You Say MacEntee, I Say McEntee

[This post was written for the 13th Edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture hosted at Small-leaved Shamrock.]

I think it is a bit of coincidence that just this week a distant MacEntee cousin whom I met on Facebook asked me why my paternal grandfather's name is also listed as McEntee. And here I am to tell the story just as the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture is coming to town!

Most of what I know about the MacEntee surname is all family legend - it has been on my genealogy "to do list" to actually determine the "why" behind the name change from McEntee to MacEntee. Here is the information that I have about my surname, its origins and how it came to its present spelling:

- the name means "son of scholar" and in Gaelic is written as Mac an tSoi

- the name is found mostly in County Armagh and County Monaghan in Ireland

- my grandfather Abraham MacEntee almost always used the name McEntee with the "a" added

- it was Abraham's father - Elmer McEntee - who supposedly began using MacEntee for reasons which are not clear

- some say that local folk in Ulster County, New York pronounced the name as a "Mac" name anyway and he decided to change it - not legally - but through usage

- others say that due to anti-Irish sentiment present at the time in turn-of-the-century New York, the "a" was added to make the name appear as Scottish in origin

- and still others talk of a rift between two McEntee brothers over religion, that one became a Protestant and wanted to show the separation by adding the "a"

I've discussed the usage of MacEntee in a previous post and have been able to prove that it was in fact Elmer McEntee who originated the usage.

So I continue through a search of court and probate records, wills, etc. to see if any further information can be gleaned as to the "why" of the name change from McEntee to MacEntee.

The Irish Tradition of Tea

[This post was written for the 4th Edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture.]

I grew up drinking tea as well as coffee but much more tea. Not only was it due to the fact that tea was a much more acceptable beverage for a child than coffee, but more so due to the influence of my great-grandmother, Therese McGinnis Austin. To this day, some of my tea-related habits are difficult to break.

Spending mealtimes at Grandma's meant following certain habits, well actually traditions, that would now seem like rules:

1. Coffee is only served at breakfast
2. Tea is served with dinner and supper
3. Tea is meant to be strong
4. Use a tea cozy to keep the tea pot warm
5. Drink with milk and sugar
6. Always use a fancy teaspoon and pick the fanciest

And these are in fact the very rules I try to follow today. After many years in California, and returning to a cold Chicago, I've picked up the tea tradition once again.

1. Coffee is only served at breakfast

I think this is just a peculiarity of my upbringing but we never had coffee at any other meal besides breakfast. I don't know if this was a measure of frugality since coffee always seemed to be more expensive than tea or just practicality from a caffeine standpoint (you need the big jolt in the morning and less during the rest of the day).

2. Tea is served with dinner and supper

Also, in the days of living on a farm, the midday meal was always called dinner and the evening meal was called supper. Dinner was at 12pm and was a large meal such as roast chicken or another roast, potatoes etc. It was meant to replenish those working in the fields or the barn and keep them going until sunset. Supper was a lighter meal consisting of sandwiches made from the leftovers of the dinner meal. My great-grandparents kept this tradition later in life, despite not having a working farm. Since my great-grandfather worked as a timekeeper for many of the aqueduct construction projects (in the 1940s and 50s they were built to supply water to NYC), and he worked the swing-shift, this made sense. They had a big meal before he left for work, then those of us left at home would have supper later on.

3. Tea is meant to be strong

My favorite tea growing up was Lipton's basic blend. Grandma would use many tea bags so that the tea was strong.

Nowadays I am hooked on Twining's Irish Breakfast (pictured above). Irish Breakfast is different than English Breakfast in that it uses only black Assam tea and is not as much a blend as other breakfast teas. It is also known as "robust" meaning it is much stronger and has a more intense flavor. In Ireland, this is only called "tea" not "breakfast tea." Amazon is a great source for ordering this tea and many others.

4. Use a tea cozy to keep the tea pot warm

Grandma had a number of "weird pillows" in the kitchen. They were weird because I just thought that she never got around to sewing them all the way and one side was always open. But I later learned that it was mean to be slipped over the tea pot to retain the heat while it steeped for the regulatory 5 minutes. I don't have a tea cozy but I think I might either make one or buy one. For now, I throw a kitchen towel over the tea put while it is brewing.

5. Drink with milk and sugar

We never had lemon or honey or even cream available, just milk and sugar. Cream wasn't meant for tea since it could do with a touch of milk. And a "wee bit of sugar" always helped.

6. Always use a fancy teaspoon and pick the fanciest

This last rule has special meaning to me. Grandma always kept a cut glass container on the kitchen table which held about 20 different teaspoons. There was no lid, and the spoons were inserted with the handles pointing up. I am not sure if these were from various sets of silverware she owned over the years, or if they were picked up at rummage sales or flea markets. But the kids would always have a skirmish over picking their favorite spoon. To me, it didn't seem like tea time if someone wasn't sulking at the table due to their inability to grab their favorite stirrer. The remainder of tea time was spent plotting revenge or devising some scheme to wrest that spoon from the other child. Good times.

The Name Game - Family Name Schematics In Different Cultures

Jasia at Creative Gene, who you all know I absolutely adore and really made me the genea-blogging junkie that I am, has a great post today dealing with the concept of a "matriname." What is a matriname? Basically, it is a method of using the wife's family name (or surname) in conjunction with the husband's family name when getting married. When offspring are produced, the families names of both mother and father can be used for naming the child.

My Matriname

First, let me meet Jasia's challenge as to what my matriname would be. But it really depends on the schematic used by the wife and her new married name.

If the format is Given Name (GN), Wife's Family Name (WFN), Husband's Family Name (HFN) then my mother's would be:

Jacqueline Austin MacEntee

For me, then if the format is Given Name (GN), Mother's Family Name (MFN), Father's Family Name (FFN) then mine would be:

Thomas Austin MacEntee

If the format is Given Name (GN), Father's Family Name (FFN), Mother's Family Name (MFN), then mine would be:

Thomas MacEntee Austin

I believe that the first instance would be more common here in the United States for naming children and is what Jasia intended in her post. But the second instance is common in some cultures, especially Hispanic ones, where it is understand that the middle name is the FFN and what we would call the "last name" is the MFN.

Family Names

Wikipedia (which I adore almost as much as Jasia and is now a widget on my iGoogle page), has a great entry on the concept of family name with examples for many different cultures.

Hispanic Family Naming Schematics

My first encounter with a family name schematic different than the culture in which I was raised was when I took Spanish in high school and college. In many Hispanic cultures, as mentioned above, the format for a name is GN FFN MFN but it is understand that the child's FFN is used in conversation when identifying that person. Not all Hispanic cultures are alike - in Argentina, due to a large Italian and French influence, the format used most often is GN FFN much like our current schematic here in the United States.

In no way do I want to entirely discuss the Hispanic family naming schematics in this post - the aforementioned Wikipedia article is a good way of doing some further investgation. But there are some aspects that I find interesting:

- In Mexico and Spain it was popular to use the schematic GN FFN de HFN when a woman was married. Thus Ana Garcia Lopez (GN MFN FFN) marrying Alex Saenz Zapatero ( GN MFN FFN) would become Ana Garcia de Zapatero (GN FFN de HFN). Since the "de" (meaning "of") basically states that the wife is "owned" by the husband, this practice has been waning in modern times.

- In Spain, a more common practice has been to create a compound family name (CFN) for the child but only using the husband's family names. Thus, the son of Ana and Alex above would be Tomas Saenz y Sapatero (the "y" meaning "and") which is basically GN FMFN FFFN (FMFN = Father's Mother's Family Name and FFFN = Father's Father's Family Name)

- Also in Spain, laws have been changed allowing a married couple to choose any configuration for naming a child. This is due to a large opinion of Spaniards that traditionally women have been shortchanged over history when it comes to perpetuating their family name.

Patrynomic Family Naming Schematics

Again, I am not going to go into the topic as well as the Wikipedia article could, but being of Dutch ancestry, I've had to learn the Dutch family naming schematic, if only to help with my genealogy research. Very often, I've been able to find mistakes from previous researchers due to what is a very delineated method of naming children.

The naming schematic uses the prefix "se" as "son" and less so "de" as "daughter." I have ancestors with names like Arent Janse Putman meaning "Arent, son of Jan Putman." For females however, it is not as common to see the prefix applied. I do have entries such as Anna Janse Putman but more common is using a "diminutive" for the female given name. Thus it would be Anntje or Annetje Putman meaning "little Anna" or "Annie."

Irish Family Naming Schematics

My current struggle with family names is how MacEntee came about and whether, in more recent times, it is related to the McEntee family name. A very good article discussing this concept is entitled Mhac an t'Saoir Country.

MacEntee and McEntee are both translated as "son of a sage" or "son of a scholar." The author in the above article traces the roots of the name and how it isn't necessarily a derivative of the more common MacAteer or McAteer meaning "son of a carpenter." As in English family names, many describe a trade in which the family practiced such as barrel making (Cooper) or tin making (Tinker). The family name MacEntee/McEntee is much less common and has allowed me to focus on the County Monaghan area of Ireland for my research.

What Family Naming Schematic Should I Use?

Finally, I've thought about the best way I could honor the women in my family by somehow still using the WFN or MFN in my research and blogging. I've decided that in most of my blog posts to use the GN WFN HFN format whenever possible. Thus you will often see Therese McGinnis Austin rather than just Therese Austin. The purpose to me is two-fold: it allows me to no "lose" the strong connection with the maternal family line for these women and it is also an aid to fellow researchers if they were to come across the name, making it much easier to see that person's maternal family line.

My Irish Ancestry - The Proof Is In The . . .

. . . actually the image to the left is the only proof I really have in hand. One would think that this would not be my current roadblock in researching my Irish roots. Unlike Apple over at Apple's Tree who states in Looking for Irish Records that she is not yet ready to research her Irish ancestry, I am itching to do so. She has some great ideas as to where to start research and I will probably follow some of her leads.

I was raised to think that almost all my ancestry and roots were Irish. My great-grandmother, Therese McGinnes Austin, still had some Irish brogue words that crept in when speaking, despite that fact that she was born in New York City in 1894. Assuredly influenced by the linguistics of her mother and father, both born in Ireland, my favorite word was how the said "bread." It came out almost like the word "braid."

I had been told that my great-grandmother's parents came from County Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland. Bridget Farren McGinnes and Matthew McGinnes had lived there and immigrated to the United States in the 1880s. Matthew became a citizen of the United States on October 9, 1888.

On my father's side, I was always told that our original last name was McEntee and that my great-grandfather had added the "a" in Mac when he immigrated from Canada so that he could secure a job in New York where anti-Irish sentiment was prevalent in the 1880s and 1890s.

But I have since found that such a story is full of blarney, as they say. MacEntee is indeed an Irish surname which means "son of scholar" in its Gaelic form "Mac an tSaoi." In fact, one of the great fighters of the Irish Rebellion was Seán MacEntee who was later heavily involved in the politics of the Irish Free State. He held several cabinet positions, served as Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) but was unable to achieve the office of Taoiseach (prime minister). I do not yet know if I am somehow related to him and his daughter Maire MacEntee, the great Irish historian and writer.

I've learned with the MacEntee story, to take as suspect any "stories" that come my way. With my McGinnes and Farren ancestors I will need to also live up to my name Thomas, the Doubter.

So this post is not only a fulfillment of another genealogy carnival, it is also one of my genealogy and family history resolutions for the coming New Year.

This was written for the second edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage and Culture hosted by Lisa at Small-leaved Shamrock.

My Ethnic Flag

Here is my submission for a fun idea from Jasia over at Creative Gene. This flag, created at We Are Multicolored, shows my country of birth (United States), the country that has had the most influence on me (Ireland) and the country I'd most like to visit (Netherlands).

Now it's time for Jasia to sew this flag and all the others from participating genea-bloggers up into a quilt!