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Question:I have traced back to 1832 when the first McAvoy came over here on a ship from Ireland and settled in Georgia.I want to trace back further.Do I start in Ireland or Scotland?I was always told we are of Irish heritage,now I am told the Mc is Scottish.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I have traced back to 1832 when the first McAvoy came over here on a ship from Ireland and settled in Georgia.I want to trace back further.Do I start in Ireland or Scotland?I was always told we are of Irish heritage,now I am told the Mc is Scottish.

Be wary of House of Names. They are a surname product peddler. There is no such thing as a family crest. A crest is a small part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms DO NOT belong to surnames. They were and are granted to individuals and are passed down to the direct male line descendants.

Actually, there might have been, for instance, 15 different individual men named McAvoy that were each granted their own coat of arms, all different. The merchants of deceit that sell them won't have all 15. They don't need to in order to sell to gullible people. The only time they will have more than one is if the same surname is found in more than one nationality.

See the links below, one from the British College of Arms(they issue coats of arms), one from the most prestigious genealogical organization in the U. S., The National Genealogical Society, one regarding Irish coats of arms and one regarding Scottish coats of arms.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.ht...

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp...

http://www.heraldry.ws/info/article10.ht...

http://www.bothwell.cx/arms.shtml

The only way to trace your ancestry is to start with yourself and work back one generation at a time. Also websites can be helpful but just because you see a family tree on the internet it doesn't mean it is correct whether the website is free or paid.
Even if you see the same information repeatedly by many different subscribers that is no guarantee at all it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying.

FamilySearch.org and Rootsweb are 2 free sites and they have good tutorials on how to do family research.

As a rule "Mc" denotes Scottish roots. You could also have Irish ancestry as well, though.

Some Irish names start with Mc. If your ancestor came from Ireland, I'd start there. Especially since you know which ship, etc.

It really helps to learn about your ancestors. You can do that by doing a search for McAvoy on Google. If you look hard enough, you will probably find a group or individual who has already done the work. You just have to see where you fit in it.

I looked up my maiden name and came across a lady in the Netherlands who had some tie to my ancestors through a marriage a couple hundred years ago.

From there I was able to trace the name back to 1600. No one knows where that first man with the name came from. I wish I could trace it back further. I would have to go to the Netherlands to find that out.

Good luck.

Try this: http://www.cousinconnect.com/p/a/0/s/MCA...

The short answer is "Yes".
Ancestry.com has The countries of origin as Scotland, Ireland and Britain.
The name can have two meanings.
Irish (Ulster) and Scottish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Gila Buddha ‘son of the yellow-haired lad’.
Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Buddha, a patronymic, meaning woodman.

Keep in mind that Ulster was settled by Scottish and British planters in the 17th century.

In my own ancestry, I have a family that kept moving between Scotland and Northern Ireland. It seems that when things got to hot in one, the moved back to the other until they finally emigrated. These people were not known for their conciliatory ways, and when they emigrated, they helped settle the western frontier of the colonies.

http://www.houseofnames.com/fc.asp?sId=&...

According to this it says Irish.

surnames with a big c are scottish and surnames with a small c are irish McAvoy is either irish or scottish

Because both the Irish and the Scottish can trace their original history back to the ancient Celts, this makes their own cultures very close, and their names both come from the Gaelic language, so both Scottish and Irish can have a "Mc" in their name when it's changed to English. There are some differences in the Gaelic language spoken in Scotland, than the one in Ireland, so names will differ based on that. If you look on the website houseofnames.com, you'll find that your last name is Irish. =)