Roots Archive
Roots: The O’Briens
The O’Briens are one of the great Gaelic families of Ireland, and were the rulers…
Roots: Byrnes and O’Beirnes
The names O’Byrne and O’Beirne (or Byrne and Beirne) are often regarded as variants of…
Roots: The Burkes
Burke (or Bourke) is one of the most popular Irish names of Norman origin. The…
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Roots: Dunne and Duffy
he names Dunne and Duffy have nothing in common except that they are derived from colors, the Dunnes from donn, the Gaelic word for brown and Duffy from dubh, the […]
Roots: O’Malley and Molloys
These two families, although unrelated, share the same origin of their names, i.e. both are thought to derive from the Gaelic word for chieftain. The O’Malley family (from the Gaelic […]
Roots: The Connolly Family
The Connolly family are an ancient sept of Ireland’s western province of Connacht. The Gaelic form of the name is O’Conghaile. The original sept dispersed and in time three separate […]
Roots: The O’Neill Family
There are several different septs of the O’Neills in County Clare (where the name is also spelled O’Nihill), in Waterford and in Carlow. The most famous of the O’Neills, however, […]
Roots: The Brady Family
The Brady family name derives from the Gaelic McBradaigh which was originally anglicized as McBrady, but the “Mc” is very seldom used in modern times. The vast majority of this […]
Roots: The Kavanaghs
Unlike most of the families covered in this column, the origin of the Kavanaghs or Cavanaghs can be traced back to one specific person. This was Donal, the son of […]