Connacht
Five counties in the west, the smallest and least populous of the four — and the only one whose name is not a place but a family. Connachta means “the descendants of Conn”.
The name comes from the ruling dynasty, the Connachta, whose name means the descendants of Conn — Conn Cétchathach, Conn of the Hundred Battles, a king who belongs more to legend than to record. Before the Connachta, the province had another name entirely: Cóiced Ol nEchmacht, the fifth of Ol nEchmacht. Almost nobody remembers it, and it is the older name of the two.
Until the 9th century the west was several independent kingdoms — Uí Fiachrach, Uí Briúin, Uí Maine, Conmhaicne, Delbhna. It became a single kingdom under the Uí Briúin Aí, whose ruling line took the surname Ua Conchobair, O'Connor. Two of them, Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair and his son Ruaidrí, became High Kings of Ireland; Ruaidrí was the last High King, and the one who lost the country to the Normans.
The kingdom collapsed in the 1230s in a civil war within its own royal family, which let the Norman de Burghs in. Their colony then shrank again through the 14th century, and kingdoms like Uí Maine and Tír Fhiachrach Muaidhe stayed outside English control into the 16th. Connacht is also the place the Cromwellian settlement pointed the dispossessed towards: the Act for the Settlement of Ireland in 1652 stripped Catholic landowners of their estates and authorised the commissioners to grant them poorer land in Connacht or in County Clare instead, with a deadline of 1 May 1654 and execution named as the alternative. That is where “to Hell or to Connacht” comes from. What actually happened is less total than the phrase suggests (most Catholic landowners stayed where they were) but Catholic land ownership across the island fell to about 8 per cent.
Connacht is the smallest and least populous province. Two of its five counties, Galway and Mayo, hold Gaeltacht districts, Connemara is the best known of them, and the province gave Irish one of its three surviving dialects. Galway is its city.
A homeland is where the name is first recorded and densest, not a boundary — people moved. The whole map of the surnames →
How many counties are in Connacht?
5: Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon, Sligo.
What is Connacht in Irish?
Cúige Chonnacht — “the fifth of Connachta” — pronounced roughly “KOO-ig-uh KHUN-akht”. The province itself is Connachta, said “KUN-akh-tuh”.
Connacht or Connaught?
Connacht is the usual spelling in Ireland since the Gaelic revival — it is the old Irish singular form. Connaught is the older anglicisation, and it survives in institutional names. Irish uses the plural, Connachta, because the dynasty split into branches and because the other provinces' peoples (Ulaid, Laigin) were plurals too.
Does Connacht have any official status today?
No. The provinces have had no administrative or political function for centuries. They survive as historical and cultural units, and most visibly in sport — the rugby provinces and the GAA's provincial championships.
Know Connacht better than this page does? Tell us. · All four provinces · The counties in Irish