The O'Kelley Name

Gaelic - Ceallach (The Kelley), Mac Ceallaigh (son), Ua Ceallaigh (grandson) Nic Ceallaigh (daughter) Ni Ceallaigh (grand daughter) Ó Ceallaigh (descendant)
Late Middle English translation (before 1600) - Kellie, Killia (son), O'Kelley (descendant of Kelley)
Modern English translation (after 1600) - Kelly & O'Kelly

Our family name means "War" , "Strife", "contention", or "bright head" and more than one native Irish has informed me that my last name's double "e" spelling has never been used in Ireland but I have discovered evidence that the spelling of many Irish names and words were determined by the time period and circumstance when they were translated from Gaelic into English and the earliest translation of our name was "Kellie" "o  Kelley", "O Killia" and later sometimes "O'Kelley" and of course when English was reduced to remove a lot of unnecessary letters mostly the extra "e" it was translated into O'Kelly.   I am certain that some native Irish have it backwards, that our double "e" spelling is one of the earliest translation of Ceallaigh into English and the single "e" spelling is the later more modern and common reduced form.  Think about it; are we to believe that in a time when all other names and words were being reduced to remove unneeded extra letters, our name started out in a reduced form and was later expanded by Americans or English shipmasters by adding another letter?  Of all the Irish names translated into English then later reduced to remove extra letters, only O'Kelly or Kelly were perfect in their original English translations?  I think not.  Our family name would have followed all the others, the early translations would have had more letters than needed just like all the rest but over time like other names it too was reduced to O'Kelly.  I believe some American families may have resisted the reduction as a way to maintain some of the customs of their former home land and that is the reason some early Kelleys coming to America appear with the second "e" when the name was being reduced in Ireland and England but is also just as possible that the second "e" was added in the 1800s to distance the American born protestant Kelleys from the Catholic Kellys flooding into America.  Read my History of Irish names page for more detailed information about Irish naming customs and why names and words were reduced.  Also my page Gaelic to English provides some common Gaelic to English information. 

The English language has always been in flux, as a living language it is always changing and one can view this page from a 1577 Geneva Bible to see how words like Holy were once spelled as "Holie" just as Kellie transformed into Kelley and then Kelly and much of this transformation occurred mostly because of the influence of the printing press which standardized the language and helped establish common spellings.  What should be understood by the researcher is our name appeared as Ua Ceallaigh and later Ó Ceallaigh in our native Irish language and how it might appear in another language was totally dependent upon that language rules at the time of the translation and the training of the person doing the translation.  If we find an English author translating our name as "o Kelley" that doesn't necessarily mean that our ancestor spelled his name in English that way if he used an English translation, it only means that the training of the English author is being reflected in the spelling but if we find a government document, church record, or entry in an early family bible reflecting different spellings that may indicate that is how that ancestor translated and used his name in the English world at the time the record was created. 

The Ui Ceallaigh was not the only line of Hy-Many Kelleys, the Mac Goilla Cheallaigh also lived in and around the borders of Hy-Many the map to the right show them as Mac Gillikelly living along the southeastern shore of Galway Bay and all indications are they interacted with their cousins.  According to John O'Hart a line of Gilroy descends from the Mac Goilla Cheallaigh.  The Mac Goilia Cheallaigh became Gilkelly then Kilkelly but some took on the name of Kelley while others took the name Kelly when they left Ireland and came to America.  While it is not clearly understood it is most commonly believed that the Gil indicated "follower" and was mostly associated with the following of a religious leader or in this case a follower of Saint Ceallach thus it wasn't believe to have been an indicator of blood relationship. Today it is the custom for a Christian to refer to another male Christian as brother so it may be the Gill was just such a reference that eventually became part of the surname.

When I was a child growing up in the 1960s my family had a tradition that every Christmas we would spend the noon dinner with my mother's family and the evening dinner or "supper" as the elders referred to it with my father's family, the O'Kelleys.  That and July 4th was pretty much the only time we saw our O'Kelley aunts, uncles, and cousins.   Most people in those days were too busy scratching out a living to spend a great deal of time visiting family but there were occasional visits.  I remember many Christmas visits occurring just after sundown on Christmas day, the smell of food mixed with scent of the wood stove that set in living room.  A dozen feet away and it was cold in my grandparents uninsulated bare board constructed home and just a couple of feet from the stove it would be blazing hot. I had five O'Kelley uncles and two aunts and almost every Christmas evening the men folk would start acting like roosters as they gathered around the wood stove and they would engaged in conversations about many different topics each trying to out best the other.  For the most part we children just ignored the adults, after all it was Christmas and Christmas was about kids but there were some topics that  peaked my interest and I would listen in.  One such topic was how our name came to be spelled with the double "e".  The common explanation given was the double "e" spelling was the old Irish way of spelling our family name, that those who dropped the "O" or removed the second "e" were going against their ancestry and my research has indicated that my family tradition story may have some truth in its telling.  The author of "A Short History Of Ireland ...", Patrick Weston Joyce tells us there were three classifications of Irish, the Old Irish who lived during the 8 to 12th century, the Middle Irish who lived from the 12th to 15th century, and the modern Irish that began in the 15th century.  Early ship arrivals in the 1600s into America show many double "e" Kelleys so clearly the double "e" spelling was in use at that time either by the immigrant or due to the training of the shipmaster who recording the name.  Keep in mind we are speaking of a Gaelic to English translation so if shipmasters were recording such that proves that such a spelling was in use by the English speaking world and being used by everyday English speaking people, the ship masters making the records were just following what they learned of the English language no different from what we do today.  I have found an early 1700 record of a James Kelley from Galway in the database at Virtual Jamestown and Sir James Ware's 1705 book titled "The Antiquities and History of Ireland" includes "o Kelley"s  the first in 1384 and the second in 1415 but it also includes "o kelly" indicating the author may have been reflecting how some ancestors used translated names.    William Brady in his 1876 book titled "The Episcopal Succession in England Scotland and Ireland Volume 2"  quotes James Ware but he takes liberties by adding the apostrophe which does not appear in Sir James Ware's text:

"This prelate undertook to pay his own tax, and also the tax left unpaid by his predecessor in this see, Maurice O'Kelley, who was translated to Tuam in 1394.

1415. Thomas O'Kelley. Ware gives Thomas O'Kelley as bishop from 14I5 to 1438, when he was promoted to Tuam."

In the book titled A Chorographical description of West or H-Lar Connaught written in 1684 we find a reference to "Kelleys" and this clan of Kelleys are of Malachy of Aughrim Chieftain at the turn of the 1500s.  In the book titled "Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records in Ireland" we find at least three O'Kelleys living in the 1500s in Ireland.  In John Woody Papworth book titled An alphabetical dictionary of coats of arms published in 1874 on page 368 we find William Kelley in 1597 living in Dublin using the family coat of arms and in The Calendar of ancient records of Dublin: Volume 2 by Dublin (Ireland), Rosa Mulholland Gilbert, John Francis Wall we find many Kelleys in those 500 year old municipal records and in most every example I have listed we also find single "e" Kellys and O'Kellys indicating these authors knew there was a difference.  If you look at the language used in these records one will find the middle English spellings in use in all kinds of words.  These are just a fraction of the double "e" Kelleys that appear in very early books and records so I no longer accept the claim that Gaelic speaking O'Kelleys had their names transformed by English shipmasters and they were the source of the double "e" spelling because there are records of many O'Kelleys who used English long before they started coming to America.  The belief that they were all Catholic and Gaelic speaking is clearly not based in fact.  I have had some tell me that protestant Kelleys used the double "e" and Catholics used the single "e" and while I have found no written evidence that this was true, it does not go unnoticed that many of the land owning Gentry class converted to the protestant faith and English language very early and before the English language was standardized while most of the poor Catholic Irish didn't learn the language until well into the eighteenth century or later when the use of the single "e" spelling was well established in Ireland so this could make it appear that protestants used the double "e" and Catholics used the single "e" or maybe they did and the knowledge has long since been forgotten.

The earliest date I have found for the double "e" spelling is 1394 and the earliest date I have found for the single "e" spelling is 1601 or 200 years later and that was Colla O'Kelley or Kelly as he appears often in books and who was the Irish lord of manor of Screen and a descendent of William Boy O'Kelly and he at the request of or rather the requirement of the English Queen Elizabeth in 1601 learned the English language, dropped the "O" from his last name and began to spell his last name in English and not Gaelic as most all other Irish Catholic O'Kellys did, and Colla became Protestant and in return the Queen gave protection under English law for his title and land holdings, and manors.   I suspect that in the letter she wrote to Colla she required the single "e" spelling as part of her condition, it was a mark of loyalty and a symbol of her authority that she held such power as to rename her subjects in the same way we rename a new dog and I suspect that is the true source of the single "e" spelling but it is also possible that Colla used a double "e" spellng and his name was modernized by later authors.  In Charles Bridge's book titled "An Index to Printed Pedigrees" on page 232 he lists five pedigrees, two he spells with a single "e" and three including the pedigree for the "O'Kelley of Screen" he spells with a double "e".  Was this a mistake or did Colla and his family originally use a double "e" spelling and as part of the agreement with "Queene Elizabethe" they went to a single "e" spelling or did later authors just take liberties and spell his name as O'Kelly.  In addition to Colla there are more records telling us of three other Irish Ui Ceallaigh lords including the one that held The Ua Ceallaigh title changed their name and religion and raised their children in English ways because they were required to do so by English Queen Elizabeth in return they got to keep their titles and lands so clearly there were two classes of O'Kelleys, the poor Gaelic speaking Irish Catholic who feuded and hated the English and a wealthier protestant class who probably spoke both Gaelic and English and were beholding to the English for not robbing them of all their power and wealth.  It should be noted that Colla actually raised an army and fought his fellow Irishmen on behalf of the Queen and because it wasn't uncommon for the ruling O'Kelley families to send their children outside of Ireland for education it was very likely there were O'Kelleys influenced by Colla that were coming to America as protestant and English speaking and would be using an English spelling of our name and because our ancestor arrived in America as a protestant and not Catholic it is likely he came from one of those lines.   Col Charles O'Kelley b 1621 d 1695 was well educated and the grandson of the above mentioned Colla and in his book titled Macariae Excidium (published 1692) are notes that were added in 1843 by Dennis Henry O'Kelly and on page 162 he states "there were several other O'Kellys, Kellys, and Kelleys in the service of King James II"  indicating that Dennis O'Kelly knew of double "e" Kelleys and was aware of a difference otherwise he would have only listed the O'Kellys and Kellys and not the Kelleys.  Something, perhaps a difference in the Gaelic spellings caused Dennis to do this.  Dennis goes on to actually lists the Kellys in service and with them he also lists a Daniel, George, Bryan, and John Kelley the clearest indicator that double "e" Kelleys existed in Ireland during Col O'Kellys time and they appear without the O' because they were forced by the English Queen to drop the O' from their names and these double "e" Kelley were living in 1692 which would have been during the time our ancestor's grandfather and father lived providing the clearest proof that our ancestor could have arrived in America as native Irish but speaking English and spelling his name as Kelley.  This is clear proof that English shipmasters were not the influence of the double "e" spelling, it originated in Ireland and we have documented proof it was in use in Ireland before 1700. 

But in spite of all the evidence that my family tradition story about my name spelling could be true, William Denis O'Kelley signed his name on his revolutionary war documents as Wm D Kelly and the 1838 Bible Records of Francis gives him as Francis OKelly so the evidence seem to indicate that our family may have used Kelly before our revolutionary war, OKelly after and in the 1800s and about the time the poor Irish Catholic O'Kellys began to flood America my family named became O'Kelley.  Was it an educated restoration of our family name as some of my family elders claimed or was it a method for the American born protestant O'Kelleys to distance themselves from their poor Irish Catholic cousins?  The answer to this question may never be known.

For the native Irish who are still not convinced that there may have been a line(s) of double "e" O'Kelleys in Ireland very early they need only look at the Calendar of Patent and close rolls of chancery in Ireland dated 1627. 

Livery of the possessions of Edmond O'Kelley, of Moyvannan, in the county of Roscommon, to Feagh O'Kelly, his son and heir; and pardon of an alienation, made by Sir Francis Annesley, of lands in the King's County, to William Sarsfield, Lisagh O'Connor, and others, with a grant of the mesne rates.—Dublin, March 22, 3°

The above provides us with an early example from an Irish government record of how some of the "old Irish" generation may have translated their name into English as early as 1627 when they used the double "e" spelling and how the younger generation reduced our name to the more modern single "e" spelling that is common in Ireland today.  Charles Bridger's 1867 book titled "An Index to Printed Pedigrees: Contained in Country and Local Histories" gives us even more concrete proof as one can see this author is listing the pedigree for Col Charles O'Kelly's grandfather, Colla who was "O'Kelley of Screen" or a double "e" O'Kelley.  He also lists single "e" O'Kellys making us aware there is a difference and this is not a mistake.  Perhaps one of the most puzzling discoveries I have made is the current living descendent of Hy-Many descended from the O'Kelley of Gallagh yet the descendants of this line living in Ireland use the single "e" spelling.

Experienced genealogists advised that I am making too much out of this name business, they don't think the names were that important to our ancestors and much of this was due to the lack of education of census takers or English ship masters but to embrace such thinking in my opinion is to believe our ancestors were less human as I think names are and have always been very important to humans, that is why we name everything, where we live, our pets, our children, everything in our lives we seem compelled to put a name on it.  We see this naming importance in our religion, when we pray we are instructed to ask in the name of Jesus and in the Hebrew texts God had a secret name and when spoken it gave great power so names have always been both important and powerful for humans.  Queen Elizabeth understood the important of Irish names; she believed the irish surnames caused "disaffection"  between the Irish and English so much so that as stated above she required the Irish Gentry to stop using Irish names and take up English spellings.   And because of our spelling I believe our ancestors had to have had a reason for their early double "e" translation, they didn't just get out of bed one morning and say, "hey, lets have our name translated into English and lets through in a couple of extra letters to bewilder and perplex our descendands ".  They had a purpose otherwise they would not seek to do it anymore than I seek to have my name translated into Chinese.  I suspect the purpose is the one most universal, profit.  Our ancestors stood something to gain from doing it.  They could have been importers/exporters of goods between England and Ireland and just as the Chinese are learning English today and having their family names translated into English, so could this have been true for our family very early in Ireland, before the influence of the printing press, before Queen Elizabeth, and that is the origin of our double "e" English spelling which became frozen in time once it was in America but the more likely reason is they were of the Irish Landed Gentry class who interacted with the English nobility and educated their children sometimes abroad and in many languages.  Understanding the spelling of our name could unlock many mysteries about our Irish family making it just as important as DNA and that is why it is important.  Let us also not forget that early America documents show our ancestors using Kelley or Kelly but then after our Revolution they returned the "O" to the name proving further evidence that our last name was so important to our ancestors as to cause them to seek to restore it to its full Irish status in the only language they seem to know.  If the name wasn't important then why change it, why not just leave it at Kelley or Kelly?  I believe it is also important as to educated Irish researchers to look at all the evidence, not just the documents but the spellings contained in the documents as to gain a broader view of both Irish and individual family histories.  When I was investigating homicides we broke many cases on just such minor clues.

As mentioned above, I came into possession of copies of bible pages dated Dec 26, 27 1838 that lists one of our Ancestor's sons, Francis O'Kelly.  Notice I have spelled the name exactly as it appears on the bible page.  Also entered in the bible are all of Francis's children and they too appear as O'Kelly.  I suspect the bible may have belonged to Thomas O'Kelly the son of Francis.  Something amazing happens in these pages because as the hand writing in the bible changes and the generations change, suddenly the children of Thomas or the grandchildren of Francis appear as O'Kelley.  Why?  Maybe the answer is the simplest answer.  Maybe that because all the sons of Thomas O'Kelly were very educated, they were all doctors, that maybe education influenced the change in the spelling of the last name as it sometimes does in a living language.  Even today people change the spelling of common names because they want their children to have a unique and more modern trendy name.  Dr. Thomas K O'Kelley a third American born generation cousin to Francis O'Kelly's second generation America born children also used the O'Kelley spelling and while almost every thing every written about Rev James O'Kelly spells his name with a single "e", you will find that his gravestone which was put on his grave about the same time that the sons of Thomas became doctors also has the double "e" spelling so it may be that the rules of written English dictated the adding of the second "e", that maybe only dumb ignorant hayseeds use the single "e" spelling in that time or it may be that adding the second "e" help set them apart from the poor Irish flooding America in about that time and the reasons for the transformation has been lost. 

We can also see where the OKelly name was used in the will of Thomas O'Kelley and in the 1820 Madison Co census we see his wife listed as Elizabeth OKelly and their son James listed as OKelley and there is more documentation as there is a website by Harold Ernest O'Kelley that displays a North Carolina Militia Revolutionary War document and the author contributes the document as Thomas O'Kelley and one can see if they look hard enough that the name on the document is "Thomas Kelly".  The page claims that the marriage records for Thomas and Elizabeth show him as "Thomas Kelley" so this gives further documented support for my theory that our ancestor came to America as a Kelley, and before or about our revolution the name migrated to Kelly and sometime after our Revolutionary War the O was added to the name then sometime in the early 1800s the apostrophe and the second "e" was once again restored.  I find the record for Thomas O'Calley on the Mecklenburg 1789 tax rolls very interesting because this would be the earliest known record where the apostrophe was used but I wonder if that report is accurate.  Sometimes authors fudge especially when they don't provide a copy of the source document for all to see. 

There is a third bible page that bears the name of James D OKelly 1833 as its first ancestor.  Like the 1838 bible this one shows us the OKelly spelling but what it doesn't tell us is James is buried in a cemetery in Oklahoma under the O'Kelley spelling of the name and his sons are also buried in Oklahoma but under the spelling of O'Kelly so it is sometimes difficult to  know why. 

My great, great, great grandfather, Charles Dean O'Kelley and his brother James left some hand written records that appear in our national archives.  Both were second born American generation O'Kelleys and they were both Justice of the Peace in Georgia and in these documents signed in their own hand they signed their last names as OKelley without the Apostrophe and if you look closely at their signatures one can see that the "O" is slightly spaced apart from the rest of the name which was the way the name was spelled before the use of the apostrophe came into use.  Their signatures may be the purest form of our anglicisized last name. 

But perhaps a clue has been overlooked by other researchers.  William Dennis O'Kelley was a Lt in our revolution and his duties as adjutant would be to create many of the written records for the 4th Regiment.  Harold O'Kelley accepts without question that he is the William D that Alethea Jane Macon lists in her 1969 book but I think it is more likely that he is our ancestor William Kelley who came from Ireland and married Elizabeth Dean.  The content of many of his records have been copied to cards at our National Archive I suspect to lesson the wear and tear on the originals.  The copiest were to record the records as accurately and among those records we find a signature card for Wm. D. Kelly.  Most all the records for William Dennis appear as Wm. D. Kelly which is likely how he represented himself in the records he created.  There are few records created by other officers relating to him and in most of those records he appears as William Dennis O Kelley.

Given Names that appear in our family

There are some given names that appear in our family that have historic origins. 

• George Washington O'Kelley is clearly named after George Washington.  I do not find this name in use in the Gaelic Irish but it does appear in some of the Old English Irish.  It may also be possible that the first George in our family was named after King George II.

• Benjamin F or Benjamin Franklins were clearly named after Ben Franklin who was very popular in America well before our revolution.  As a publisher he was perhaps the best known American.  I do not find this name in use in the Gaelic Irish, it was used in the Old English Irish, Rev John Chetwode's brother was named Benjamin.  The Deans were of old English but because there are no Benjamin Dean O'Kelleys in our family I do not think this name originated from the Dean family.

• William has long been a popular name with the native Irish and the English.  In Gaelic it appears as Liam.  There are several very popular William O'Kelleys in Dr. O'Donovan's book about Hy-Many Ireland but these early Williams would have used the name Liam Ua Ceallaigh, Dr O'Donovan was writing a book for the English reader so he translated the Gaelic names into modern English spellings.  Because William was so popular it should not be a surprise it is a name that appears in our American family. William is widely accepted among descendents as the Irish father of our ancestor who come from Ireland but because of a 1782 VA State Head of Household Census of Mecklenburg Co showing William Kelley and ten others as the only Kelleys of any spellings living there, I think it is certain that this is the name of our ancestor who came from Ireland.  This is a government document, this is as good as it gets and the census occurred just three years after Charles Kelley appeared on the Mecklenburg Militia roster the same year his son, the first grandson to be born in America was born and Charles and Mary named him William.  Charles does not appear in this head of house hold census nor does any of his brothers the explanation is he and his wife and two children were living as the native Irish were acustom, they all lived in the household of their mother and father, William and Elizabeth Kelley.

• Thomas was used in the native Irish but it appears as Tomas or Tomhas in the Gaelic Irish Catholic families.  The Thomas spelling is an English spelling and I suspect it originates in our family from Thomas Dean a wealthy Galway merchant in the 1690s and probably a grandfather to Miss Dean.

• Francis does not appear in the Gaelic Irish that I can find.  It does appear in the English.  Francis Bacon was a famous Englishman who promoted the protestant plantation of Ireland by the Scots and English. Francis Drake was a famous sea captain and could have been the source as well.  It is not a name one would expect to find in a native Gaelic family but because it appears most often as Francis Dean I suspect it originated with the old English Dean family.

• Charles does appear in the 1600s in the Gaelic Irish family of Colla O'Kelley.  Col Charles O'Kelley was the grandson of Colla and the 9th Lord of Screen.  The O'Kelley of Screen family was deeply loyal to the English Royal family changing religions when the English Royals changed theirs but because we most often see Dean following the name I suspect it is a name that originated from the Dean family but Charles is a name that appears often in the Irish Newtown O'Kelly line.

• Dean is a middle name that appears often in our America family but I think its origins have been misunderstood.  The Deans were one of the 14 tribes of Galway Ireland who originated from English and came to Ireland and established Galway during the Norman invasion of Ireland.  Some claim that Elizabeth Dean was born in America and while that may be true, I suspect she was born in Ireland and her marriage to our ancestor was an arranged marriage between the two powerful families of Galway as was the custom not just with the Irish but with the English and many of the European nations.  It was also the Irish custom to name children after famous or powerful maternal relatives when they existed and I believe that that is the source of Francis Dean, Charles Dean and Thomas Dean O'Kelley.  Betsy Dean O'Kelley was the eldest daughter of Charles O'Kelly, my 5th grandfather and she appears in her Georgia marriage record to Mark Harwell as Betsy OKelly but she appears in the 1860 US Census living in Oglethorpe Ga as Elizabeth D Harwell providing proof that the second grandchild to be born in America to Charles and Mary was named Elizabeth Dean Kelley after her grandmother Elizabeth Dean.  Because they were all living as native Irish did, all in the same home it seems only natural that the granddaughter would become known by a nickname of Betsy as to reduce the confusion between granddaughter and grandmother.

• The name James appears as Séamas in Irish Gaelic.  Some native Irish have told me the James spelling was used only by the English or Irish protestant and was deeply hated by the Irish Catholic and this could be true as the Irish deeply hated King James for his plantation of Ulster and what they believed was his perversion of the true faith.  The first Irish O'Kelly I have found was James O'Kelly an Irish Gentry died in the battle of Aughrim in 1691 and his name may be resulted from a great fondness that the Irish developed for James Butler of Ormond when in 1649 he commanded the Irish Army fighting the much hated Oliver Cromwell who is responsible for the slaughter of a great many O'Kellys. The name James became more common with the descendants of the Aughrim line after this time but not so with most of the other lines. I feel certain that the source of the name James that appears three times in the first  American born grandchildren's names can from Rev James O'Kelley a rather famous person in that time and I believe Francis Dean or Charles Dean was the father of Miss Dean and that is why his name appears three times with his grandchildren.