Irish surnames starting with K

The K names in brief

• Kavanagh · Caomhánach · Gaelic dynasty
  Follower of St Caomhán. Royal heirs of Leinster's Mac Murroughs. Art Óg Kavanagh made two English royal armies look foolish in the 1390s, and the family kept 'king of Leinster' pretensions into Tudor times.
• Keane · Ó Catháin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Cathán, 'little battler'. The O'Cahans of the Roe valley were O'Neill's chief urraghs — their inauguration right was to toss a shoe over the new O'Neill's head. Their ruin came with their lord's, in 1607.
• Kearney · Ó Cearnaigh / Ó Catharnaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Cearnach, 'victorious'. 'Victorious' septs west and east; Peadar Kearney of Dublin wrote 'The Soldier's Song', Amhrán na bhFiann, the anthem his nephew Brendan Behan's generation grew up singing.
• Keating · Céitinn · Norman-Welsh
  Possibly Welsh cethin, 'dusky'. Norman-Welsh settlers whose greatest son, Seathrún Céitinn (Geoffrey Keating), wrote Foras Feasa ar Éirinn — the sweeping Irish-language history of Ireland that generations learned as gospel.
• Keenan · Ó Cianáin · Gaelic learned family
  Descendant of Cianán, a diminutive of Cian, 'ancient'. Hereditary historians to the Maguires of Fermanagh — one of the families whose job was to remember, which is why we know as much as we do. Woulfe records them as still numerous throughout Ulster.
• Kehoe · Mac Eochaidh · Gaelic learned family
  Son of Eochaidh — from each, 'horse'. The Leinster branch, descended from Brandub mac Echach, king of Leinster in the sixth century, and chief poets of Leinster down to the seventeenth. The same name as Keogh, spelled the Wexford way.
• Kelleher · Ó Céileachair · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Céileachar, 'companion-loving'. A Dalcassian family who moved south from Clare into Cork and Kerry, where the name is now concentrated around Millstreet and the Blackwater.
• Kelly · Ó Ceallaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Ceallach, 'bright-headed' or 'strife'. The O'Kellys of Uí Maine were kings in east Galway and south Roscommon; their chief famously feasted all the poets of Ireland at Christmas 1351 — the origin of the phrase 'O'Kelly's welcome'.
• Kennedy · Ó Cinnéide · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Cinnéidigh, 'helmeted head'. Kin of Brian Boru, lords of Ormond around Nenagh. One famine-era emigrant family from Dunganstown, Wexford, produced a President of the United States.
• Kenny · Ó Cionnaith · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Cionnaith. A sept of Uí Maine along the Suck; the name gathered branches (and spellings) across four provinces, and a Taoiseach in the 21st century.
• Keogh · Mac Eochaidh · Gaelic learned family
  Son of Eochaidh — from each, 'horse'. Hereditary poets to the O'Kellys of Uí Maine and to the O'Byrnes of Wicklow. The root is Eochaidh, one of the oldest personal names in Ireland, built on the Old Irish ech, a horse — the same word standing behind Eoghan and behind the horse-lord in Ahern.
• Kiely · Ó Cadhla · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Cadhla, 'graceful'. A Déisi name of the Suir valley; an Ó Cadhla was the last Gaelic archbishop of Tuam to die in the old order, at the Confederation's fall.
• Kinsella · Cinnsealach · Gaelic dynasty
  Of the Uí Cheinnsealaigh — the royal line of south Leinster. One of the very few Irish surnames with no Ó or Mac: it is the dynasty name itself. The Kinsellas descend from the royal house of Diarmait Mac Murchada, the king whose invitation brought the Normans.
• Kirby · Ó Ciarmhaic · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Ciarmhac, 'dark son'. A Limerick sept whose Gaelic name, 'dark son', was traded for an English village name. Under both, they farmed the Golden Vale for eight centuries.
• Kirwan · Ó Ciardhubháin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Ciardhubhán, 'the black-dark one'. The only Gaelic Irish family among the fourteen Tribes of Galway — merchants inside the walls of a town that spent centuries keeping the Irish outside them.

Also spelled with K

These are listed on the atlas under another spelling, but the K form is the one many families carry.