20 Irish Surnames That Are Really One Dead Man's Name

In 916 an Irish scribe wrote nine words that people still call the oldest surname in Europe. Tighearnach Ua Cleirigh, lord of Aidhne, died. It is not a surname. Ua means grandson of, and the scribe was describing a man by his grandfather, nothing more. But read on in the same annals and you can watch a real surname being born, one entry at a time. This video walks twenty Irish surnames back to the individual each one is named after. O'Brien and Brian Boru. O'Neill and Niall Glundubh. MacCarthy and a man burned alive in a house in 1045. Byrne and a king of Leinster who died at Cologne. Then the names that were never one family at all, because Murphy is three separate clans, Kelly is nine, and O'Connor is at least six. And at the end, the Irish surnames that stopped looking Irish once the English administration translated them, including one that is a four-hundred-year-old mistranslation. Sources are the Annals of the Four Masters and Woulfe's Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall of 1923. If this is your lane, there is more of it here:    / @thewayofireland