The word 'kirk' for 'church' is common
in the north of England and in Scotland, areas where the
Danes settled in the tenth century. (The
Scandinavians did not use the sound 'ch'.) Kirk is
a Scottish name of various local origins, from residence
near a church. The Dumfriesshire name Kirkhoe, now
rare, also became Kirk.
In Ireland the name is most
common in counties Antrim and Louth, though a particular
concentration was noted in the parish of Killaney, Barony
of Upper Castlereagh, Co. Down, in the mid-nineteenth
century. In Co. Monaghan the name Kirke is thought
to be a variant of Carragher, Gaelic Mac Fhearchair,
through the seventeenth-century variants Kearcher and
Kirker. Kirk was also noted as synonymous with
Kirkpatrick around Coleraine and Limavady in Co. Derry at
the start of the twentieth centry (see Kirkpatrick).
GLOSSARY
Clan
From the Gaelic
clann which means literally 'children'.
Mac-
From the Gaelic
mac, meaning 'son'
O'
From the Gaelic
Ó, meaning 'grandson', 'grandchild' or
'descendant'; Ní is the femine form of Ó,
meaning 'daughter' or 'descendant'
Plantation (Ulster)
The
redistribution of escheated lands after the
defeat of the Ulster Gaelic lords and the 'Flight
of the Earls' in 1607. Only counties
Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh and
Cavan were actually 'planted', portions of land
there being distributed to English and Scottish
families on their lands and for the building of
bawns.
Sept
A family group of
shared ancestry living in the same locality
Undertakers
Powerful English
or Scottish landowners who undertook the
plantation of British settlers on the lands they
were granted.
Gaelic
This word in
Ireland has no relation to Scotland. As a
noun it is used to denote the Irish language, as
an adjective to denote native Irish as opposed to
Norman or English origin.
Erenagh
From the Irish
Gaelic airchinneach, meaning 'hereditary steward
of church lands'. A family would hold the
ecclesiastical office and the right to the church
or monastery lands, the incumbent at any one time
being the erenagh.
