Names of Parents
Where parents' names are shown in relation to a person in this collection, those names may have been gathered or deduced through a variety of sources.
- Baptismal records - where found, the baptismal record will always give the parents' names. In the case of Roman Catholic baptisms, the mother's maiden name is almost always given. In Church of Ireland records, the mother's maiden name is rarely given.
- Civil Birth Register records - where found, the record will always give the mother's name, including her maiden name. The father's name will also be present except in some cases of birth to a single mother.
- Marriage records: Civil Marriage records will always give the names and occupations of the fathers of the couple marrying. While in some parts of the country a Church register marriage record gives the names of both parents, this is extremely rare in Co Leitrim records
- Census records - if the person is living with a parent or parents at the time of the 1901 and/or 1911 Censuses then those parents' names will be included. In the case of mothers, however, only the given name is listed on the census, and in cases where the parents' marriage has not been found or the person's birth or baptismal records have not been found, the mother's surname appears as 'Unknown' in this collection.
- Census Search records - while relatively few of these exist for Co Leitrim, those that do generally give the maiden names of mothers'.
- Death records - if a person has been found as the informant of a parent, then the first name of that parent has been captured. In the case of men, the surname is also known. With women, again unless other data has been found that supplies a maiden name, we have to enter her maiden name as 'Unknown'
- Burial records - while extensive searches for headstones have not been made, some burial records are included in this collection of data. In some cases these give the maiden names of women buried; others do not, and again in these cases the woman's surname is entered as 'Unknown'
- Inferred names - sometimes while it has proven impossible to find a birth, baptismal or other appropriate record for a person and thus get direct evidence of his or her parents' names, siblings of that person have been found and the parents of those siblings have been identified. In these cases, and unless there are indications to the contrary, those siblings' parents have been assumed as the parents of the person in question