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Surgeons and their estates
Ballycullen/Baile Uí Choileáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Coileáin’
(see logainm.ie #55319 )
Date: 01/02/2025
We noted in last week’s theme that the area around Mount Kennedy Demesne in Co. Wicklow was formerly known as Baile Ó gCearnaigh ‘the town(land) of the people surnamed Ó Cearnaigh’ (logainm.ie #55643), and suggested that the professional status of the Ó Cearnaigh (anglicized Kearney) family was a likely reason that they were granted lands here in the first instance.
However, the last-known Gaelic Irish landholders at Baile Ó gCearnaigh were in fact members of the Ó Coiliúin (< E.Mod.Ir. Ó Cuileamhain) and Ó Broin (angl. O’Byrne) septs. These two families – the Ó Coiliúin in particular – feature prominently in local land deeds in the early 17th century. At least two members of the Ó Coiliúin family were literate in Irish at this period, befitting their traditional professional status. They signed their names in full on one of the deeds, as ‘sean o cuileamhin’ [Seán Ó Cuileamhain] and ‘cormac o cuileam[h]ain’ [Cormac Ó Cuileamhain] (NLI MS 38, 638/12, dorso). (Our sincere thanks are due to Therese Hicks for bringing these and other related documents to the attention of the Placenames Branch.) Anglicized forms in official documents such as O’Cullon (Calendar of Patent Rolls p.30) (anno 1603) and O’Cullone (Fiant [Eliz.] §6577) (1601) suggest that Ó Cuileamhain was pronounced close to standard Mod. Ir. Ó Coiliúin in this period.
Conoghor m‘Mahown O’Cullon [Conchúr mac Mathúna Ó Coiliúin] of Ballegane (leg. Ballegarne) was granted a pardon in 1586 (Fiant [Eliz.] §4853). The same individual (named as Connor O’Cullen [sic] of Ballygarvy (leg. Ballygarny)) figured among jurors enquiring into the extent of the manor of Powerscourt in 1611 (CPR, p.208). (Note the beginnings of the standardization of the anglicized surname as Cullen.) In 1616 (as Conn O’Cullen) he sold a parcel described as “the town part of B’garny” to his brother Farrell [Fearghal] (NLI MS 38,638/22). Many other transactions involving Ó Coiliúin lands were recorded over the next few years, until their association with Baile Ó gCearnaigh ended when Robert Kennedy made the predatory acquisition of Fearghal’s remaining share under the New English dispensation in 1626/7 (NLI MS 38,582/1). Kennedy then acquired the portion held by Bran Birne [Bran or Brian Ó Broin] of Courtfoyle in 1632 (NLI MS 38,638/22), and the whole area was rebranded Newtown Mountkennedy and Mount Kennedy Demesne (see Therese Hicks, No mere Irish: The Kennedys of Mount Kennedy (2022)).
Although no early native records survive, it can reasonably be assumed that the Ó Coiliúin (< Ó Cuileamhain) sept came into ownership of these lands at Baile Ó gCearnaigh due to their recognized status as one of the hereditary medical families of Gaelic Ireland (see Aoibheann Nic Dhonnchadha, ‘Medical writing in Irish, 1400-1700’). The family’s medical pedigree survived well into the 17th century: the 1641 Depositions record Donnell Cullen [Dónall Ó Coiliúin] and William Cullen [Liam Ó Coiliúin] as chirurgeons (i.e., surgeons) (see Donnell Cullen; William Cullen) and we find Keane Cullon [Cian Ó Coiliúin] of Dublin, another surgeon, recorded in 1641 among wills in the Dublin diocese (Dublin Wills, p.208). (This Keane is likely to be identical with the Kean O’Cullom of Cowlenekille – referring to Coolnakilly / Cúil na Cille (#55474), between Glenealy and Wicklow town – named in a patent roll from 1620 (CPR, p.465).) According to Nic Dhonnchadha (ibid.) a branch of the Ó Cearnaigh sept themselves had a medical pedigree, as well as their Ó Coiliúin successors in this location. It is possible therefore that the lands of Baile Ó gCearnaigh around Mount Kennedy Demesne were the special preserve of hereditary medical families for a very long time.
The Ó Coiliúin family did not rename Baile Ó gCearnaigh, but it is not implausible that their surname occurs in the underling Irish form of Ballycullen (logainm.ie #55319), a townland lying very close to Coolnakilly – the place of residence of the abovementioned Cian Ó Coiliúin – about 10km to the south of Mount Kennedy Demesne. As noted above, the Irish surname Ó Coiliúin began to be conflated with anglicized Cullen in the 17th century. Further early examples include Gillernowe O’Cullen [Giolla na Naomh Ó Coiliúin] of Castlekevin, near Mount Kennedy Demesne, mentioned in a fiant of 1600 (F §6401). But although it is plausible that this process (Ir. Ó Coiliúin > angl. -cullen) had occurred before the earliest attestation of the placename as ‘Ballicullen’ (1604), in the absence of any unambiguous reflex of the less common Ó Coiliúin the consistent anglicized forms in -cullen, -cullin must be presumed to reflect the more widespread surname Ó Coileáin (var. Ó Cuileáin) (see Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall s.n. Ó Cuileáin): the recommended Irish form is therefore Baile Uí Choileáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Coileáin’.
Of course, many families bearing the surname Ó Coileáin themselves belonged to the learned classes of Gaelic society. A family of the name were erenaghs [< airchinneach ‘[hereditary] church steward’] in the diocese of Clogher (SGG s.n. Ó Cuileáin) and other examples are found among ecclesiastics in the dioceses of Armagh (Calendar of Papal registers relating to Britain and Ireland III pp.108-117 [CPL]), Cloyne (CPL V pp.449-455), Derry (CPL VII pp.263-271) and Tuam (CPL VIII pp.415-421). It is particularly notable, therefore, that Ó Coileáin is one of the most common native Irish surnames to occur in townland names. We consider Baile Uí Choileáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Coileáin’ to be the likely Irish forerunner to the townland names anglicized as Ballykillane (logainm.ie #3028) in Co. Carlow; Ballycullaun (logainm.ie #6740) in Co. Clare; Ballycullane in Cos. Cork (logainm.ie #9990), Kerry (logainm.ie #22729), Kildare (logainm.ie #25105), Limerick (logainm.ie #30683), Waterford (logainm.ie #49143) and Wexford (logainm.ie #53588); Ballycoolan (logainm.ie #28260) and Ballykillane (logainm.ie #28456) in Co. Laois; Ballycollin (logainm.ie #41303) in Co. Offaly; and Ballykilliane (logainm.ie #53853) in Co. Wexford.
Quite apart from the aforementioned corruptions of anglicization, another point of confusion regarding these surnames arose within the Irish language itself. We are familiar with the Irish word coileán as the common term for puppy in the modern language. This word was also used as a man’s name, as found in the Modern Irish version of the surname Ó Coileáin ‘descendant of Coileán’, in which we find the genitive form Coileáin. But that genitive form is in fact an irregular development of Middle Irish cuilén (‘pup’), gen. sg. cuilíuin [sic] (see eDIL s.v. cuilén; see Thurneysen, Grammar of Old Irish §272). In a surname based on the Middle Irish personal name Cuilén, gen. Cuilíuin, therefore, the strictly regular inflection in Early Modern Irish would be *Ó Cuiliúin, with a long -ú- sound in the second syllable. This may appear very peculiar, but a parallel is found in the Irish placename Ros Mhic Thriúin / New Ross (#1416678) in Co. Wexford, which retains the regular inflection of Middle Irish trén ‘strong man’, gen. sg. tríuin, as opposed to the standard Modern Irish tréan, gen. sg. tréin. It is reasonable to hypothesize, then, that in certain areas the regular Early Modern Irish inflection Ó Cuiliúin (instead of Ó Coileáin) survived well into the 13th and 14th centuries – just as it survived in the placename Ros Mhic Thriúin (instead of Ros Mhic *Thréin) – and therefore came into contact with the newly established pronunciation of the unrelated surname Ó Cuileamhain as if spelled Ó Cuiliúin (the -mh- was not pronounced after about the 13th century). If this was the case, confusion of the two surnames would have been almost inevitable long before the Tudor era, from which the bulk of our earliest anglicized evidence comes. Note that this also opens up the possibility of the name-form Ó Cuileamhain being adopted by families to explain the pronunciation of their surname as Ó Coiliúin (deriving from Middle Irish Cuilén, and therefore the same origin as the surname pronounced Ó Coileáin), though not perhaps the learned hereditary surgeons of Baile Ó gCearnaigh we have discussed in this note.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility, therefore, that some of these townland names for which the surviving anglicized evidence happens to favour derivation from Baile Uí Choileáin ‘the town(land) of Ó Coileáin (Cullen/Collins)’ may actually go back to an earlier Baile Uí Choiliúin < *Baile Uí Chuileamhain ‘the town(land) of Ó Coiliúin (Cullen)’. As we must continually stress, there are no end to the complexities involved in the research of Irish townland names.
(Conchubhar Ó Crualaoich & Aindí Mac Giolla Chomhghaill)
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballykillane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullaun
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycoolan
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballykillane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile an Cholláin/Ballycollin
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballykilliane
- Baile Uí Choileáin/Ballycullen
- Cúil na Cille/Coolnakilly
- Díméin Bhaile an Chinnéidigh/Mount Kennedy Demesne
- Ros Mhic Thriúin/New Ross