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To form any reliable estimate of the numerical strength of the Irish and their descendants in the United States would, I believe, be a hopeless task, and while several have attempted to do so, I am of the opinion that all such estimates should be discarded as mere conjecture.  Indeed, there is no standard, or fixed rule or principle, by which a correct judgment of the racial composition of the early inhabitants of the United States can now be formed, and the available statistics on the subject are incomplete and confusing.  The greatest obstacle in determining this question is found in the names of the immigrants themselves.  With names such as Smith, Mason, Carpenter, and Taylor; White, Brown, Black, and Gray; Forrest, Wood, Mountain, and Vail, and other names that are similarly derived, the first thought is that they are of English origin.  Yet we know that for centuries past such names have been numerous in Ireland, and there are many Irish families so named who are of as pure Celtic blood as any bearing the old Gaelic patronymics.  By a law passed in the second year of the reign of Edward IV., natives of Ireland were forced to adopt English surnames.  This Act was, substantially, as follows:  “An Act that Irishmen dwelling in the Counties of, etc.... shall go appareled like Englishmen and wear their beards in English manner, swear allegiance and take English sirnames, which sirnames shall be of one towne, as Sutton, Chester, Trim, Skryne, Cork, Kinsale; or colours, as white, black, brown; or arts, or sciences, as smith or carpenter; or office, as cook, butler, etc., and it is enacted that he and his issue shall use his name under pain of forfeyting of his goods yearly”, etc.

This Act could be enforced only upon those Irish families who dwelt within the reach of English law, and as emigrants from those districts, deprived of their pure Celtic names, came to America in an English guise and in English vessels, they were officially recorded as “English.”  Moreover, numbers of Irish frequently crossed the channel and began their voyage from English ports, where they had to take on new names, sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes voluntarily for purposes of concealment, either by transforming their original names into English or adopting names similar to those above referred to.  These names were generally retained on this side of the Atlantic so as not to arouse the prejudice of their English neighbors.  In complying with the statute above quoted, some Irish families accepted the rather doubtful privilege of translating their names into their English equivalents.  We have examples of this in such names as Somers, anglicised from McGauran (presumably derived from the Gaelic word signifying “summer"); Smith from McGowan (meaning “the son of the smith"); Jackson and Johnson, a literal translation from MacShane (meaning “the son of John"); and Whitcomb from Kiernan (meaning, literally, “a white comb").