MacNamara

Variations – McNamara, Macnamara
Racial Origin – Irish
Source – A given name

Here is a family name with a tang of the salt sea, and which, if you were familiar with the speech of the Gael, would call up visions of clashing arms and splintering galleys, with Celt and Viking locked in deadly combat of shore. Nor, if you were familiar with the history of the Gael, would locality of the visions necessarily be off the Irish coast, for the Irish in the early Middle Ages, united under a single “high king,” took the offensive as often as the defensive, and at one period their campaigns penetrated as far as northern Italy, as well as along the shores of the Baltic and Scandinavia.

The meaning of the name of the ancient Irish clan, or “Siol Conmara,” or, to use the more usual and modern form, “MacConmara,” is “descendants” or “followers of the sea protector,” and the clan derived its name at some point in medieval history from a sea chieftain to whom had been given the name “Cu-mara,” derived from the combination of the words “cu” and “muir,” and signifying “protector of the sea.”

With the passage of the Gaelic clan system many generations ago, under the pressure of English law and custom, the use of the word “siol” and the designation of divisions of population by clans has been dropped. The Irish have not succeeded in preserving their clan organizations as well as the Scots. Through the prefixes “O” and “Mac” as denoting descent are still in wide-spread use with family names with hereditary connections strongly cherished.

This family name is not Scottish, being found but seldom in Scotland.