THE ADVENT OF SURNAMES IN IRELAND

Glendalough, Wicklow County, Ireland, August 2000.

The people of Ireland adopted the use of surnames in the 10^th century A.D. during the lifetime of King Brian Boru (941 – 1014 A.D.,) one of the first countries to do so.  The Irish, being truly Irish, developed their own unique system of surnames which could be easily recognized throughout the world.  This was accomplished by attaching the prefixes "O" (meaning "grandson of") or "Mac" (meaning "son of') to the paternal name.  When writing in Irish, however, no apostrophe is used with the “O.”    An old poem depicted how this process worked:

"By Mac and O you'll always know

 True Irishman, they say;

 But if they lack both O and Mac

 No Irishman are they."

Certainly not all Irish names follow this rule of nomenclature but many do.  Likewise, it is not at all unusual to find numerous forms of a particular name appearing regularly throughout the centuries of record keeping being kept.  The original Irish Gaelic name “O Ruairc,” for example, has been corrupted into such forms as: O'Rourke, O'Roarke, O'Rorke, O'Ruarke, O'Rooke, Rourke, Roark, Roake, Rookes and Ruake to name just a few.  

In addition a plethora of  Irish surnames were "anglicized" between the years 1550-1600 due to economic and social pressures made upon the Irish by the English government.  Little by little the English sought to eradicate the use of the Irish language and the Irish identity of the people.  Over time this generated an almost totally illiterate society unable to read and write in their own native Irish Gaelic language or even the Queen's English.  As the English landlords tried to maintain the records of their Irish tenants, they recorded the names by “pronunciation” since they had no guide as to how to spell them correctly.  The result was the creation of a 

myriad of "anglicized" Gaelic surnames still in existence today.

When the Great Famine devastated Ireland in the years 1845 – 1852, over one million people died there on the island and another million immigrated to safer havens around the world.  The ironic twist concerning this mass immigration is that the English government had desired the annihilation of the people of Ireland for centuries yet they continued to thrive and survive.   So instead of creating their total destruction, they created an Irish Diaspora amassing to over 80 million strong in the 21^st century who can all claim at least some small degree of Irish descent.  Today, not surprisingly, Irish surnames and their variants can be found even in the tiniest and remotest corners of the world.    

Amazing right!  Any Irish surnames on your family tree? If so, great!  You are a fellow member of the Irish Diaspora!  If not, then a little genealogical detective work might prove very revealing.....

Another blog will look at my own Irish family lines.  Stay tuned.