Ó Cnáimhsighe
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Ó Cnáimhsighe The map shows families in the 1992 telephone directories whose surnames are derivatives of Ó Cnáimhsighe. The green dots represent 680 families who have the anglicised form, Bonner, which is a pseudo- translation of ‘cnámh’, the Irish for ‘bone’, adopted from the seventeenth century. It appears in four spellings, but in Donegal the name is always pronounced Boner. The red dots are Kneafsey families, of various spellings. Adjusting for phone ownership means there are about 60 families altogether. Another derivative is Crampsie (black dots), of whom there are about 30 families. The difference is because Gaelic ‘mh’ is not everywhere pronounced as ‘v’, and in Donegal ‘cn’ is normally pronounced ‘cr’. Ó Cnáimhsighe was first recorded in 1095. Cnáimhsighe is a plural of which the singular is Cnáimhseach. This was sometimes used as a personal name for a woman, and sometimes as a byname for midwife. The ultimate origin appears to be the bearberry, a mountain heather, cnaimhseag in Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland, the plant is found in much the same area as the surnames derived from Cnáimhsighe - north Antrim through Donegal to the Burren. It is oxytocic, and oxytocin is a drug given today to women in childbirth. The Kneafseys of Connaught are likely to have left Donegal before the adoption of Bonner began, and all the clan’s families on
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A map showing the distribution in Ireland of surnames derived from Ó Cnáimhsighe: Bonner, Kneafsey and Cramsey. Each occurs in several spellings. Data 1991/92
Transcript of Ó Cnáimhsighe
Ó Cnáimhsighe
The map shows families in the 1992 telephone directories whose surnames are derivatives of Ó Cnáimhsighe. The green dots represent 680 families who have the anglicised form, Bonner, which is a pseudo-translation of ‘cnámh’, the Irish for ‘bone’, adopted from the seventeenth century. It appears in four spellings, but in Donegal the name is always pronounced Boner.
The red dots are Kneafsey families, of various spellings. Adjusting for phone ownership means there are about 60 families altogether.
Another derivative is Crampsie (black dots), of whom there are about 30 families. The difference is because Gaelic ‘mh’ is not everywhere pronounced as ‘v’, and in
Donegal ‘cn’ is normally pronounced ‘cr’. Ó Cnáimhsighe was first recorded in 1095. Cnáimhsighe is a plural of which the singular is
Cnáimhseach. This was sometimes used as a personal name for a woman, and sometimes as a byname for midwife. The ultimate origin appears to be the bearberry, a mountain heather, cnaimhseag in Scottish Gaelic. In Ireland, the plant is found in much the same area as the surnames derived from Cnáimhsighe - north Antrim through Donegal to the Burren. It is oxytocic, and oxytocin is a drug given today to women in childbirth.
The Kneafseys of Connaught are likely to have left Donegal before the adoption of Bonner began, and all the clan’s families on the east coast are there probably as a result of internal migration in relatively recent times. Some Bonners in Ireland are not of Cnáimhsighe origin. Scots whose Anglo-Norman name means ‘courteous’ came from the seventeenth century, mainly to Ulster; and Rhineland Germans with a name recalling the city of Bonn moved to Limerick in the early eighteenth century. Neither of these has left a discernible imprint on the map.
The legend of the bones is found in Manus O’Donnell’s Irish language ‘Life of St Columba’, 1532. St Columba raises Connla, 80 years dead, to finish a task set for him by St Patrick of carving a reliquary casket. I put all this together in ‘Of the Children of Kneafsey and the Shrine at the Pictish Fort’, which is on my site at Scribd.
Edward Neafcy
