May
An Irish surname of Sligo. In the 2010 US census it was carried by 103,306 people, the 304th most common surname in the country.
May is the anglicised form of four distinct Irish names. Some you can hear in the English name; others look and sound nothing like it, and were simply swapped for it.
Mac Máigheóc, Mac Máigheóg
Mac Máighe, son of May (short for Maheu, i.e., Matthew)
Máighiú, son of Maheu (a Norman form of Matthew)
Ó Miadhaigh. This family stood in Co. Mayo, Co. Roscommon, and Co. Westmeath.
Where the name comes from
May is Matthew worn down to one syllable. Mac Máighe is son of May, short for Maheu, the Norman-French form of Matthew, and Mac Máigheóg is son of little Mayoc, a patronymic taken up by a branch of the family of Condon in East Cork and Waterford. Máighiú, son of Maheu, is very rare and gives Mayhew and Mayo as well.
Ó Miadhaigh is a different name entirely: descendant of Miadhach, the honourable one, an old Westmeath surname still found in the midlands and now more often in Roscommon and the southern parts of Mayo. It was an Ó Miadhaigh who ended the career of Sir Hugh de Lacy, the profaner and destroyer of many churches, by cutting off his head with a blow of an axe at the castle of Durrow in 1186.
Sligo, photographed
Photographs made in Sligo.
Sligo
Benbulben is a limestone plateau with its sides cut away by ice, standing flat-topped over the plain. Knocknarea has a cairn on top, thought to be a passage tomb and never excavated. Strandhill and Mullaghmore get some of the biggest surf in Europe. Yeats is buried at Drumcliffe below Benbulben.
Cottage, Ox Mountains, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo
Beach Detail, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo
Benbulben, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo
Notable bearers
Theresa May (born 1956), politician.
Brian May (born 1947), actor, singer, and musician.
Karl May (1842-1912), writer, screenwriter, and composer.
Ralphie May (1972-2017), television actor, comedian, and podcaster.
Rollo May (1909-1994), writer, psychologist, and psychotherapist.
About this page
The counties on this page are where the name was thickest on the ground in Ireland a century and a half ago, not a claim about any one family. Names moved around inside the country as much as they left it. The photographs are mine, made in the counties named.
More Irish surnames: King · Reynolds · Ford · Hunt · Hart · Burke · Banks · Hopkins · Leonard · Moran · Thornton · Higgins
How common the name was
In 1890, 28 births were registered under May in Ireland, most of them in Sligo.
| Connacht | 11 | 39% |
|---|---|---|
| Leinster | 7 | 25% |
| Ulster | 6 | 21% |
| Munster | 4 | 14% |
| Ireland | 28 |