Mac and O in Irish Surnames

The first of the major invasions of Ireland in historical times (1169-1172) resulted in the formation of a new set of surnames belonging to the Norman families which in due course became 'Hiberniores Hibernicis ipsis' (more Irish than the Irish themselves). Names in this category are numerous and widespread in Ireland, and most of them have in the course of time become exclusively Irish, as for example Burke, Costello, Cusack, Cogan, Dalton, Dillon, Fitzgerald, Keating, Nagle, Nugent, Power, Roche, Sarsfield and Walsh. Some of them, of course, like Barry and Purcell, though generally regarded as Irish, are found in England also since the twelfth century. This practice of forming sub-septs was not confined to Norman families. This is the assumption by Norman families of surnames of a Gaelic type and the formation under those designations of what practically amount to septs or sub-septs on the Gaelic model. The majority of these are nearly extinct today, as are the various offshoots of the Burkes, though no doubt some of their descendants did revert to their original surnames. Fitzpatrick, which up to the seventeenth century was MacGilpatrick, is in a class by itself, being the only Fitz name which is Gaelic: otherwise Fitz (from French fils) also denotes a Norman origin. In many cases local association has been perpetuated in place names. Today, no doubt, almost all the Norman-Irish surnames which are increasingly common in England became established there as a result of nineteenth century and particularly of recent emigration from Ireland.

The second great upheaval, five hundred years later, was of a more devastating character. In the seventeenth century the dire effects of conquest were intensified by religious persecution, and the three main events of that century resulting from military aggression - the Plantation of Ulster, the Cromwellian Settlement and the Williamite forfeitures - followed by the Penal Code which was at its severest in the first half of the eighteenth century, inevitably led to a lack of accord between the new settlers and the old inhabitants of the country. The natural process of assimilation was thus retarded, indeed it is not too much to say that it was deliberately prevented. Thus the Elizabethan immigrants and those that followed them in the next century did not become hibernicized as the Normans had.

It has been stated that one of the causes of the disuse of the prefixes Mac and O in the eighteenth century was the inclusion in the Penal Code of a provision to that effect. No legislation dealing with this question was ever passed except in so far as the Statute of Kilkenny (1367) affected the Irish of the Pale. The widespread belief outside Ireland that Mac is essentially a Scottish prefix. many Mac names in Ulster are Scottish in origin, having come in with the seventeenth century planters and these tended to retain their Gaelic prefix when those of Catholic Ireland fell into disuse. In any case the Scottish Gaels are originally of Irish stock and Scotland herself took her name from the word 'Scotia' which in Latin was at first used to denote the land inhabited by the Irish race. For many of our foremost Irish families bear Mac names such as MacCarthy, MacGuinness, MacGrath, MacGillycuddy, MacKenna, MacMahon, MacNamara and so on. evertheless, it is a fallacy widely held.

It is a characteristic of Irish place names, particularly those beginning with Bally, Dun, Clon etc., that a large proportion of them are formed from personal names. Ballymahon, Lettermacaward, Drumconor, Toomevara Similarly Doonamurray has nothing to do with the surname Murray, nor has Drumreilly any etymological connection with the sept of O'Reilly. Of course the association, especially in the case of the Kil words, is often ecclesiastical rather than genealogical, for many are formed from the names of pre-surname saints and hermits, and so have no interest for the student of surnames. Those place names beginning with Bally and other Irish words were almost all formed before the seventeenth century and too often when a family was thus distinguished it has ceased to exist or has almost died out in the immediate neighbourhood of the particular townland so designated. After the 1602 debacle, as we must regard the battle of Kinsale, place names with the prefix Castle and Mount or the suffix Town and Bridge like Castlepollard and Crookstown, and occasionally a combination of both like Castletownconyers, began to be used. For the most part these names honoured planter families, with whom must be classed renegade Gaels who forsook their own people and religion and backed the winning side though where they represent translations from older Irish place names, as in the case of O'Brien's Bridge and Castledermot, this of course does not apply.

Those surnames which were actually formed from places. In England they constitute one of the most numerous classes in Ireland they are comparatively rare. Apart from Anglo-Irish names taken from places in England like Welby, Preston etc., the only Irish place names so used I have met are Ardagh, Athy, Bray, Corbally, Finglas, Galbally, Sutton, Rath, Santry, Slane and Trim, some of which are very rare. Dease (and Deasy), Desmond, Lynagh, Meade, and Minnagh, formed from extensive territories, may also perhaps be included. Not all place names found as surnames can be accepted in this category.The other descriptive surnames as genuinely Gaelic, having neither O nor Mac, for they are the descriptive type. Cavan for example is not taken from the town but is a synonym of Keevane or occasionally an abbreviation of Kavanagh:

These have a topographical significance, as have Spain, Switzer, Wallace, Brett, London. Quite a number of descriptive surnames, which at some period must have superseded a normal family surname, are formed from adjectives such as Bane (white), Begg (small), Crone (brown), Creagh (branchy) Duff (black), Gall (foreign), Glass (green), Lawder (strong), Reagh (brindled). Phair or Fair is also one of these, but it has been subjected to translation, being the Irish adjective fionn. The most numerous of these in Ireland today is Galway or Galwey. It does, it is true, derive from a place, but the place is Galloway in Scotland.

The Ormond Deeds, especially those of the sixteenth century, contain a great many names formed by prefixing Mac to a christian name. Besides those mentioned above, MacNicholas, MacPhelim, MacRory, MacThomas and MacWalter are of most frequent occurrence. Of all these names the only two to be found in any considerable numbers as surnames today are MacShane and MacTigue, as it is now spelt. The latter has in some places been shorn of its Macs and is written Tighe. Bane does exist as a modern surname, Oge, however, does not, though it may have occasionally survived by translation, as Young. Similarly Bane is given as a common surname, though there is little doubt that it was in fact, like Oge, merely an epithet. The 1659 census all over the country according to this there were large numbers of MacWilliams, MacEdmunds, MacDavids MacRichards etc., and in the same way Fitzjames (sometimes alias MacJames) appears as a common surname. The prevalence, according to the returning officers, of Oge as a surname bears out this assumption. The great majority even of the labouring class did have hereditary Mac and O surnames at least from the middle of the sixteenth century. By the eighteenth, of course, the cottier and small farmer class had come to include a considerable pro-portion of the old Gaelic aristocracy.

Locative bynames were common in many medieval European naming cultures, including English, French, and German. In contrast, they were vanishingly rare among Gaelic bynames. These may be names of places, such as the name of a farm, town, region, territory, or country, or they may be descriptions of places based on some topographical feature, such as a mill, bridge, lake, or the like. There are few examples of Gaels being identified as "of <name of someplace>" or "at <description of someplace>" or the like in their Gaelic names. Of the known examples, most occur in the names of unusual individuals such as the Lord of the Isles, and so are not necessarily representative of standard Gaelic naming. As indicated in the introduction to this article, other styles of bynames in addition to those explained above were used in medieval Gaelic names. However, there are certain types of byname that, while popular in other naming cultures in medieval Europe, were vanishingly rare in Gaelic bynames and therefore are poor choices for medieval Gaelic name re-creation.

Occupational bynames were common in many medieval European naming cultures, including English, French, and German. In contrast, they were vanishingly rare to non-existent among Gaelic bynames. Note that official bynames -- bynames that indicted a person's office, rank, or title -- are not the same as the occupational bynames described above, and such official bynames were used in Gaelic. So while there don't appear to be Gaelic bynames describing that individual as a smith or a tailor, there are bynames identifying Gaels as earls, bishops, abbots, priests, judges, and the like. Note also that while Gaels don't seem to have used occupational bynames, simple patronymic bynames were sometimes formed from the father's occupation rather than his given name. So while there don't appear to be Gaelic bynames describing that individual as a smith or a tailor, there are simple patronymic bynames that identify Gaels as the child of a smith or a tailor. For most of the Middle Ages, most documents where individual real people are named were written in Latin. In the later Middle Ages, many documents in Scotland were written in Scots (a cousin language of English) and many documents in Ireland were written in English.