Coens, Leavys, and others: anglicisation, assimilation, and “Jewish” surnames in Ireland in the early 20th Century

Anglicisation in this context is the assimilation of names into the dominant English culture, whether for Jewish immigrants or native Gaels. Biblical names were present in Ireland via both Christianity and English immigration before the period under consideration here, while the process of anglicisation of Gaelic names led to the emergence of surnames in Ireland that are typically regarded as Jewish elsewhere, at a time when there were effectively no Jews in Ireland. The arrival of 5000 Jews in the late nineteenth century, many bearing variants of those names, led to an enrichment of the range of names in the country in a political era when names were regarded as an important signifier of cultural and political identity. The legacy of that enrichment has remained throughout the twentieth century and beyond.