Customer Reviews

The Complete Book of Irish Family Names

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This is another suprising book from the IGF. It is not family histories - they have several excellent works on family histories - it is a great index where you can tell what book has your surname in it, and where standard works say your name is from, like the 1659 census and the 1890 birth index, it tells what county your name was found in - oh, and get ready to see how they spelled your name in the old days ! Not a coffee table book, but a great book for researchers trying to find rarer names in Ireland. I recommend it to researchers.

As the owner of Black Hills Celtic Shop in Rapid City, SD, I can safely say that O'Laughlin's Complete Book of Family Names is the best and most accessible reference I have ever seen. We have resort to this volume at least a dozen times a day and it never fails us at finding and affixing any name or variation spelling of same to its proper historical and geographic locus in Ireland. In fact, between this volume and Tartan For Me, we can usually discern any and all Celtic names of "British" extraction and assign an historic locale to them. O'Laughlin's uses resources as early as the Norman Invasion of Ireland in the 1170s and as late as 1890s, so the names and locales are quite accurate and thorough.

I can't imagine a day at the shop without our reference copy. And I am amazed that this vital volume has gone out of print!