Quinn
also Ó Coinn, O'Quinn
Of Conn the Hundred-Battler — three distinct lordships, one Anglicised name.
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CoreHistoric reach
The seat of Quinn
Seat vacantChief
No chief yet. The seat awaits its first claimant — be the first to stake your name to Quinn.
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.
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Stake your name →What does the Quinn name mean?
From Ó Coinn — descendant of Conn. Conn is among the great Old Irish personal names, born by Conn Cétchathach — Conn of the Hundred Battles — the legendary 2nd-century high king from whom most of the great northern Irish dynasties traced descent. Several distinct Ó Coinn kindreds gave rise to the modern Quinns: the Tyrone Quinns of the Cenél nEóghain, the Thomond Quinns of Clare (close kin of the O'Briens), and the Longford Quinns of Annaly. All Anglicised independently as Quinn by the 17th century.
The history of Quinn
Quinn is among the top twenty Irish surnames, with strong density in the Ulster heartland and a parallel concentration in north Munster. The Thomond Ó Coinn — the Quinns of Inchiquin in Clare — were the principal cadet branch of the O'Briens of Thomond, holding the lands around Lough Inchiquin near Corofin from the 12th century and providing the senior earldom-of-Thomond cadet line into the early modern period. Their seat at Inchiquin Castle is now a ruin on the lake's western shore.
Anthony Quinn (1915–2001), the Mexican-Irish actor who won two Academy Awards in the 1950s and is most associated with the role of Zorba the Greek (1964), descended from a County Cork-Quinn line of mid-19th-century emigration to Mexico. Aidan Quinn (b. 1959), the American actor, is a Chicago-born Quinn whose father was a Tyrone-Quinn emigrant of the 1950s. The Quinn surname is heavily distributed across the American and Australian-Irish diaspora and has produced an outsized share of contemporary Irish public figures across politics, sport and entertainment.
Notable bearers of the Quinn name
- Anthony Quinn (1915–2001) — actor, Zorba the Greek
- Aidan Quinn (b. 1959) — actor
- Niall Quinn (b. 1966) — Irish footballer
- Pat Quinn (1948–2014) — Governor of Illinois