as Cooney.