The Irish Looneys – Where did the name “Looney” come from?

An interesting thing happened after my book was published. Suddenly I’m an expert! I have, essentially, the same body of knowledge I had before ClanDonnell was published, but nobody knew or cared. Now I’m the expert on all things Irish.

That’s not a bad thing, after all, since my recognized expertise might translate into book sales. Someday, it might even land me an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (picture me sitting next to Jon).

What triggered this rambling was the rush of inquiries I’ve received about the Irish and Irish heritage. Here is but one example:

A friend told me that her grandmother was a Looney, originally from County Cork. The friend asked, “Where did the name ‘Looney’ come from?”

A possible answer is that her grandmother was, indeed, a lunatic and an immigration official recognized her as such. The official conducting the border interview said out loud: “She’s a looney,’ and another official recorded that as her name on her immigration papers. It’s nearly impossible to correct errors on immigration papers, and so that became her last name.

There are other possibilities, though. I devoted countless pages in ClanDonnell to the Irish clans, how clan names evolved into surnames, and how Irish language surnames were translated (and often butchered) into English. I don’t want to give too much away in this blog, but here is a wee bit, using Looney as an example.

Loinigh was a 9th Century clan leader and a descendant of 4th Century king Niall of the Nine Hostages. Niall’s descendants (the Ui Nialls) were the dominant clan in much of Ireland for centuries. When Irish started to adopt last names in about the 12th Century, most of these folks became O’Neills. Loinigh descendants, though, were known as Muintir Loinigh, or the people of Loinigh, and most took the last name O’Loinigh. The Muintir Loinigh lived in what is now County Donegal until they were expelled after a series of 12th Century wars. They moved east into the present-day County Tyrone and County Fermanagh in Ulster.

Loinigh is pronounced somewhat like ‘LOO-nee’, and so O’Loinigh became O’Looney, which in turn became Looney.

There were more than one man named Loinigh on the Isle of Man, since the O’Loinigh clan became a prominent one there. The O’Loinigh clan name and last name derived independently from the same name in the Ulster clan. The Isle of Man is a small island in the Irish Sea, about half-way between Ireland and England, and many of these O’Loinighs migrated into Ireland over the centuries.

And there must have many prominent men named Loinigh in the south of Ireland — there were several clans named O’Loinigh in Counties Kerry, Clare and Cork. I ran out of energy trying to track down the origins of these clan names. Someday I might do the research and write Part Two of the Irish Looneys.

The fact that Grandma Looney was from County Cork does not necessarily mean that she descended from the Cork clan. During Ireland’s clan era, each clan carved out a geographical niche for themselves and generations of the clan lived in the same region. But English confiscation of Irish land led to the dispersal of the Irish throughout the island. And famine and hunger in the 19th Century led to even further dispersal. Grandma Looney’s family might have originated from anywhere before she ended up in Cork. More clues are required to identify her Celtic clan.

Turlough Loinigh is my favorite Irish Looney, only because he is included in a few of the ClanDonnell stories. Turlough (pronounced TUR-la or TUR-low) was chief of the mighty O’Neill clan in the late 1500s. At the time, Agnes McDonnell was one of the most sought-after women in Ireland. Agnes was the widow of James McDonnell, chief of the ClanDonnells of Antrim, and daughter of a clan chief in Scotland. Agnes was attractive, charming, witty, wealthy and, above all, extremely powerful. Many men courted Agnes, but Turlough won the prize.

Turlough and Agnes were married at a dual wedding on Rathlin Island, off the coast of Ballycastle, County Antrim. The other happy couple was Agnes’ daughter Ineen and the chief of the O’Donnell clan. With the two weddings, the three most powerful clans in Ulster were united, much to the dismay of the English. Within a generation of the weddings, most of Ireland joined with these Ulster clans in a war against England – the bloodiest war ever fought on the island.