Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
Irish surnames
Irish surnames

Irish last names. surnames and famiy names are names that have been commonly associated with individuals who hail from the island of Ireland. Many of these surnames date back to the early medieval period (c. 500–1000) and are over a millennium old, making them some of the oldest fully formed surnames found anywhere in Europe.

Irish surnames follow specific naming practices, though the surname landscape of Ireland has been complicated by centuries of colonization by Norse, Anglo-Norman, English, and Scottish settlers. Moreover, because the Irish diaspora is so large, with upwards of 80 million people worldwide claiming Irish heritage, Irish surnames have spread across the world.

History of Irish surnames and naming conventions

Most of Ireland’s major ethnic surnames have their origins in the Iron Age, which lasted in Ireland into the late Roman and early medieval eras. Most names in ancient times either began with an ‘O’ or ‘Mac’, ‘O’ effectively being ‘of’ and ‘Mac’ being the Irish word for ‘Son’. Thus, when we come across a very common Irish surname like O’Connor or MacNamara, what these surnames indicate is that in the semi-mythical past of the Iron Age these families were begun by individuals named Connor or Namara, whose ancestors were subsequently known as O’Connor or MacNamara to indicate that they were of the line of Connor or the sons of Namara. The O’Neills, who dominated much of the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland for a millennium, were said to be descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages.[1]

This naming pattern is repeated across a wide range of Irish surnames. Since the seventeenth century however, there has been a tendency for the ‘O’ or ‘Mac’ to be dropped in order to conform more with English naming practices. This habit often increased one’s chances of finding a better job or promotion within social and political life under British rule. Thus, one is just as likely to find Byrnes as O’Byrnes in Ireland today or Kennedys instead of O’Kennedys.[2]

Most popular Irish surnames and their origins

The lordships of Ulster in the fifteenth century. The O’Neill, O’Donnell, MacMahon and Maguire surnames are still very common in these areas centuries later.
The lordships of Ulster in the fifteenth century. The O’Neill, O’Donnell, MacMahon and Maguire surnames are still very common in these areas centuries later.

The most popular Irish surnames tend to be those which were associated with large lordly septs during the medieval period. For instance, the most powerful lords in the northern province of Ulster were the O’Neills and O’Donnells. There are tens of thousands of O’Neills and O’Donnells within Ireland and worldwide.

Following Gaelic naming practices, these surnames tended to derive from a legendary founder of these lordships way back in the Iron Age, in this case a Neill or Niall or a Donnell or Domhnaill. There are some notable exceptions to this prevalence of ancient Irish lordly names. For instance, Murphy, which is an Irish family surname which appears on the signage of many Irish bars across the world and which is the most common surname in Ireland, was commonly found amongst the poorer classes in medieval and early modern Ireland (c. 1500–1800).[3] Examples of some of the most prominent Irish surnames and their meanings include:  

  • O’Brien – Meaning ‘of Brien’, a reference to the eleventh-century High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, who defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014
  • Byrne/ O’Byrne – Meaning ‘of Bran’, an eleventh-century King of Leinster
  • Neill/ O’Neill – Meaning ‘of Niall’, Nine of the Niall Hostages, a powerful, semi-mythical Irish lord of the fifth century
  • O’Connor – Meaning ‘of Conchobhar’, with Concobhar in turn meaning ‘lover of hounds’
  • MacCarthy – Meaning ‘of MacCarthy’ or ‘MacCárthaigh’, with ‘Cárthaigh’ in turn meaning ‘loving one’, so MacCarthy in full means ‘son of the loving one’

Geographical spread of Irish surnames

While the urbanization of Ireland over the last fifty years has seen a lot of inward migration across the island, pulling people of all surnames towards the capital Dublin and to a lesser extent cities like Cork, Limerick and Galway, there is still a tendency for certain surnames to appear more frequently in certain geographical regions.

Incredibly, these appearances still follow where the Irish lordships were located in medieval and early modern times. For instance, the O’Neills and O’Donnells dominated western Ulster in what are now the counties of Tyrone and Donegal for centuries. Those surnames are still more common in western Ulster than in any other part of the island. The same is true of county Wicklow which was long ruled by the O’Byrnes and O’Tooles, while the Kavanagh name appears in great frequency around the ancestral Kavanagh lordship lands in Carlow and adjoining parts of south Leinster. The O’Briens and MacCarthys will tend to be found in greater numbers in northern and western Munster, the southern province of Ireland. Munster was largely dominated by these families in medieval times.[4]

The appearance of Anglo-Norman, English and Scottish surnames in Ireland

[[File:Viking settlements in Ireland.png|thumb|250x250px|Viking settlements in Ireland] The surname history of Ireland becomes more and more complicated from the ninth century onwards as successive ways of colonizers and newcomers arrived. The first of these were the Vikings, though these Norse surnames were generally incorporated into Irish surnames in subtle ways. Similarly, while Anglo-Norman settlers began arriving from the late twelfth century onwards, many of these families Gaelicised their habits and names during late medieval times. For instance, the de Burgos became the Burkes or MacWilliam-Burkes over time. Conversely, some families of Irish origin incorporated elements of Anglo-Norman naming practices. Thus, the MacGiolla-Padraigs of the Irish midlands, were often referred to as the FitzPatricks by the early modern period as the Irish patronymic for ‘son’ (Mac) was replaced with the Anglo-Norman patronymic for ‘son’ (Fitz).[5] More straightforward were English and Scottish arrivals during the plantations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These later colonists tended to retain their original surnames such as which are still found all over Ireland, notably in the north of the country which was heavily settled by Scottish immigrants in the seventeenth century[6]:

The Irish diaspora

While the extensive colonisation of Ireland from medieval times onwards complicated the surname history of the island, the Irish diaspora of the nineteenth century spread Irish surnames far and wide across the globe. Crippling poverty, the Irish potato famine and over-population saw approximately seven million Irish people leave their homeland between 1800 and 1900. Many of these headed for North America and settled intensively in cities like New York, Boston and Chicago, but there was also a major flow of people to Australia and Latin America, especially Argentina. Thus, one will find Murphys, O’Connors, O’Higgins, Ryans and O’Briens today everywhere from New York and Boston to Buenos Aires and Melbourne.

Famous people with Irish surnames

A Portrait of Bernardo O’Higgins, ‘The Liberator’ of Chile in the early nineteenth century.
A Portrait of Bernardo O’Higgins, ‘The Liberator’ of Chile in the early nineteenth century.

Because Ireland was dominated politically, economically and socially for centuries by English and Scottish colonial families, often the most famous people from Ireland were of British heritage. However, the Irish diaspora has provided acclaimed individuals overseas, while in the United States there are no shortage of famous Irish-American individuals. Today Irish-born celebrities have names which are ultimately derived from the ancient lordships of Ireland.  

  • Bernardo O’Higgins, ‘the Liberator’ of Chile in the Chilean War of Independence of the early nineteenth century. His father Ambrosio hailed from Sligo in western Ireland.[7]
  • John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States whose family’s roots lie in the region dominated by the O’Kennedy lordship in the Irish midlands in the late medieval and early modern periods.
  • Sinéad Marie Bernadette Sadaqat (O'Connor), Irish singer and songwriter
  • Anne Hathaway, US actress
  • Colin Farrell, Irish actor whose name derives from the O’Farrells of Longford in the late medieval and early modern periods.
  • Gabriel Byrne, Irish actor and filmmaker whose family surname comes from the O’Byrnes of Wicklow, a powerful lordly family there between the tenth and seventeenth centuries.

Explore more about Irish surnames

References

  1. Three million people in the world are descended from one Irish High King. IrishCentral
  2. A dozen things you might not know about Irish names. Irish Times
  3. Irish Clan Names - Family Names in Ireland. Lynott Tours
  4. How the borders within Ireland changed during the Middle Ages. Medievalists.net
  5. The Two Nations of Medieval Ireland. BBC
  6. Gregory, Ian N.; Cunningham, Niall A.; Lloyd, C.D.; Shuttleworth, Ian G.; Ell, Paul S. 2. The Plantations: Sowing the seeds of Ireland's religious geographies Troubled Geographies: A Spatial History of Religion and Society in Ireland. Indiana University Press
  7. Bernardo O’Higgins. Encyclopedia Britannica
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Contributors

Main contributor: Dr. David Heffernan
Additional contributor: Cynthia Gardner