Spelling variations in official names of Clare PLUs.

Genealogy, Archaeology, History, Heritage & Folklore

Moderators: Clare Support, Clare Past Mod

Post Reply
pwaldron
Posts: 730
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:31 pm
Location: Ballina, Killaloe
Contact:

Spelling variations in official names of Clare PLUs.

Post by pwaldron » Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:49 am

County Clare comprises (or comprised) all or parts of nine Poor Law Unions (PLUs, now known as Superintendent Registrar's Districts or SRDs):

Ballyvaghan
Corrofin
Ennis
Ennistimon
Killadysert
Kilrush
Limerick
Scarriff
Tulla

These are the spellings which appear on the map at
http://www.logainm.ie/eolas/Data/Brainse/sw-sheet.jpg

However, at
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Ireland/Un ... land.shtml
no less than five of the nine are spelled differently:

Ballyvaughan
Corofin
Ennistymon
Kildysart
Scariff

Searching the Irish Civil Registration Indexes, 1845-1958 for births, marriages and deaths in Clare obviously requires a knowledge of the possibility that insisting on exact matches might miss a spelling variant in the PLU/SRD name.

So I did some counts using the ancestry.com version of the database.

Ballyvaghan: no births, no marriages, no deaths
Ballyvaughan: 7,658 births, 2,884 marriages, 5,392 deaths

Corofin: no births, no marriages, no deaths
Corrofin: 9,364 births, 3,420 marriages, 6,181 deaths

Ennistimon: 37,806 births, 11,919 marriages, 22,885 deaths
Ennistymon: no births, no marriages, no deaths

Ennis: 47,445 births, 22,277 marriages, 36,927 deaths

Kildysart: no births, no marriages, no deaths
Killadysert: 18,598 births, 7,439 marriages, 11,657 deaths

Scariff: no births, no marriages, no deaths
Scarriff: 27,952 births, 12,824 marriages, 20,290 deaths

The bottom line is that the ancestry.com database is internally consistent as regards spelling of PLU/SRD names, but uses the spellings from the map for Corrofin, Ennistimon, Killadysert and Scarriff, but the alternate spelling for Ballyvaughan.

Paddy Casey
Posts: 743
Joined: Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:53 pm
Location: Внешняя Громболия
Contact:

Re: Spelling variations in official names of Clare PLUs.

Post by Paddy Casey » Tue Jan 03, 2012 4:40 pm

Much of my time spent searching databases is wasted by having to guess at and type in all the possible spelling variants or synonyms of placenames, surnames, etc. This is as major bugbear in genealogy. It is enraging me today as I try to find townland inhabitants in the NAI census database at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/search/ . I have a .txt file with the synonyms for a few of the townlands I frequently search and I simply copy-paste the synonyms from that into search sites but that's a complicated, albeit timesaving, way of doing it.

I'm surprised that there isn't a synonyms plugin for attachment to databases. For Irish searches it would simply need to graze http://www.logainm.ie and a few other databases for the synonyms, hold them in a table, and then refer to the table whenever a search argument is entered. If I weren't beyond the age at which one writes software I'd cobble together such a plugin myself today. Maybe I'll go down to the local infant school and see if one of the children would like to write it. I was reading this week that a 14-year old child has become a zillionaire by writing a successful app for the i-phone or i-something.

Paddy

P.S. Hold on, maybe I'll go down to the local infant school and get one of them to teach me how to write it so that I can become a zillionaire myself. P.

pwaldron
Posts: 730
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:31 pm
Location: Ballina, Killaloe
Contact:

Re: Spelling variations in official names of Clare PLUs.

Post by pwaldron » Tue Jan 03, 2012 6:11 pm

Paddy

When you get sufficiently annoyed by the spelling variations at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/s ... searchmore you will start avoiding the search form altogether and drilling down to the people that you want by going to http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/ and selecting year, county, DED, townland and surname in that order.

As regards synonym plug-ins, we probably should give credit to the IFHF who seem to have developed a pretty good search engine for Irish names, although some people do complain that it should distinguish between names like MacDonnell and O'Donnell, and it isn't designed for the sort of transcription errors that are rampant on the census site.

If you are inspired to take on a programming project, perhaps one that merely links the 1901 and 1911 pages for each townland would be a straightforward place to start.

\pw

Post Reply