Manx surnames

{{Main|History of the Isle of Man}}

During the first period of recorded history the island was occupied by Celtic speaking peoples and later Christianised by Irish missionaries.

By the 9th century Vikings, generally from Norway, ruled the island: Old Norse speaking settlers intermarried with the Gaelic speaking native population, and Norse personal names found their way into common Manx usage.

By the 13th century the island became a Scottish possession, but passed back and forth between Scotland and England for a hundred years before finally coming under British rule{{clarify|date=September 2017}}, resulting in open immigration from the occupying country.{{cite book |last=Reaney |first=Percy Hilde |author2=Wilson, Richard Middlewood |title=A Dictionary of English Surnames |edition=3rd |year=2006 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=0-203-99355-1 |pages=LI, LII}}

Under the English many surnames introduced to the island were translated into Manx, while many indigenous Manx surnames became Anglicised. Immigration from Ireland brought Hiberno-Norman surnames to the island as well.{{cite book |last=Moore |first=Arthur William |title=The Surnames & Place-names of the Isle of Man |url=https://archive.org/details/surnamesplacenam00mooruoft |format=PDF |year=1890 |publisher=Elliot Stock |location=London |pages=[https://archive.org/details/surnamesplacenam00mooruoft/page/1 1]–21 }}

Very few Manx surnames are recorded prior to the arrival of the Stanleys in 1405. The majority of early surnames are recorded in the Manorial Rolls dating from 1510 to 1513. More recent sources of surnames are Parish records from the beginning of the 17th century.{{cite web |url=http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/famhist/fnames/sources.htm |title=Sources for Family Names |access-date=15 December 2008 |work=Manx Notebook (www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook) }}

Arthur William Moore analysed the origin of Manx surnames in use at the beginning of the 19th century: of 170 surnames, about 100 (65 percent) are of Celtic origin while about 30 (17.5 percent) were of Norse-Gaelic origin.{{cite book |last=Moore |first=Arthur William |title=The Surnames & Place-names of the Isle of Man |url=https://archive.org/details/surnamesplacenam00mooruoft |format=PDF |year=1890 |publisher=Elliot Stock |location=London |page=[https://archive.org/details/surnamesplacenam00mooruoft/page/11 11] }}

Patronymic names were formed by the use of the Gaelic prefix {{lang|mga|Mac}} to the father's name. The "Irish" {{lang|ga|O (Ó)}} never took root among Manx names.

In the early 16th century, the {{lang|mga|Mac}} prefix was almost universally used on the island but by the 17th century, it had almost completely disappeared. The pronunciation of the prefix {{lang|mga|Mac}} was unstressed, so that the final consonant became first consonant in the second element of the name (the father's personal name). When the Mac prefix fell out of use, the final consonant became the first sound of the surname. Because of this, many Manx names characteristically begin with the letters C, K, or Q, for example Cubbon, Kelly and Quayle.

Patronymic forms of personal names beginning with element {{lang|mga|Giolla}} "servant of" (for instance, MacGillchrist) underwent a transformation of their own; the prefix {{lang|mga|Mac}} and the element {{lang|mga|Giolla}} were contracted into Myley. For example, MacGillchrist became Mylechreest or Mylchreest.

Prior to the mid-17th century there were many instances of female surnames using the prefix {{lang|gv|Ine}}, a Gaelic contraction meaning "daughter," cognate to the Irish prefixes {{lang|ga|Ní}} and {{lang|ga|Nic}} and Scottish Gaelic {{lang|gd|Nic}}, derived from {{lang|gv|iníon}} "daughter". From the mid-17th century onwards the prefix generally fell out of use. According to J. J. Kneen, there are several instances of feminine surnames using {{lang|gv|IIne}} as late as the early 19th century,{{cite web |url=http://www.medievalscotland.org/manxnames/jonesmanx16.shtml |title=Manx Names in the Early 16th Century |access-date=13 December 2008 |last=Jones |first=Heather Rose |date=1998 |work=Medieval Scotland (www.medievalscotland.org) }}

During the 18th century, formal documents in English (for example parish registers and probate records) made use of the Latin "Alias" to incorporate the maiden name of a married woman or widow, for example "Mr. Robert Kelly of the Rock in the parish of Marown and his wife Isabel Kelly als Clucas".Narasimham, J., (1986) 'The Manx Family Tree', 35

The following table shows the top ten surnames found in the 1986 telephone directory on the Isle of Man. The ten names are compared to the 1881 their census ranking.{{cite web |url=http://www.isle-of-man.com/manxnotebook/famhist/fnames/sn1881.htm |title=Manx Surnames from 1881 census |access-date=15 December 2008 |work=Manx Notebook }}

The following table ranks Manx surnames by occurrences in the 1881 census.{{cite web |url=http://forebears.co.uk/isle-of-man#surnames |title=Top surnames in Isle of Man from the 1881 British Census |access-date=1 November 2013 |work=Forebears}} See footnote for the legend to the table.{{#tag:ref|The Total column represents the total number of people with the surname. The Frequency column represents the percentage of people on the Isle of Man with this surname. The Index column represents the probability of finding the surname in Man, compared to the probability of finding it in the rest of Great Britain. A number 1 in this column shows that there is the same chance of finding this surname at random on the Isle of Man as there is in whole of Great Britain (a 2 would show twice as much, and a 10 shows ten times as much).|group=note}}

This table lists the surnames of the 1881 census which have the highest percentage of appearing on the Isle of Man.{{clarify|date=December 2018}} The important column in this table is the Index column. This table shows the most "Manx" surnames in Great Britain. See the previous footnote for the legend to the table.

• Family name, description of family names
• History of the Isle of Man, Manx history
• "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?"

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{{Names in world cultures}}

Surnames