SPELLING HAGGERTY, ETC. SURNAME

The spelling of our family name is highly variable, and it is important that we not rely on the spelling as any indication of relationship until well into the 20^th century. For example, in the 1820s three brothers settled in Hastings County in what is now Ontario. Documents signed by one of them in the 1830s reveal he spelled his name Haggertie. However, by the mid 1860s he and his two brothers were signing Haggerty. Known descendants of those men currently spell their name: Haggarty, Haggerty, and Hagerty. A fourth brother who settled in Pennsylvania continued to spell his name Haggertie, and that is how it is recorded on his tombstone.

I have also been reviewing Irish parish records dating from the 1690s to the present time. In the old parish registers the spelling seems to have depended on who entered the record, rather than how the individual spelled his or her name. There are parish records in which a person’s name was spelled one way by a recorder and the adjacent signature was a different spelling. As well, it must be remembered that many of these folks were illiterate, and therefore their names really had no spelling for them personally. Therefore we should not be surprised to find that the same individual could have had his name spelled in various ways at various times. One rather extreme example is that for one individual, Daniel, in a single parish register (Ballymodan) recording the baptisms of his eight children between 1732 and 1746, his surname was spelled: Higerty, Higirthy, Haggarthy, Hegerty, Hagerty and Haggerty! Any of the surname who live in this part of Cork today spell the name Hegarty.

The following variants have been observed: H, a/e/i/ea, g/gg/gh, a/e/i, r, t/th, ie/y in church registers and other early Irish records.

That is, about the only certainties are that there is an “H” at the beginning, one or more “g”s, a single “r”, and a “t”. Everything else is up for grabs!