Search more than 2,000 Scottish, Irish and Welsh family names.
O'Connell and Connell both come from Ó Conaill, the Kerry family who kept Ballycarbery for MacCarthy Mór and whose Derrynane branch raised Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator. The family crest comes here on a woven blanket, mugs, pennants, garden flags, an ornament and coasters, with a crest tee and an Irish-flag license plate.
O'Connell and Connell are anglicized forms of the Irish Ó Conaill, “descendant of Conall,” an ancient personal name that Rev. Patrick Woulfe glosses as “high-powerful.” Connell is the same name written without the O, and the two spellings have traded places over time: John Grenham found that almost 60% of births of the name in 1890 were recorded as Connell, yet by 1996 only 12% of Irish households still used that form. Both spellings are carried here.
Woulfe records three Ó Conaill families, in Derry, south Galway and Kerry, and the Kerry line is the famous one. Its chiefs held Magh O gCoinchin, now the barony of Magunihy in east Kerry, until the O’Donoghues displaced them about the middle of the eleventh century. From the Anglo-Norman invasion to the 1600s they followed MacCarthy Mór as hereditary castellans of Ballycarbery, near Cahersiveen. Their Derrynane branch on the Iveragh peninsula produced Maurice “Hunting-cap” O'Connell, his brother Count Daniel Charles O'Connell, a lieutenant-general in the French army, and their nephew Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847), the Liberator, who won the Clare election of 1828 and saw Catholic Emancipation become law in 1829. Derrynane was also the birthplace of the poet Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, and Valentia Island gave Kerry football Mick O'Connell, captain of the 1959 All-Ireland winners.
Shop a woven cotton blanket, accent mugs and wall pennants in both the O'Connell and Connell spellings, two garden flags including the House of O'Connell design, a ceramic Christmas ornament and a cork coaster set, each showing the family crest set against the Irish National Tartan. An aluminum license plate sets the crest over the Irish flag instead, and an O'Connell crest T-shirt comes in Irish Green or Black.
Follow the family from Magunihy to the walls of Ballycarbery and the shore at Derrynane in our O'Connell and Connell surname history.
