Is Co short for county and I should drop it
NY Naturalization Records. On image 1 the birth places of the primary and spouse are Co Longford, Ireland and Co Sligo, Ireland, respectively. I'm just curious if this is short for county and I should drop it, or index/review it as it is written.
https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/batch/a2d8dde3-1326-4ea8-9fae-c80c223197a1
Answers
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It does stand for county and we drop "County" (or the abbreviation for it).
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@barbaragailsmith1 @Lisa Kay Horlacher
I would object most strongly to dropping the Co. (note the .) or dropping the word County.
The common use in Ireland is to write and say an address as County Antrim, County Cork, or Co. Antrim, Co. Cork.
Using the name of the County without the prefix Co. or County also adds confusion, as the main Town of the County is frequently the same name as the County. Thus we have a County Antrim and within that County the principal town is the Town of Antrim.
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I agree with @John Curran that dropping the designator is a Bad Idea -- anywhere, not just in Ireland, and not just for counties. It's only in usages where context identifies the jurisdiction level, such as a full address, that the "county" or "district" or similar label can be safely dropped. If the naturalization record says "Co Longford, Ireland", then please index it as "Co Longford, Ireland", because it's not the same thing as "Longford, Ireland". (The latter has 16 matches in FS's Places database. Only one of them is the county.)
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This isn't just about what genealogists do - it's what the vast majority of people do in everyday life.
Because just about every Irish county has the same name as its county town, people refer to the place as "County XYZ" until the context is clear. That's absolutely how people talk in real life. In England, Wales and Scotland, there is only one such duplication but the result is the same - we talk about "County Durham" until the context is clear.
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The general indexing guidelines could be applied in this case:
Do not include identifying descriptions or terms, such as “near,” “about,” “around,” “twp,” “township,” “city,” “county,” or “state,” with the place-name unless the term is normally used as part of the name (for example, Mexico City, Salt Lake City, or New York City).
Since County is normally used as part of the name, then it should be okay to use it.
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And please, please remember that in Ireland and the UK "County" comes before the name of the county, thus, "County Antrim".
Never after the county name as is the practice in North America.
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