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Origin / History of the Kilkenny Name Of Irish origin, this name is an Anglicized form of the Old aelic ‘Mac Giolla Chainnigh’. The Gaelic prefix ‘mac’, denotes ‘son of’, with ‘giolla’, literally meaning ‘servant’, but used here in the transferred sense of ‘devotee’, and the saint's name Cannach (Canice); hence ‘son of the devotee of St. Canice’. Traditionally, Irish family names are taken from the heads of tribes or from some illustrious warrior, but in some instances, sept names indicate veneration of a particular saint, as in Kilcash, from ‘Mac Giolla Chais’, a devotee of St. Cas. The Great ‘Mac Giolla Chainnigh’ sept were of the ancient Cenel Eoghain population group, and were located in Tyrone and south Derry. St. Canice, whose place of origin was Drumachose in County Derry, was a hermit and abbot who founded monasteries in Drumachose and Cluain Bronig in County Offaly. His name alternatively appears as St. Kenny, which is nearer to the original Irish phonetically. In the process of Anglicization ‘Mac Giolla Chainnigh’ has acquired several variant forms including Kilkenny in North Connacht, and MacElhinney with MacIlhenny in West Ulster. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William de Kilkenny, Bishop of Ely, in the ‘Medieval Ecclesiastical Records’, 1256. The county name Kilkenny, written as ‘Cill Chainnigh’ in Gaelic, means ‘the church of St. Canice’. David de Kilkenny was bishop of Achonry, Co. Sligo, from 1312 to 1344, but the modern surname is rarely of locational origin. Paddy Kilkenny, the wandering piper of renown, was born at Clifden, Co. Galway, circa 1882.
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