Quote:
So my family has a very uncommon last name / surname (Coniam).. in all my research I've only found one website that claims to know the meaning and origin.
I come to this community hoping for 2 things:
1. Assistance in how an American might learn to pronounce the word "Choinniamaigh"
2. Your thoughts on if this sounds like it could be true as far as translation/origin...
MacLysaght’s
Surnames of Ireland has a similar reference to
Baile an Choinniamaigh in County Wicklow, Anglicized as Cunniamstown, in reference to the Anglicized surname Cunniam, which it says "shows that Cunniam is an old name in Ireland". He also says that that it's sometimes a synonym of Cunningham. Your family name, Coniam, is likely a variant Anglicization of the family name. If MacLysaght is right, then the family name inside of
Baile an Choinniamaigh would probably be
[Mac] Choinniam, but MacLysaght does not actually give the Irish form, presumably because he didn't find it anywhere, and was deriving it "logically" from the place name.
The word
con is is a genitive form of the word
cú, meaning "hound" or "dog". MacLysaght also lists another name which shows how
con can be used in a name.
Mac Conanaonaigh, usually Anglicized as [Mac] Conheeny, is stated to be a "rare south Connacht name" derived from the words
con ("hound") and
aonach "fair"", and means "hound of the fair".
Wicklow is in the East and Connacht in the West, so the two names are probably unconnected, but stranger things have happened. The interior part of
Conanaonaigh means "the" (or "of the" in this case), and is found in many names, and it often got lost or garbled when names were Anglicized.
If your family's original name was
[Mac] Choinniam, the pronunciation (in modern Irish) would be (very roughly):
mu[k] KHUNN-ee-um, where the "kh" is the guttural sound found in words like
Loch.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
