Re: The big Hannan or Hannon Mystery
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In reply to:
The big Hannan or Hannon Mystery
8/06/01
I think a big part of the debate comes from 2 areas: literacy and trancsription.My brother and I were recently in Ireland (in Counties Longford and Cavan) doing Hannan research.The locals there generally agree that the common Anglicized spelling is "Hannon."Most of the records we reviewed there and online come from the late 1700s and early 1800s.However, there are branches of the same family that spelled their names Hannan (at least according to records).There are discrepancies even from the US census records that I've looked at.While in the US, our surname has always been spelled Hannan.However, many of the census records for our family have Hannon.Some even have worse spellings, and we know because of the location and address that the (horrible) mis-spellings refer to our ancestors.After our recent trip in Ireland, I am comfortable with the fact that our surname is most commonly spelled Hannon in Ireland.(but I'm not changing how I spell my name)