O'Keeffe - Irish Surname Origin & Meaning
Irish form: Ó Caoimh
Meaning: “gentle, beloved”
Traditional stronghold: Cork
Pronunciation: oh-KEEF; Irish Ó Caoimh: oh KEEV
History of the O'Keeffe name
Ó Caoimh comes from caomh, 'gentle' or 'noble', and the sept descends from Art Caomh of the Eóganacht Glendamnach, the royal line that gave Munster several early kings. Their original lands lay in the fertile Blackwater valley around Fermoy and Glanworth in north Cork, from which the advancing Anglo-Norman Roches and FitzGeralds displaced them in the thirteenth century. They regrouped westward in Duhallow, where their new territory around Cullen and Dromagh became known as Pobal Uí Chaoimh, 'O'Keeffe's country', and chiefs of the name were recognised there into the eighteenth century. Many O'Keeffes later served as Wild Geese officers in the Irish regiments of France. The surname is still strongly concentrated in County Cork.
Variants: O'Keefe · Keeffe · Keefe
Famous bearers of the name
- Pádraig O'Keeffe - Legendary Sliabh Luachra fiddle master and travelling music teacher.
- John O'Keeffe - Dublin-born eighteenth-century playwright whose comedy Wild Oats is still revived.
- Georgia O'Keeffe - American modernist painter whose father was of Irish ancestry.
- John O'Keefe - Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist, born in New York to Irish emigrant parents.
Related names from the same part of Ireland: Murphy · O'Sullivan · McCarthy · Daly · Collins · Flynn · Healy · Casey