Irish surnames starting with T

The T names in brief

• Taaffe · Táth · Norman-Welsh
  From Welsh Dafydd (David). Louth gentry who rose in Habsburg service: Count Eduard Taaffe was twice prime minister of Austria while still, on paper, an Irish viscount. Racing folk know the name from Pat Taaffe, Arkle's jockey.
• Thompson · Mac Thómais · Ulster Scots
  Son of Thomas. Ubiquitous in planted Ulster; Belfast's William Thomson became Lord Kelvin, who put the absolute zero of temperature (and the transatlantic cable) on the world's charts.
• Tierney · Ó Tighearnaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Tighearnach, 'lordly'. The 'lordly' septs of three provinces; their namesake saint, Tighearnach of Clones, kept one of the annals that let Ireland remember itself.
• Tobin · Tóibín · Norman
  De St Aubyn. Normans of St Aubyn who became so Gaelic their chief was styled 'Baron of Coursey' by no authority but custom — and the poets called them Tóibín as if they'd always been there.
• Treacy · Ó Treasaigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Treasach, 'the fierce, the warlike'. Septs in Leinster and Uí Maine whose name means exactly what Seán Treacy of Soloheadbeg made it mean in January 1919 — the man who fired the War of Independence's first shots died in a Dublin street fight a year later.
• Troy · Ó Troighthigh · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Troightheach, 'the foot-soldier'. An infantryman's name from Thomond's wars, later gentled into parish registers across Tipperary — no connection to Homer, though the spelling borrowed his city.
• Tully · Mac an Tuile / Ó Maoltuile · Gaelic learned family
  Son of the flood — 'of God's will'. Hereditary physicians to O'Connors and O'Reillys; many later translated themselves to 'Flood' — medicine, meaning and metaphor all moving in one name.
• Twomey · Ó Tuama · Gaelic sept
  Descendant of Tuaim — 'burial mound'. Muskerry's poets' name: Seán Ó Tuama kept an open 'court of poetry' at Croom where the last Gaelic poets of Munster drank, mourned and versified the old world's end.

Also spelled with T

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