Irish clans
Irish clans are traditional kinship groups sharing a common surname and heritage and existing in a lineage-based society, originating prior to the 17th century.
[3] These unrelated clients and their agnatic descendants were ineligible to be elected chief, but nonetheless assumed the name of the leading lineage as a show of allegiance.
At least one genetic study has concluded that while these genealogies appear fairly accurate back to the Middle Ages, they are unreliable prior to the 7th century.
[5][6] The Irish word clann is a borrowing from the Latin planta, meaning 'a plant, an offshoot, offspring, a single child or children, by extension race or descendants'.
[7] Such a "clan", if sufficiently closely related, could have common interests in landownership, but any political power wielded by their chief was territorially based.
[8] Within these larger groupings there tended to be one sept (division) who through war and politics became more powerful than others for a period of time and the leaders of some were accorded the status of royalty in Gaelic Ireland.
Some of the more important septs to achieve this power were O'Connor in Connacht, MacCarthy of Desmond and O'Brien of Thomond in Munster, Ó Neill of Clandeboy in Ulster, and MacMorrough Kavanagh in Leinster.
[10] According to T. F. O'Rahilly, in his works Goides and Their Predecessors and later Early Irish History, there were a total of four waves of Celtic invasions of the British Isles and that the first three of these were pre-Gaelic.
A larger part of England remained out of the control of the West Germanic people who invaded after the imperial collapse of Roman Britain and who founded the English nation.
[13] O'Rahilly's version of the origins of the Irish, as supported by C. Thomas Cairney and John Grenham is as follows: The first of the Celtic invaders of Ireland were known as the Cruthin who arrived between 800 and 500 BC.
The power and influence of the Gaeils gradually spread over the next three centuries, northwards, from Kerry into Tipperary and Limerick, as well as to the west into Galway and Roscommon.
[18] J. P. Mallory stated that O'Rahilly has argued that this manuscript showed that the medieval people of Ireland had seen a series of invasions from whom various dynasties and families might have traced their origins to.
[26] Donnchadh Ó Corráin put the evidence for the Irish naitional identity back to the 7th century emphasising the impact that Christianity had on the people there.
Descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, who was the ancestor of the Uí Néill dynasty, include people with the surnames O'Boyle, O'Connor and O'Donnell.
The tribes in the south called themselves the Eoghanacht and in about the year 400 AD they established at Cashel a dynasty which held power throughout most of southern Ireland from the 5th to 12th centuries.
Although it is not possible to prove O'Rahilly's history of the four Celtic invasions of Ireland or that the Dumnonii or Laigin were the third of these invasions, or that the following Irish tribes descended from them, according to historian Sean Duffy, with the exception of the Ciarraighe Loch na nAirne and the Feara Cualann, the existence of all of the following Irish tribes in around the 7th century is supported by the literature of the time that came to Ireland with Christianity.
Although it is not possible to prove O'Rahilly's history of the four Celtic invasions of Ireland or that the Gaels or Gaeils were the fourth of these invasions, or that the following Irish tribes descended from them, according to historian Sean Duffy, with the exception of the Clann Cholmáin, Cineal Laoghaire and the Muintear Tadhagain, the existence of all of the following Irish tribes in around the 7th century is supported by the literature of the time that came to Ireland with Christianity.
[74][F] The following surnames found in Ireland are believed to be of Norman origin and to have arrived following the Norman invasion of Ireland: Barry, Branne, Burke, Butler, Condon, Cusak, Dalton, Darcy, de Covcy, Dillon, Fagun, Fitzgerald, MacGibbon, French, Hackett, Jordan, Keating, Lacy, Lynch, MacCostello, Martin, Nugent, Power, Purcell, Rothes, Sarsfield, Wall.
[75] In the 16th century, English common law was introduced throughout Ireland, along with a centralised royal administration in which the county and the sheriff replaced the "country" and the clan chief.
The associated policy of surrender and regrant involved a change to succession to a title by the European system of primogeniture, and not by the Irish tanistry, where a group of male cousins of a chief were eligible to succeed by election.
[77] In 1607 the senior Gaelic chiefs of Ulster left Ireland to recruit support in Spain but failed, and instead eventually arrived in Rome where they remained for the rest of their lives (see Flight of the Earls).
After this point, the English authorities in Dublin established real control over all of Ireland for the first time, bringing a centralised government to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the native clans and their lordships.
