O'Connell
also Connell, Ó Conaill
The family of Daniel O'Connell — The Liberator, and the most influential Catholic of 19th-century Britain.
CoreHistoric reach
The seat of O'Connell
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to O'Connell.
Current mission
No mission proclaimed. The chief, once seated, sets the clan’s public focus — a campaign, a contest, a piece of restoration, a year of remembrance.
The pledge surface for chiefdoms and missions is being built. Until it ships, register your name through the submit form.
Stake your name →What does the O'Connell name mean?
From Ó Conaill — descendant of Conall (a personal name probably derived from cú, 'wolf' or 'hound'). The Ó Conaill were a Munster sept anciently seated near Lough Currane in south Kerry, the Iveragh peninsula. The Anglicised O'Connell remained densely Kerry-rooted through the medieval and modern periods, with the family's principal seat at Derrynane on the Atlantic coast at the south-west tip of Iveragh — the seat from which Daniel O'Connell, 'The Liberator', emerged in the 19th century.
The history of O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847), born at Carhen near Cahersiveen in Co. Kerry into a Catholic landed family that had survived the Penal Laws by judicious participation in the European 'Wild Geese' trade (his uncle General Count Daniel Charles O'Connell served in the French royal army), led the Catholic Emancipation movement that won Irish Catholic political rights in 1829. He was elected MP for Clare in 1828 — illegally under the Penal Laws — and his admission required the passage of the Catholic Relief Act, the most consequential single Catholic-rights bill in the history of the British state. Through the 1830s and 40s he led the Repeal Association in pursuit of the dissolution of the Act of Union, holding 'monster meetings' of hundreds of thousands across Ireland; the Clontarf monster meeting of October 1843 was banned by Peel, O'Connell complied to avoid bloodshed, and the political momentum collapsed.
Maurice O'Connell, his son, was MP for Tralee. John O'Connell, another son, was MP for Kilkenny. The Derrynane Abbey estate — the family seat — is preserved as a state house-museum. O'Connell Bridge in Dublin and O'Connell Street, the city's main thoroughfare, both carry the family name; Limerick, Ennis, Sligo and Cork all have an O'Connell Street. The shape of public space across modern Ireland is, more than any other surname's, a Kerry-Connell shape.
Notable bearers of the O'Connell name
- Daniel O'Connell (1775–1847) — 'The Liberator', leader of Catholic Emancipation
- Count Daniel Charles O'Connell (1745–1833) — Wild Goose general in the French royal army
- Maurice O'Connell (1803–1853) — MP for Tralee
- John O'Connell (1810–1858) — MP for Kilkenny, son of the Liberator