O'Flaherty - Irish Surname Origin & Meaning
Irish form: Ó Flaithbheartaigh
Meaning: “bright ruler”
Traditional stronghold: Galway
The old city walls allegedly prayed: “From the ferocious O’Flahertys, good Lord deliver us.”
Pronunciation: oh-FLA-hur-tee; Irish O Flaithbheartaigh: oh FLAH-vyer-ta
History of the O'Flaherty name
O'Flaherty derives from O Flaithbheartaigh, 'descendant of Flaithbheartach', a name combining flaith, lord or prince, with beart, deed, roughly 'one who acts like a lord'. The family were kings of Iar Connacht and, following displacement by the Anglo-Norman de Burgo family from their original lands east of Lough Corrib, became the dominant power in Connemara and the west Galway coast from the thirteenth century, giving rise to the old saying that the O'Flahertys were people 'from whom God preserve us' inscribed on Galway's western gate. The name remains strongly linked with Connemara and County Galway today.
Novelist Liam O'Flaherty, born on the Aran Islands, drew on this same west-Galway Gaelic heritage in his fiction, most famously The Informer, set in revolutionary Dublin.
Variants: Flaherty · Flahive · Lafferty
Famous bearers of the name
- Liam O'Flaherty - Aran Islands-born novelist and short-story writer, author of The Informer
- Roderic O'Flaherty - Seventeenth-century Galway historian and author of the early Irish history Ogygia
Related names from the same part of Ireland: Kelly · Lynch · Connolly · Burke · Clarke · Hughes · Keane · Kenny