Mcmurrough Family History

Irish:: Anglicized form (in Leinster) of Mac Murchadha ‘son of Murchadh’ a personal name meaning ‘sea warrior’. The spelling gh indicates the original guttural fricative sound of the internal -ch-. Elsewhere in Roscommon and Tyrone the usual Anglicized form was Murphy (the same phonetic change as in English laugh cough etc.).

Diarmait Mac Murchadha (Dermot McMurrough) was intermittently king of Leinster from 1126–7. After being deposed in 1166 he requested help from Henry II to reclaim his kingdom, which resulted in the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169 under the leadership of Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke (known as ‘Strongbow’), an event that brought many Anglo-Norman surnames to Ireland.

A powerful Irish family of this lineage were also known as Kavanagh after Dermot's son. The spelling gh indicates the original guttural fricative sound of the internal -ch-. Elsewhere (especially in Roscommon and Tyrone) the usual Anglicized form of the Irish name was Murphy.