McKee Irish Surname: History, Origins & Heritage of an Ulster Family
The McKee surname is compact, sharp, and unmistakably northern — a name that belongs to the Presbyterian townlands of Down and Antrim, the hills of Galloway across the water, and the long Scots-Irish road to America. McKee is an anglicised form of the Gaelic Mac Aodha, meaning son of Aodh, one of the oldest and most powerful personal names in the Gaelic world: Aodh was the ancient Celtic word for fire, the name of a pre-Christian fire deity, and a favourite name of Irish kings for a thousand years — usually rendered in English as Hugh. Because Mac Aodha was pronounced with a soft, almost vanishing middle sound, English-speaking clerks captured it in a remarkable variety of spellings, and the same Gaelic name emerged onto paper as McKee in east Ulster, Magee in Antrim, McCoy among the gallowglass families, McKay in the Scottish Highlands, and Hughes wherever the name was translated rather than transliterated. McKee is thus one branch of an enormous Gaelic family of names — and in the United States, where it is now most numerous, it stands firmly among the classic surnames of Scots-Irish descent.
Where Did the McKee Name Take Root?
The McKee spelling crystallised on both shores of the North Channel at once. In east Ulster, families of the Mac Aodha name were long established in Down and Antrim, part of the Gaelic population of the old kingdom of Ulaid. In south-west Scotland, the same name flourished in Galloway and Ayrshire — the Kirkcudbrightshire form McKie and the Wigtownshire McKee families were prominent enough to hold lands and appear in Scottish records from the medieval period. The seventeenth century then folded the two streams together: Galloway lay directly opposite the Ulster coast, and its families supplied a heavy share of the Lowland settlers who crossed during the Plantation era, settling precisely where the Irish Mac Aodha families already lived. Within a few generations, McKee was one of the signature names of the Presbyterian congregations of Down — a name whose bearers might descend from Irish kings named Aodh, Galloway lairds named McKie, or, very often, both.
What Is the McKee Story in America?
Few names are more deeply woven into the Scots-Irish settlement of America. McKees appear in the eighteenth-century emigration from Belfast and Larne to Philadelphia and Charleston, and the name marched down the Great Wagon Road into the Shenandoah Valley, the Carolinas, and Kentucky with the main body of the Ulster migration. Thomas McKee's trading post on the Susquehanna and the town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania — founded by the family of frontier trader David McKee at the meeting of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers — fixed the name permanently on the map of the American frontier. McKee's Rocks, across the river from Pittsburgh, carries it too. From that frontier stock the name spread through every region and calling in American life, from Kentucky's McKee, seat of Jackson County, to the officers, engineers, teachers, and entertainers who have carried the name in the generations since. In Ireland, Dick McKee of Dublin was a commandant of the Dublin Brigade in the War of Independence, remembered in the name of McKee Barracks — evidence that the name's story runs through both of Ireland's traditions.
What Does the Name Aodh Carry With It?
Every McKee carries in the second syllable of the name the oldest fire in Gaelic culture. Aodh was borne by the High King Aodh Finnliath, by generations of O'Neill and O'Donnell princes — Aodh Mór O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell, the leaders of Gaelic Ulster's last great stand at the turn of the seventeenth century, were both men named Aodh — and by saints and poets across a millennium of Irish history. When the name was translated into English as Hugh, the fire hid in plain sight; the surnames of the Mac Aodha family are its lasting monument. It is a fine inheritance for a one-syllable name that fits so neatly on an American mailbox.
Where Should McKee Families Research Their Roots?
County Down is the first place to dig, with Antrim close behind. The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland in Belfast holds the Presbyterian congregational registers, tithe applotment books, and Griffith's Valuation returns that tie a McKee family to its townland, and the name is thick in the records of the Ards Peninsula, north Down, and the country around Belfast. Families with a Scottish trail should search the old parish registers of Wigtownshire and Kirkcudbrightshire through the ScotlandsPeople service, where the McKie and McKee spellings interleave. American researchers should work the Pennsylvania land warrants, the Cumberland and Shenandoah Valley records, and the passenger lists of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston — the three great doors through which the Ulster McKees entered America.
Which Related Surnames Connect to McKee?
The McKee name is one branch of the great Mac Aodha family: Magee is the Antrim form of the identical name, McKay carries it in the Scottish Highlands, McCoy among the gallowglass descendants of the Mourne country, and Hughes is its translated twin. In the emigrant records of Scots-Irish America it travels beside McCullough, McConnell, and McKinney, the constant companions of the Down and Antrim parishes from which they all sailed.
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