Deasmhumhain
Desmond · south Munster
Deasmhumhain, in English Desmond, said DASS-woo-in. A kingdom.
South Munster. Mac Cárthaigh country, and the name of the earldom that tried to break away from the Tudors and was destroyed for it.
The name
south Munster
Where
Cork and Kerry, the southwest.
In today's counties: Cork (Corcaigh), Kerry (Ciarraí).
When it mattered
From the twelfth century, under the Mac Cárthaigh and later the Fitzgerald earls.
After Brian Bóruma's line took the north, the old Eóganachta royal family, now called Mac Cárthaigh, held the south and called it Desmond. Cork and Kerry were theirs in name even where the Normans held the ground in fact.
The word then changed owners. The Fitzgeralds, Norman in origin, became earls of Desmond and ran the southwest as something close to a separate country. Their rebellions against Elizabeth in the 1570s and 1580s ended with the earldom destroyed and the land planted, which is why so many Munster surnames scatter in the records after 1590.
What is left of the name
The barony names and the diocese keep it, and the Desmond rebellions keep it in every Irish history book.
Names out of it
Families on this site that belong to Desmond. A surname is not a pedigree, and plenty of people carry these names for reasons that have nothing to do with the old kingdom.
- McCarthy (Mac Cárthaigh)
- O’Sullivan (Ó Súilleabháin)
- O’Donoghue (Ó Donnchadha)
- O’Mahony (Ó Mathúna)
- O’Driscoll (Ó hEidirsceoil)
- Fitzgerald (Mac Gearailt)
Next to it
- Na hEóganachta (The Eóganachta)
- Tuadhmhumhain (Thomond)
- Urmhumhain (Ormond)