About The Family Circle
SHEEHY - This interesting surname is of Scottish and Irish origin, a reduced form of McSheehy, an Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac Síthigh ‘son of Sítheach’, a personal name from the adjective sítheach ‘peaceful’ or ‘other worldly’. (The noun síth, from which this adjective derives, means basically ‘settlement’, hence both ‘peace’ and ‘place inhabited by other world beings’.) In some cases the name may be a reduced Anglicized form of Ó Síthigh, ‘descendant of Sítheach’, a later form of the Irish name.
The name was first established in Ireland by a branch of the Scottish McDonnell's, descended from
Sithich, great-grandson of Domhnaill, who came to Ireland early in the 14th Century. The surname
is
now peculiar to Munster, though it is not found there before 1420, when the first of the family
came to County Limerick, where they took service with the Earl of Desmond and established
themselves near the town of Rathkeale. The modern surname can be found as (Mac)Sheehy, Sheekey,
Sheach and Se(a)th. Among the recordings in Ireland are the christenings of William, son of
Silvester and Mary Sheehy, on April 29th 1752 at St. Mary's Cathedral, County Limerick, and of
Michael, son of Edmund Sheehy and Dorothy Allen, on June 29th 1796 at Killarney Roman Catholic
Church, County Kerry. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of
Sheehy,
which was dated 1420, County Limerick, Ireland, during the reign of King Henry V of England, known
as 'The Victor of Agincourt', 1413 - 1422. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced
personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in
every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original
spelling.
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The Family Circle
