Irish surnames commonly contain prefixes such as Mac, Fitz, and Ó in men’s names, and Mhic, Nic, and Uí in women’s names. A survey of Irish libraries found that the most common practice when alphabetizing these names was to include the prefix in the surname (Nic Cóil C4). This is the MLA’s recommendation as well. The following list provides examples of Irish surnames alphabetized according to this principle:
Works Cited
Nic Cárthaigh, Emma. “Surviving the Flood: Revenants and Antediluvian Lore in Medieval Irish Texts.” Transmission and Transformation in the Middle Ages: Texts and Contexts, edited by Kathy Cawsey and Jason Harris, Four Courts Press, 2007, pp. 40–64.
Ó Corráin, Donnchadh. The Irish Church, Its Reform and the English Invasion. Four Courts Press, 2017.
Ó Gráda, Cormac, and Diarmaid Ó Muirithe. “The Famine of 1740–41: Representations in Gaelic Poetry.” Éire-Ireland, vol. 45, nos. 3–4, fall-winter 2010, pp. 41–62. Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.1353/eir.2010.0020.
Uí Chollatáin, Regina. “Irish Language Revival and ‘Cultural Chaos’: Sources and Scholars in Irish Language Journalism.” Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, vol. 30, 2010, pp. 273–92. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41219664.
Work Cited
Nic Cóil, Róisín. “Irish Prefixes and the Alphabetization of Personal Names.” The Indexer, vol. 29, no. 2, 2011, pp. C1–C6, www.theindexer.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/irish-prefixes.pdf.