Talk:Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh

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The image of MacMurrough Kavanagh is described as a "photograph" - it's clearly a pen-and-ink or pencil-and-ink sketch. The link on it doesn't work. The only attribution I can find for it is that it is the frontispiece of his cousin Sarah L Steele's book The Right Honourable Arthur Macmorrough Kavanagh (1891); that book gives no provenance for the sketch. Pageturners (talk) 10:46, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

MacMurrough or MacMorrough

As of the current version, the article title and most of the text have MacMurrough, but the lede has MacMorrough. This neatly splits the difference between the independent sources (e.g. "o" in EB1911 and thepeerage.com). Scolaire moved from o to u a few years ago - was there any rationale besides the text of the article itself? Does anyone have good data on 19th century Scots spelling, and are they equally valid? I think the Kavanagh family website should win (spelled with a "u") but if the "o" also has validity that should be explained in the article. The contradictory text and the third party sources shouldn't go unexplained. David Brooks (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Looking back, it seems my interest was in Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh. That article said his father was Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, but the name wasn't linked. I found this article, then titled "Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh", moved it, and changed the link to Walter, which said "MacMorrough" and was a red link. I neglected to change the first sentence of this article at the same time, which was naughty.

So today I've checked the death notices in the newspapers of December 1889. The Times says "Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh", but the Manchester Guardian unhelpfully says "Arthur M. Kavanagh". Of the Irish papers (he was Irish, not Scottish), The Irish Times begins with "(From The Times)" so it can be ignored. The Freeman's Journal says "A. M’Murrough Kavanagh" (a common abbreviation of the time), but in a review of the year on 30 December it says, "notable men who once represented Irish constituencies and who have passed away are The O'Donoghue and Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh." The Belfast Newsletter, another important Irish paper, says "The Right Honourable Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh". Smaller provincial papers say either "Murrough" or "Morrough" (or sometimes both). Apparently both forms were used even at the time of his death.

Maybe the most definitive answer is to be found in an 1891 review in the New York Times of a book, The Right Honourable Arthur MacMurrough Kavanagh, a Biography, "compiled by his cousin, Sarah L. Steele." That book is available at The Internet Archive.

My instinct would be to change to "MacMurrough" throughout, but add "also known as Arthur MacMorrough Kavanagh" to the first sentence, citing Britannica or whatever. Scolaire (talk) 12:06, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Scolaire: Impressive; thanks for the detailed archaeology. I've modified the article as you suggested, and fixed the defaultsort. I didn't reference thepeerage.com, as that is self-published, although it does claim Burke's Irish Family Records, 1976, as a source. Also, I re-spelled the Wikisource EB1911 article to capitalize the middle M; although the printed book only has the name in all-caps, I don't think there is any other source for "Macm[ou]rrough".

But this article is also in Category:MacMorrough Kavanagh dynasty, which includes the more contemporary Dermot McMorrough Kavanagh, presumably the spelling he adopted. Also, I just noticed that DNB, 1900, uses "o" (is it worth adding that reference?). I also realized after making the edit that it would be a good idea to search Wikipedia; mentions of his full name use the "o" spelling in 24 articles against 8 with "u", so we may have made more of a mess. Anyway, there it sits for now. We have probably learned, by inference, more about the spelling of Irish names than we wanted. David Brooks (talk) 18:54, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Good edit, David. I come from two families whose names (neither of them Irish names) have been spelled inconsistently for generations, so the phenomenon isn't new to me. Shame about the differences across articles and categories, but then, it's far from being the biggest mess on Wikipedia. Scolaire (talk) 11:53, 24 January 2018 (UTC)