The top 100 Irish last names explained
Your Irish roots and where your family's surname hails from - get started on your own Irish genealogy
Published Saturday, March 30, 2013, 5:14 PM
Updated Saturday, March 30, 2013, 5:14 PM
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maryb11 | Mar 07, 2013, 11:43 AM EST
CAN SOMEONE HELP ME TRYING TO FIND OUT IF THE NAME "FISHER " IS IRISH. ANY THOUGHTS. MY FIRST TIME HERE. AN EARLY ' HAPPY ST. PATRICKS'S DAY TO ALL. GOD BLESS.
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Frosty38 | Nov 11, 2012, 03:55 PM EST
McClung I look at the census that I have it is not on it early. Maybe after the early one was done. was done
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Frosty38 | Oct 29, 2012, 09:58 AM EDT
this is for the lady wanting to know where her family is from NI and they have a lot of areas
McClung's Northern ireland
Antrim Armagh Down Tyrone only 31 families in the early years
Help this helps. I do family history for a hobby
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Frosty38 | Oct 29, 2012, 09:54 AM EDT
My husband is a Connolly from Cork. They arrived into New Brunswick in 1835 with the first group. Then came to Maine
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michaelfshea | Oct 24, 2012, 11:00 AM EDT
shea- foot high wave eat- ireland, lake vanern, sweden.
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Roger Sweny | Oct 23, 2012, 10:27 AM EDT
My name is obviously a "Mac Suibhne" variant, and although I prefer the pronunciation "swenny", I usually answer to almost anthing! Iterestingly, my older generation (now passed on, R.I.P.) always used the pronunciation "swinny".
My reason for writingin is that you have "suibhne" as meaning "peasant", whereas I have always seen it given as "pleasant", as opposed to "duibhne", which I understand to mean "dark, or unpleasant", as in Dublin, a dark pool. I don't mean to imply that Dublin is unpleaasant, far from it - I have always found it to be a most pleasant city to visit, and would recommendit anybody.
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nena729 | Oct 05, 2012, 09:44 PM EDT
Like this site just not too helpful for me, at least not that I have been able to see. Trying to find where in Ireland the McClung's were from.
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FierceAsHounds | Oct 04, 2012, 05:35 PM EDT
No Connolly's? We already know we are in top Irish names!! haha
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Seannachy | Sep 22, 2012, 07:45 PM EDT
The following shud be read after the one below? In any event you should include your source(s) as well as some sort of disclaimer that you have left out many names. You did include my mother's maiden name, Murphy, & her mother's name McGrath but left out my father's mother's name Cunniff, anglicized 'Bones' from the Irish word for bone, cnamh. To summarize, I would suggest that you list your source(s) or your criteria at the onset in order to avoid being personally accused of playing favorites as there are many disagreements in both Irish & Celtic history as well as genealogy.
And as a postscript, for your information, a recent book (2006) by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford, titled "Saxons, Vikings, and Celts" "The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland", published in England as "The Blood of the Isles", indicated that the overwhelming maternal & paternal DNA thruout the Republic & the UK is of an indigenous 'Insular' & an Atlantic coast Western 'Celtic' origin going back to Paleolithic & Mesolithic times, some 10,000 years ago. As Prof Sykes says: "The Irish, the Welsh and the Scots know this, but the English sometimes think otherwise. But, just a little way beneath the surface, the strands of ancestry weave us all together as the children of a common past."
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Seannachy | Sep 22, 2012, 07:44 PM EDT
I get it. I shud uv dun it backwards. So I will. cont.
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Seannachy | Sep 22, 2012, 07:43 PM EDT
As an hereditary keeper of the Lore, I am both bound and a bit curious how you came up with this list? Was it the surnames from a list of the employees of Irish Central/Voice/America? You fail to mention your source nor to define what you mean by an "Irish" name. Obviously you are not referring to those Pre-Norman Gaelic clans, technically, the original "Celtic/Milesian/Gaelic/ Irish" who came to Ireland c. 500 B.C. Brian Boru issued a decree in the 10th c. that all Irish who hadn't already were to take a surname, the 1st time in Europe that this was done. You apparently are using the names of all those familes born & raised in Ireland despite the non-Ireland origin of their surname, Celts as well as non-Celts. This I infer from your describing your own paternal surname, Fitzgerald as: "One of the two greatest families which came to Ireland as a result of the Anglo-Norman invasion. " Is it based on the most recent census? From a genealogical tome such as O'Hart, Boylan, Grenham or MacLysaght, et al? I'm sure you know that to make a list like this would necessitate your exclusion of many, many Irish names and be a sure bone of contention to many Irish who may feel slighted by the absence of their name. I admit to a wee bit of umbrage, myself, that you left out mention of my paternal surname, Casey/O'Casey, which acccording to the research of History House Publishing of Ennis, Co Clare (which was for the most part publishers of genealogical research), in 1987 indicated it was #45 of the top 100 'original' Irish, Pre-Norman names & that a minimum of 110,000 Casey families existed thruout the world. cont.
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Seannachy | Sep 22, 2012, 07:41 PM EDT
Oh I get it, a little bit at a time.
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Seannachy | Sep 22, 2012, 07:40 PM EDT
Hey whatever happened to my comments?
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