The Griffin surname is the anglicized form of the Gaelic Ó Gríobhtha, from gríobh, "griffin," the eagle-lion of legend and an old byname for a fierce fighter. The family grew up in two Munster homelands: County Clare, where the seat was Ballygriffy near Ennis, and County Kerry, centered on Ballygriffin in the barony of Glanarought. From those two starting points the Griffins spread and intermingled across Clare, Kerry, Cork and Limerick.
Like many Gaelic families of the southwest, the Griffins lived within the political world of Munster, between the McCarthys of Desmond and the O'Briens of Thomond. A smaller number of Irish Griffins descend from Welsh settlers named Griffith, who arrived after the twelfth century. The Munster Plantation of the late sixteenth century and the Cromwellian settlements of the 1650s reshaped landholding across Kerry and Clare, and by the nineteenth century most Griffin families worked smallholdings rather than ancestral estates.
The Great Famine hit Kerry and Clare especially hard, and Griffin families emigrated in large numbers to Boston, New York, Liverpool and Sydney during and after the 1840s. Griffin became one of the most familiar Irish names in the northeastern United States, and today it ranks among the hundred most common surnames in Ireland, still concentrated in Clare and Kerry.
This collection brings that story into everyday keepsakes: woven blankets, garden flags, accent mugs, coasters, ornaments and apparel carrying the Griffin name and family crest, ideal for a family reunion, a housewarming, or anyone curious to dig deeper into their roots. For the fuller account of the family's Clare and Kerry origins, see this Griffin surname history.
