Irish surnames starting with M

The M names in brief

• MacDermot · Mac Diarmada · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Diarmaid. Princes of Moylurg with a castle on an island — the Rock of Lough Key. Their chief still carries Ireland's only officially recognised Gaelic title in male line: The MacDermot, Prince of Coolavin.
• MacNamara · Mac Conmara · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cú Mara, 'hound of the sea'. Second family of Thomond and hereditary marshals to the O'Briens — it was the MacNamaras who built Bunratty Castle, now Ireland's most-visited medieval hall.
• Madden · Ó Madáin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Madán (from madadh, 'hound'). Chiefs of Síl nAnmchadha in the south-east corner of Uí Maine, holding both banks of the Shannon at Portumna — one of the few septs whose lordship straddled provinces.
• Magee · Mag Aoidh · Gaelic sept
  Son of Aodh, 'fire'. An east Ulster sept that gave its name to Islandmagee — and, in emigration, gave Canada a founding father: Thomas D'Arcy McGee, poet, Fenian-turned-statesman, assassinated in Ottawa.
• Maguire · Mag Uidhir · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Odhar, 'the dun-coloured'. Kings of Fermanagh and admirals of Lough Erne's boat-fleets; their island castle at Enniskillen still guards the passage. Fermanagh without Maguires is unthinkable — then and now.
• Maher · Ó Meachair · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Meachar, 'hospitable'. The kindly-named sept of Ikerrin. Thomas Francis Meagher of the 1848 rising brought the tricolour from France, escaped Tasmania, led the Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg, and governed Montana.
• Malone · Ó Maoileoin · Gaelic learned family
  Descendant of Maoileoin, 'devotee of St John'. An ecclesiastical family of Clonmacnoise, where several of them were abbots — a name that belonged to the monastery on the Shannon before it belonged to anyone else.
• Martin · Mac Giolla Mháirtín / Máirtín · Gaelic sept & Norman tribe
  Devotee of St Martin. Both a Tribe of Galway, whose Richard 'Humanity Dick' Martin forced through Europe's first animal-welfare act in 1822, and a Gaelic sept of Tyrone. Two roads to one name.
• McBride · Mac Giolla Bhríde · Gaelic sept
  Son of the servant of St Brigid. A Donegal name from the Rosses and Gweedore, carried to Kintyre in Scotland and back again. Maud Gonne MacBride's married name, and John MacBride was executed after the Rising of 1916.
• McCabe · Mac Cába · Scots-gallowglass
  Son of Cába. Gallowglass axemen from the Hebrides who came to fight for the O'Reillys and O'Rourkes of Bréifne around 1350 — and stayed to become one of the border counties' most common names.
• McCann · Mac Cana · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cana, 'wolf cub' — a young warrior. Lords of Cinel Aonghusa, or Clann Breasail, on the south side of Lough Neagh in County Armagh. Still one of the county's commonest names.
• McCarthy · Mac Cárthaigh · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Cárthach, 'loving'. Kings of Desmond, heirs of the ancient Eóganachta of Cashel. It was a MacCarthy who built Blarney Castle — and whose talk-around-a-treaty style allegedly gave English the word 'blarney'.
• McConnell · Mac Conaill · Gaelic sept & Scottish
  Son of Conall — 'hound' and 'valour'; in Ulster also from Mac Dhòmhnaill. Two names in one: a Gaelic Irish Mac Conaill, and the Scots MacDonnells who crossed to Antrim as gallowglass and later as settlers.
• McCormack · Mac Cormaic · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cormac, 'charioteer'. Formed independently wherever a Cormac had sons, so the name belongs to every province. Athlone's John McCormack became the most famous tenor on Earth — the first artist to sell a million records of an Irish song.
• McCullough · Mac Cú Uladh · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cú Uladh, 'the Hound of Ulster'. A name that carries the old title of the Ulster champion. Cú Uladh was a common medieval given name long after the hero it recalled.
• McDonagh · Mac Donnchadha · Gaelic sept
  Son of Donnchadh. A princely branch of the MacDermots who ruled Tirerrill and Corran in Sligo from castles on the lakes. Thomas MacDonagh, poet and 1916 Proclamation signatory, and playwright Martin McDonagh carry the name's two temperaments.
• McDonnell · Mac Dónaill · Scots-Gaelic
  Son of Dónall. Lords of the Glens of Antrim, sprung from the Lords of the Isles. Sorley Boy MacDonnell out-manoeuvred both Elizabeth I and Shane O'Neill to keep the Glens — his line are earls of Antrim still.
• McElroy · Mac Giolla Rua · Gaelic sept
  Son of the red-haired youth. Son of the giolla rua, the red-haired youth. The head of the family lived at Ballymackilroy in the parish of Aghalurcher, near Lough Erne, and left the name on the map there.
• McFadden · Mac Pháidín · Scots-Gaelic & Irish
  Son of Páidín, 'little Patrick'. A name of Kintyre origin, well known across Ulster and in Mayo. In Donegal it took root deeply enough around Gweedore and the Rosses to read as thoroughly Irish.
• McGale · Mac Cathail / Mac Cathmhaoil · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cathal, 'battle-mighty' — or of Cathmhaol, 'battle-chief'; the authorities differ. A name of one place: Omagh. MacLysaght calls it 'quite numerous' there and a variant of MacCall, and the record agrees.
• McGovern · Mág Shamhradháin · Gaelic sept
  Son of Samhradhán, 'summer's child'. Lords of Tullyhaw in the mountainous north-west of Cavan, Ballymagauran keeps their name, with their own praise-poetry collection, the Book of the Magauran, the oldest surviving Irish family poem-book.
• McGrath · Mac Craith · Gaelic learned family
  Son of Mac Raith, 'son of grace'. Poets to the O'Briens and coarbs of Lough Derg. Miler Magrath managed to be simultaneously a Catholic bishop and a Protestant archbishop for decades — his sardonic epitaph at Cashel hints he knew exactly what he'd done.
• McGuinness · Mag Aonghusa · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Aonghus. The Magennises were lords of Iveagh in Down, ruling from Rathfriland; ennobled by the Stuarts, ruined by the Williamite wars, their name is now written over more pub doors than any castle gate.
• McInerney · Mac an Airchinnigh · Gaelic learned family
  Son of the erenagh — the hereditary steward of church lands. A job title fossilised into a surname: the family were hereditary erenaghs in Thomond, managing church estates by the Fergus. Every McInerney is, etymologically, in church administration.
• McKenna · Mac Cionaoith · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cionaoth. Lords of Truagh in north Monaghan, famous as fighters and, in later centuries, as everything from Spanish grandees to Hollywood's Siobhán McKenna of the Abbey stage.
• McKeown · Mac Eoin · Norman-Gaelic
  Son of Eoin or Eoghan — John, or the older Irish Eoghan. The Mac Eoin Bissetts came to the Glens of Antrim in the thirteenth century with John Bissett and became a Gaelic sept in all but ancestry — Normans of Scottish exile speaking Irish within a century.
• McLoughlin · Mac Lochlainn · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Lochlann, 'the Norse-lander'. Two royal lines in one name: the Mac Lochlainn high kings of the north, and the O'Melaghlins, royal heirs of Tara reduced to a bog-side barony but never quite extinguished.
• McMahon · Mac Mathghamhna · Gaelic dynasty
  Son of Mathghamhain, 'bear'. Two princely septs: Thomond's, from Brian Boru's brother; and Oriel's, whose lordship the crown dismembered in 1591. A descendant became President of France — Marshal Patrice de MacMahon.
• McManus · Mac Mághnais · Gaelic sept
  Son of Magnus — from Latin magnus, 'great'. A branch of the Maguires on Belle Isle in Lough Erne, and a separate branch of the O'Connors in Roscommon. The Latin 'great' reached Ireland through the Norse, who took it from Charlemagne — Carolus Magnus.
• McNally · Mac Con Allaidh · Gaelic sept
  Son of Cú Allaidh, 'the wild hound' — the wolf. An Ulster branch of the Cenél nEógain. A separate Mayo family, Mac an Fhailghigh, was anglicised the same way — two different names wearing one coat.
• McNelis · Mac Niallais · Gaelic sept
  Son of Niallas, a name formed on Niall, 'champion'. One of the older Donegal surnames, and a south-west Donegal one above all: common around Ardara, Killybegs, Kilcar, Carrick and Glencolumbkille, and uncommon enough elsewhere that it still places a family. It is also a name the free references do not carry — Woulfe's 1923 dictionary has no entry for it at all, and Wikipedia only a list of people — so this page follows MacLysaght, who is the standard modern authority and is in print rather than online.
• McNulty · Mac an Ultaigh · Gaelic sept
  Son of the Ulsterman. Held to be a branch of the MacDonlevys, the ruling family of the Ulaid, who fled west after the Normans took their kingdom in 1177 — and whose descendants were named for where they came from.
• Meehan · Ó Miadhacháin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Miadhachán, 'the honourable'. An erenagh family keeping church lands on the Leitrim-Fermanagh border; a Meehan hand copied part of the Annals of the Four Masters — history owes its clerks.
• Minogue · Ó Muineog · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Muineog — a diminutive of manach, 'monk'. Woulfe gives the root as a diminutive of manach, a monk, and records the name as common in Clare and Offaly. It is old enough in the record to have produced a bishop: Cléirchen Ó Muineóg held the see of Leighlin in the 11th century.
• Mitchell · Mistéil · Norse-Scots
  From Michael. Planter stock in Ulster, merchant stock in Galway — and John Mitchel of Newry, the Young Irelander whose furious 'Jail Journal' taught a century of rebels their prose style.
• Molloy · Ó Maolmhuaidh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Maolmhuadh, 'noble chief'. Princes of Fir Cheall in Offaly, entitled (so the old books say) to keep the High King's hounds. The bogs of their country hid Ireland's finest medieval book shrines.
• Mooney · Ó Maonaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Maonach. Woulfe records three separate families: chiefs of Clann Murthuile in Roscommon, a branch of the Uí Fiachrach on the south shore of Sligo Bay in the barony of Tireragh, and a branch of the Siol nAnmchadha in south-east Galway. By the end of the 16th century the name was found in every part of Ireland.
• Moore · Ó Mórdha · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Mórdha, 'majestic'. Chiefs of Laois and scourge of the Pale — which is why theirs was the first county ever planted (1556). Rory O'More's name became a password of the 1641 rising: 'God, Our Lady, and Rory O'More'.
• Moran · Ó Móráin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Mórán, 'the great one'. Connacht through and through: septs at Ardnaree on the Moy and among the Uí Maine. The name crossed every ocean with the Famine ships and now belongs to five continents.
• Moriarty · Ó Muircheartaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Muircheartach, 'skilled navigator' — from muir, the sea. Muircheartach is a sea-director, an expert navigator, and it is one of the very few Irish surnames with the sea in its meaning. Woulfe places the Kerry family as chiefs of Aos Aisde, a district he reckons lay along the river Maine, which is the country behind Castlemaine and the Dingle peninsula.
• Morrison · Mac Muiris / Ó Muirgheasáin · Ulster Scots / Gaelic
  Son of Maurice / descendant of Muirgheasán. Hebridean bard-family Ó Muirgheasáin on one side, Scots planters on the other — and Belfast's Van Morrison singing both traditions into one.
• Moynihan · Ó Muimhneacháin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of the Munsterman. Muimhneachán is, literally, the Munsterman — which makes the name a puzzle, since you would hardly be called that at home. Woulfe answers it: there are two families, and the older is a Uí Fiachrach family in Erris in Mayo, where a Munsterman would indeed be worth naming, and where the surname is sometimes translated outright as Munster.
• Mulcahy · Ó Maolchathaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of the devotee of St Cathach ('battle'). A south Tipperary sept; General Richard Mulcahy carried the name through the independence war as IRA chief of staff and then, hardest of all, through the Civil War's other side.
• Mulholland · Ó Maolchalann · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Maolchalann, 'chief of the calends'. Keepers of the Bell of St Patrick, the Bell of the Testament, from at least the twelfth century to the end of the eighteenth, seated in the barony of Loughinsholin in Derry with a branch early settled in Antrim. Woulfe records two other families of the name, in Limerick and Meath, and reckons the Ulster line the only one still extant.
• Mullan · Ó Maoláin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Maolán, 'the tonsured one'. From Maolán, a diminutive of maol, bald — and in Irish names that baldness is usually the tonsure of a monk or a devotee rather than a hairline. Woulfe calls it one of the commonest surnames in the country, found in almost every part of it and under a great spread of anglicised forms: Mullan, Mullen, Mullane, Millane, Moylan, Mullins, Mollan.
• Mulligan · Ó Maolagáin · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Maolagán, 'the little tonsured one'. Chiefs of Tír Mac Carthainn in Donegal until the Plantation scattered them into Mayo and Monaghan. In America the name became everyman — Hercules Mulligan, the New York tailor-spy of the American Revolution, was Coleraine-born.
• Murphy · Ó Murchadha · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Murchadh, 'sea-warrior'. Ireland's most numerous name, borne by three separate septs. The Wexford Murphys led the county in the 1798 Rising — Fr John Murphy of Boolavogue is still sung about.
• Murray · Ó Muireadhaigh / Mac Muireadhaigh · Gaelic sept & Scots
  Descendant of Muireadhach, 'seafarer / lord'. Irish septs of the seafarer-name in three provinces, reinforced by Scottish Murrays of Moray — a name that crossed and re-crossed the narrow sea for a thousand years.

Also spelled with M

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