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"Moher"
is both a surname originating in Ireland and an Irish place name. The surname
is an anglicisation of an Irish-Gaelic name. The original may have been
O Mochair (feminine Ni Mochair, plural Ui Mochair
) or O Mothair. The late Edward MacLysaght, a leading authority on
Irish surnames, prefers the former. Irish-Gaelic surnames are patronyms,
that is based on the personal name of a male ancestor. The family name
O Mochair means the "grandson or descendant of Mochar." Similarly,
O'Mothair would be "the grandson or descendant of Mothar". The
O prefix is the Modern Irish form of the ancient Ua which means
"grandson" but can by extension mean descendant. Mochar is likely
a west Waterford-east Cork dialectic variation of the word mothar
(cf. mothas and mochas). In Modern Irish (c. A.D. 1600 on),
mothar is pronounced MO-hur. The 'th' was pronounced much as
the modern English 'th' in Old Irish (A.D. 650 - A.D. 900) but was later
softened to an 'h' sound. The spelling of the word, however, retains the
Old Irish form. Mochar is pronounced 'MO-chur' with the 'ch' pronounced like
the 'ch' of 'loch'. The west Waterford-east Cork Mohers were likely using
O'Mochair based on evidence in Sir William Petty's "Census" of 1659. In that
survey, the name appears as O'Mohir in County Cork and Mogher in County Waterford.
Since there was not yet a set spelling, the English-speaking enumerators
simply wrote phonetically what they heard the Irish say. In Waterford, these
enumerators seemed to have rendered the Modern Irish 'ch' as 'gh'. This
was a standard practice as can be seen in the Irish word loch being
transliterated as lough in English. In Cork, the enumerators recorded
something closer to O'Mothair (MO-hur) showing that they were either
less sensitive to the nuances of the name than were their Waterford counterparts
or that the surname in the western part of its traditional range had softened
by 1659. There is evidence, however, that the families in east Cork also
used O'Mochair for as late as the early 1840's an enumerator in Upper
Canada in British North America spelt the name as Maugher in an attempt
to capture the 'ch' sound. A tombstone cutter in Upper Canada in 1860 wrote
the name as Mawher which may also be an attempt to capture something
of the sound of Mochair. This family immigrated to Upper Canada from
the area of Kilworth in County Cork.
We have no idea who Mochar was but he was considered sufficiently
distinguished to be honoured by his descendants in a particularly noble way.
We continue to honour our unknown ancestor with our surname. The name Mochar
is based on the Irish masculine noun of the first declension mothar
(and its apparent Cork/Waterford variant mochar). The modern Irish
word means a place overgrown with a brushwood, a thicket or even a large
mass. In Middle Irish, it also meant an enclosure. Some Irish personal names
arose as toponyms (names based on places or physical features of the land)
or from physical features of the bearer of the name. Therefore, Mochar
could have been a man from the 'enclosure' or 'place overgrown with brushwood'
or perhaps its meaning is linked to the noun's cognate adjective which
can mean 'massive'. The Ui Mochair, then, would be 'the descendants
of the man from the place overgrown with brushwood' or 'the massive man'.
Yet again, the personal name Mochar may have simply been our Mochar's name
and he may have had no more to do with his name's origins than a bearer of
the name John has to do with the original Hebrew word meaning 'a gift of
God'.
The surname Moher is especially linked to the barony of Condons and Clangibbon
in northeast County Cork. In the last three and a half centuries, the Mohers
have been closely associated with the territories embraced by the civil
parishes of Brigown, Kilworth and Macroney. MacLysaght claims that the actual
territory containing Mohers in historic times stretched from Mitchelstown
in the north of the barony of Condons and Clangibbon in County Cork to Lismore
in the middle of the barony of Coshmore and Coshbride in County Waterford.
This may be based on the totals given in Sir William Petty's "Census" of
1659. This survey also shows O'Mohir and Mogher as a "principal surname
in every barony of Waterford and Cork". The name is also recorded as a principal
surname in at least one barony of County Kilkenny. The Return of Householders
produced in 1766 shows five Mohir households in the civil parishes
of Kilworth and Macroney. Unfortunately the returns for the adjoining parish
of Brigown to the north of Kilworth have not survived. This area contains
Mitchelstown and some townlands in which Mohers were later known to be resident.
By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1852, there were only three dozen
or so households in all of Ireland. They are found in Mitchelstown and the
Cork townlands of Ballard, Ballinvoher, Billeragh West, Boolabwee, Castlecooke,
Coolaneague, Coolmoohan, Curraghmore, Furrow, Garrane, Gurteenboul, Macroney
Lower, Macroney Upper and Pollardstown all in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon.
There are also three entries in the civil parish of Templetenny in County
Tipperary and in the Limerick civil parishes of Kilbeheny, Knocklong, and
Galbally. Most Mohers of Limerick and Tipperary lived close to the Cork border.
Census returns for 1851 survive for most of the civil parish of Kilworth
and parts of the civil parish of Macroney. These returns cover a large part
of the area known to contain Mohers from Griffith's Valuation, yet they list
a mere seven Moher households. This drastic decline in the number of Moher
households in the two hundred year period from 1659 is likely the result
of war, famine, disease and immigration.
The east Cork Mohers likely lived in this area for many centuries before
the surname ever made its way into a surviving historical record. MacLysaght
sees them as possibly a family in the O Faolain sept. This would
mean that the Mohers have a kin relationship with the Ui Faolain
whose surname has been anglicised as Phelan and Whelan. At some point in
the past, generations before the first records of the Moher name, a family
of the O Faolain sept took on the name O Mochair as a new family
name to distinguish it from other O Faolain families. The reason for
this was likely the growth in population of the O Faolain sept. When
a sept became very large, additional designations were required especially
for families which had distant kinship with the ruling family of the sept.
If the Ui Mochair of Condons and Clangibbon are of the O Faolain
sept, they can claim the following ancestry. They are perhaps descendants
of the Erainn, a Celtic tribal-grouping which invaded Ireland around
500 B.C. Ptolemy, the second century A.D. Greek geographer, calls them the
Iverni in his work entitled Geographike Huphegesis.He
places them in the south of Ireland. The Erainn gave the island the
name Eueriio which became Eriu in Old Irish and Eire
in modern Irish. The Erainn pushed deep into the island and displaced
or conquered the older inhabitants and also some of the Celtic Pretani tribes.
Professor T.F. O'Rahilly has identified several Erainn tribes including one
called the Deisi (in Latin Desii or Decii). The
Deisi may have lived for a time in the area of Meath but they later
moved back into the south of Ireland. This group produced the historic Kingdom
of the Decies in west Waterford. By the tenth century, this group contained
a number of septs, or kinship subgroups, including the dominant Ui Faolain
. The Ui Faolain claimed descent from Faolan of
Faelan, a king of the Decies, who appears in the Book of Lismore
. His name comes from the Irish faol, "wild animal or wolf". In the
same way that the O Mochair surname was produced from Mochar
, so the O Faolain name was adopted in a similar fashion anywhere
from the 800's to 1100's. The kings of Decies were usually subject to the
Eoghnacht kings of Munster who ruled from Cashel in County Tipperary. The
O Mochair surname would have then been produced sometime after
O Faolain. From the distribution of families in 1659, an early
date can be supposed. MacLysaght also leaves the door open to the possibility
that the Ui Mochair developed from an extended family of the
O Faolain sept into an independent sept.
The Ui Mochair once stretched across the southern foothills of the
western spur of the Knockmealdown Mountains along the north bank of the River
Blackwater. By the early 1800's, some Mohers had migrated down into the
Mitchelstown area on the north side of the Kilworth Mountains. Jeremiah
Moher, for instance, was a baker in Mitchelstown in the 1850's. Mohers were
farming in the area east of Mitchelstown about the same time. Some also
spilled over into the border area of Tipperary and Limerick and even over
the Galtee Mountains into the heart of Limerick. At the same time, however,
the family seems to disappear from Counties Waterford and Kilkenny. In 1831,
William Moher emigrated to Douro Township in the colony of Upper Canada in
British North America with his large family. Emigration from this family's
centre near Peterborough, Ontario has produced a far flung family with members
across the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. Scattered
immigration also took place to Australia and the United States during and
immediately following the Great Famine of the 1840's. Many of these emigrants
were women and their descendants do not bear the Moher name.
MacLysaght also found some families using the surname Moher in County Clare.
It is unknown whether these Mohers are related to the east Cork Mohers. They
may have developed the name independently by a process similar to the one
outlined above or they may represent a branch of the east Cork family which
moved to County Clare, settled and prospered.
The numerous Moher place names in Ireland are derived from mothar
(a place overgrown with brushwood, a place studded with bushes, a deserted
place, a thicket, an enclosure) and its variant mochar or from one
of the Moher families. There are eight townlands in County Cavan and another
eight in County Clare called Moher or have Moher as part of their name. There
are a further six both in County Leitrim and in County Tipperary, four in
Limerick, three in both County Roscommon and County Fermanagh, two in both
County Laois and County Galway and one in County Kerry. The most famous placename
is Ailltreacha Mothair or Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of County
Clare. These impressive cliffs rise 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean.
According to Ronan Coghlan's Book of Irish Names, in the south of
Ireland, mothar is also used to designate the ruins of a caher, rath
or similar fort. He identifies the old stone ruins atop the cliffs as 'Moher
O'Ruan' or "O'Ruan's ruined fort'. The cliffs take their name from this
mochar. In the Barony of Offa and Iffa in Tipperary there is
a townland of Moher which lies within or close to the traditional homelands
of the Mohers. It could derive its name from the Moher family. There is
a township in Sudbury District in northern Ontario, Canada named Moher. This
township was almost certainly named after a member of the Moher Family whose
ancestors immigrated to Upper Canada in 1831. Additionally, there is in
County Cork the townland of Ballinvoher located in the parish of Kilworth
in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon. Ballinvoher is usually taken to
mean baile-an-bhothair (translated "town of the road") but could also
be baile-an-mhochair (translated "town(land) of the place overgrown
with brush wood") or even baile-an-Mhochair (translated "town(land)
of the Moher (family)"). In Munster, the mh combination is often pronounced
in the local Irish as an English "v". Ballinvoher, situated in the southern
foothills of the Kilworth Mountains (part of the Knockmealdown system) is
covered with a large forest known today as Jeffrey's Woods. This forest could
well be "a place overgrown with brushwood".
This site is dedicated
to those searching for their Moher Family roots in Ireland and throughout
the world. Please feel free to peruse the pages here to discover more about
the history of this Irish family and if you are into genealogical or family
history research, please contact the site manager to include your information.
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