If anybody is well-versed in McCarthy agnomens, I'd love to hear from you.
Drawing from various sources (Southern Star news archives;
The Book of Irish Families, Great and Small;
Tim Cadogan articles;
Riobard O'Dwyer articles) I have collected the following McCarthy surnames:
Reagh, Rabagh, Crimeen, Spawnach, Mucklagh, Cawsca, Samhna (Sowney), Cunic, Tollin, Bawny (or Bawnee), Fairsinn (Fortune), Glas, Duna (or Dooney), and Mountain.
My question is, is there a McCarthy-Looney or McCarthy-Louney? I am finding these in the handwritten Griffiths records of Caheragh civil parish, which I suspect is really mistranscribed Sowney. Whomever wrote these records sometimes wrote an initial S (as in Sullivan) as a perfect snake, detached from the remainder of the name. Sometimes the record taker wrote the initial letter so it looped at the bottom and attached to the rest of the name - like an L.
