Irish surnames starting with J

The J names in brief

• Jenkins · — (Welsh / Cornish name) · Welsh & Cornish settlers
  'little John' — Jenkin, a pet-form of John with the '-kin' ending. A name from Cornwall that became one of the great surnames of south Wales — 'little John', recorded in England as early as the Domesday Book of 1086. In Ireland it is chiefly a settler name: brought to Ulster by English and Scottish planters in the 17th century, and found mainly in Antrim, Down and Limerick.
• Jennings · Mac Sheóinín · Norman-Gaelic
  Son of little John. A branch of the Burkes in Connacht who took their own name from an ancestor called Seoinín, little John — Normans gone so thoroughly Irish that they formed a Gaelic sept of their own. Woulfe places them in Connacht generally; the Burke lordships they came from were Galway and Mayo.
• Johnston · Mac Seáin (sometimes) · Ulster Scots (Border)
  John's town. Border reivers of Annandale re-rooted in Fermanagh, where Johnston remains among the most common names — some Gaelic MacShanes quietly joined them under the English spelling.
• Joyce · Seoighe · Norman-Welsh
  From Josse, a Breton saint's name. Welsh-Norman settlers of Connemara's mountains, still called Joyce Country, and a Tribe of Galway. James Joyce made the name the most famous in modern literature.