Genealogical Office - Chiefs of The Name

Chiefs of The Name

When the Kingdom of Ireland was created in 1541, the Dublin administration wanted to involve the Gaelic chiefs into the new entity, creating new titles for them such as the Earl of Tyrone, or the Barons Inchiquin. In the process they were granted new coats of arms from 1552. The associated policy of surrender and regrant involved a change to succession to a title by primogeniture, and not by tanistry where a group of male cousins of a chief were eligible to succeed by election. This was accepted by the new title-holders but not by some of their cousins. Thereafter the chiefs of the name succeeded by primogeniture for several centuries, in a similar way to the clan chiefs in Scotland.

Many other clan chiefs were never given formal titles or knighthoods from the Kingdom of Ireland, but were issued with arms and usually registered their genealogies with the heralds in Dublin, and became a significant part of the landed gentry.

After the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 and the subsequent Flight of the Earls, some dozens of the old Gaelic aristocracy scattered throughout Catholic Europe. Some of their descendants were granted courtesy recognition in 1943 by the Chief Herald as Chiefs of the Name, signifying that they are the senior male line descendant from the last recognised chief of the name.

The issue of the chiefs' succession arose again after the creation of the Chief Herald of Ireland in 1943. Some Chiefs of the Name favour tanistry while others see primogeniture as a more practical system. In an address to the Irish Senate in December 2006 John O'Donoghue, the then Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism also expressed the opinion that it was a matter for those who bore these titles to decide on the system they used for succession, but that he found it strange that an English system had been used for the succession of titles originally created under a native Irish system.

Following advice from the Attorney General that the recognition of Chiefs of the Name was without basis in law, the practice of courtesy recognition was abandoned in July 2003.