The Chief of the Name, or in older English usage Captain of his Nation, is the recognised head of a family or clan (Irish and Scottish Gaelic: fine) in Ireland and Scotland.
There are instances[1] where Norman lords of the time like FitzGerald and Burke took to using the Gaelic style of "The" or "Mór" (great) to indicate that the individual was the primary person of his family in Ireland.
At the same time mentions were made in official records of locally-powerful landlords described as "chief of his nation", i.e. head of a family, whether assimilated or not.
Attempts were made by the English to make each "chief" responsible for the good behaviour of the rest of his family and followers.
The lineages of assimilated chiefs were usually recorded by the Herald's Office in Dublin Castle, set up in 1552, not least because many clans in the 16th and 17th centuries had been persuaded to enter the English-law system under the policy of surrender and regrant.
[citation needed] The Irish Free State, founded in 1922, gave no special recognition to the concept, but in 1938, the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, at the inauguration of Dr. Douglas Hyde as the first President of Ireland, welcomed the incoming President with these words: "In you we greet the successor of our rightful princes and in your accession to office we hail the closing of the breach that has existed since the undoing of our nation at Kinsale".
McLysaght deplored that anyone could perfectly legally describe themselves as "chief of the name" (such as The O'Rahilly) without having any written proof of descent, if nobody else claimed the very same title.
After genealogical errors in the 1990s saw Terence Francis MacCarthy and other impostors receive recognition, the Irish government decided in July 2003 to abandon this practice.
Five years later, Sir Henry Farnham Burke, KCVO, CB, FSA, Somerset Herald stated in 1900 that "the only Pedigree at present on record in either of the Offices of Arms showing a lineal male descent from the House of O'Neill, Monarchs of Ireland, Kings of Ulster, and Princes of Tyrone and Claneboy, is the one registered in the fifty-ninth year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lady Victoria, in favor of His Excellency Jorge O'Neill of Lisbon".