Family Name Changes due to Pension Introduction

[corisande]

Can anyone verify a comment I had on a recent email. I had been researching the sudden change of families with surname "Granny" in Donegal to "Grant" between 1901 and 1911 censuses, and could not find a reason. This correspondent suggests that it was the introduction of the pension in 1904

[i....]the sudden change you speak of from Granny to Grant between the 1901 and 1911 census has been put down to the introduction of the old age pension in 1904 when the authorities then did not recognise the name Granny so people simply changed back to Grant.  To get the pension another big change you will notice between the 1901 and 1911 census is that people ages changed more than the ten years this was to enable them to apply for the pension before they were of pension age....[/i]

If this is true, it would have been seen across Ireland and not just in Donegal. Hence I am putting this question in Ireland General and not Donegal. And if true would have seen lots of families either change name or people change their age.

[shanew147]

were the people concerned literate ?

If their forms were filled in by an enumerator then it would be up to him to decide the 'correct' surname and spelling..


Shane

[corisande]

Shane

I have a full write up of the Granny to Grant change in Donegal here

But you do not need to wade through it all, the nub of the thing was that more than 100 Granny (and similar) families became Grant. It looked like a major change, not just one or two illiterate families

Someone else emailed me to say they had found this odd "aging" in another part of Ireland between 1901 and 1911. As state records did not exist before 1864, if you wanted a pension it would appear you could add a bit to your age, and nobody could prove otherwise! That sounds almost too simple to be true, but I know nothing about the introduction of the pension in Ireland at that time.

Do we have a pension expert here?

[shanew147]

The adding to the age phenomenon to get the pension definitely happened....

Some early census details were extracted at the time (some still survive in the National archives) to check people's ages.


Shane

[corisande]

Shane,

Seems logical/tempting for the average person of 55+ to add a bit.

However I had not come across other examples of people changing (presumably having to change) their surname

[aghadowey]

The 'sudden' increase in ages did certainly happen when the pension was introduced. If you look at surviving pension applications the person checking the census records often had comments saying family found but child not listed (meaning born after census), etc.

I've never come across any stories of names being changed for pension reasons anywhere in Ireland and it is very strange that this apparently happened to numerous families with the same surname.

It would be interesting to check original pension applications to see what details were listed at each stage of the application. First, what name (or names) did the applicant give (Granny or Grant)? what names were the family listed under in census records?

My guess would be that when they applied for pension the surname was given as 'Granny' but census records showed the surname as 'Grant' and that 'Granny' was actually a local corruption of Grant.

[shanew147]

I think it sounds very like an evolution of the name from the Irish version O´Grainne (as discussed on corisande's webpage), to an English spelling of that name i.e. O'Granny, then gradually dropping the O to make Granny, and the removing the Y and replacing with T.. because the Y is not Irish



Shane

[corisande]

My guess would be that when they applied for pension the surname was given as 'Granny' but census records showed the surname as 'Grant' and that 'Granny' was actually a local corruption of Grant.  

I don't think this was the case here. They were all "Granny " n the 1901 census, and that was presumably the one that officials could have checked if they had needed to in 1904. They only appear as "Grant" in 1911 census

If you look at the bottom of this page I have some census details to illustrate the point

It is very odd to me, but I am convinced from the census records that they all changed their name. I have a fairly full analysis on that page.

I am really trying to see if anyone has other examples of a wholesale change of "Irish" names to "English" ones at this time.

[shanew147]

A look at the Civil Births shows the Granny's practically vanishing in the early 1900s as you've seen - but the numbers of Grant's staying reasonably steady ...

Year	-	Grant	Granny	Grainey
1860-69	-	7	38	0
1870-79	-	66	62	4
1880-89	-	82	25	1
1890-99	-	113	20	1
1900-09	-	86	1	0
1910-19	-	86	1	0
1920-29	-	134	0	0
1930-39	-	106	0	0

It might be worth a detailed analysis when the 1901 census data is online, so possible examples of this name change in other counties could be tested.


Shane