Donovan & O'Donovan Irish Family Gifts & Heritage

Donovan and O'Donovan are the two English forms of Ó Donnabháin, “descendant of Donndubhán,” a personal name that joins donn, brown, to dubh, dark, with a small diminutive ending. The family’s first country was Uí Chairbre Aedhbha, on the banks of the River Maigue in County Limerick, and its stronghold was Bruree, a place name that means “abode of kings.” Their ancestor Donnabhán son of Cathal, lord of Uí Fidhgheinte, appears in the Annals of the Four Masters as the man who seized Mathghamhain, king of Munster and brother of Brian Boru, and he died in 980.

About 1178 the O'Donovans were forced out of Uí Chairbre. Their old allies the O'Mahonys helped them settle in O'Driscoll country in southwest Cork, and the family came to hold land from the Carbery coast almost to Bantry, its leading line, Clann Chathail, answering to the MacCarthy Reagh lords. Its seat was Castle Donovan in Drimoleague parish, written “Castledonevan” by English clerks in 1601. The chiefs held on until the confiscations at the end of the seventeenth century, and Colonel Daniel O'Donovan won back part of the estate after the Treaty of Limerick. Cork kept the name: in 1890, 175 of the 211 Donovan births in Ireland were registered there. Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa (1831–1915), born at Rosscarbery, carried the name into the Fenian movement.

Both spellings are stocked. The Donovan and O'Donovan crests sit on the Irish National Tartan on a fringed woven cotton blanket, a printed polyester throw, two 11 oz accent mugs and a pair of 18 × 21 inch wall pennants, and a silver-tone framed ornament hangs the Donovan crest on the tree. A Donovan tee and an O'Donovan tee put the surname beside a Celtic harp.

Follow the family from the banks of the Maigue to Castle Donovan at Drimoleague in our Donovan and O'Donovan surname history.