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Joyce, Seoighe in Irish, is the Welsh-descended family whose name still marks Joyce Country on the Galway–Mayo border, and one of the fourteen Tribes of Galway. Here the Joyce family crest meets the Irish National Tartan on a woven blanket, mug, wall pennant, ornament, coasters and garden flags, alongside a Joyce license plate and T-shirt.
Joyce is Seoighe in Irish, and few Irish surnames are stamped so plainly on the map: Dúiche Sheoigheach, Joyce Country, is the mountain district west of Lough Mask and Lough Corrib on the Galway–Mayo border. James Hardiman’s History of Galway (1820) traces the family to Thomas Joyes, who sailed from Wales in the reign of Edward I, married Onorah O’Brien of Thomond and went on to Iar-Chonnacht. A son born on that voyage was named Mac Mara, “son of the sea.”
The Joyces acquired the mountain country that became the barony of Ross, and John Grenham records that they became completely Gaelicized and ruled Joyce Country down to the seventeenth century. In Galway town they were one of the fourteen Tribes of Galway. The goldsmith Richard Joyce is credited with the modern Claddagh ring, and the oldest known example, stamped with his RI mark, dates from about 1700. James Joyce, born in Rathgar in 1882, came of a Cork branch that the Dictionary of Irish Biography traces back to Joyce Country.
Behind the Joyce family crest, the Irish National Tartan runs through a woven cotton blanket, an accent mug, a wall pennant, a ceramic Christmas ornament, a cork coaster set and two garden flags, one of them the House of Joyce design. The crest rides over the Irish flag on an aluminum novelty license plate, and the Joyce family crest T-shirt comes in Irish Green or Black.
Follow Thomas Joyes from Wales to Iar-Chonnacht, and the name from Seoighe to Ulysses, in our Joyce surname history and origins.
