Quote Originally Posted by beloitpiper View Post
It would go from English "Long" back to the Irish "Ó Longaigh".

It would be a big change. I was wondering if I could get your opinions or thoughts on the subject? Thanks.
It depends on how invested you are in spending the rest of your life explaining to reservations clerks, maitre d's, bored semi-literate form-filling government clerical workers, etc. the difference between an accent grave and an accent acute, exactly which letter in your name it should go over and why, why there is no apostrophe in it, and which letters are not pronounced. It will be something that you will encounter almost daily, often several times a day.

My surname is unusual but similar to one that is common. Those of us who were born with it have gotten used to having to exert some effort in getting it spelled correctly, in judging almost immediately whether it is worth the effort, and we all have our various methods.

Interesting, the women who marry into our family and take the name are initially quite irked at having to go through all of this, but most adjust. Some don't, even after using it for 60+ years.

Another thing to remember is that the correct spelling of any words is a rather recent development, dating back only to the coming of dictionaries in the early 19th century. Before then everyone spelled words they way they sounded to them with few rules.

(I have a document---a deed of land of one of my ancestors---from the 1750's with the signature spelled the way we do now, spelled differently by the clerk who wrote, and spelled a 3rd way by the person who indexed it. Who was correct? All of them, and none of them. It wasn't an issue.)

Look on the bright side. Things could be worse. You could be of English descent and named Chumly.