Roots Ireland

Find your Irish Ancestors today with the Irish Family History Foundation online research service

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Searching this site

Top Tips

  • Be flexible in all searches.
  • Remember the information recorded on each record can vary.
  • Search five years each side of an expected date of an event as a starting point and narrow or widen the search as required depending on the results.
  • Learn about administrative divisions in Ireland – here

First Names

The recording of first names (also known as Christian names) can vary from record to record, e.g. Elizabeth, Lizzie, Bess or Patrick, Pat, Paddy. Please consult the First Names listing for guidance.

Remember that a wild card search facility is automatically performed, returning all first names that begin with the characters entered i.e. if you enter Pat, it will match Pat, Patrick, Patrick John, but not Paddy. You can also use the % character for more complex matching, e.g. %LIZ% will match Liz, Liza, Lizzy, Elizabeth etc. On some records one or more of the parents’ first names may not have been recorded in the original source, they may have been illegible or recorded incorrectly by the priest.

First Name Variants
To  include firstname variants in your search, select Include Firstname Variants from the Firstname Match drop-down list.

Surnames

The recording of surnames can vary from record to record, e.g. Brien, O’Brien, Bryan.  We have a Standardized Surnames database in operation and you can also consult the Surnames listing for guidance.

On some records a surname may not have been recorded in the original record, may have been illegible or recorded incorrectly by the priest. The surname of the mother may not be recorded on baptismal records. It may be recorded on one child’s baptism, but not on a subsequent baptism. A father’s first name and surname may not be recorded on a baptismal record. A mother’s first name may not be recorded on a baptismal record.

The parents’ names of the bride and groom are not usually found on marriage records before the 1850s, when they first appeared in some parishes in Dublin diocese; however, this varies from county to county and parish to parish.

Dates

You can search by year and increase or decrease the span of years according to your knowledge of possible dates of events. If a lot of records are returned for your search criteria, you will need to narrow your search criteria.

County/Parish

You can choose to search all counties or one county or any combination of counties. On a county’s page you can also search by parish.

Sources

Please check under Online Sources to see the available sources and dates covered for each participating county genealogy centre to establish what is available online. You may be searching for records that are too early or too late for the available data. New data is added to the site at regular intervals.