Uí Maine
Hy Many · the descendants of Maine
Uí Maine, in English Hy Many, said ee MAN-yeh. A kingdom.
East Galway and south Roscommon. A thousand square miles of Connacht under one family for five hundred years.
The name
the descendants of Maine
Where
East Galway and the south and centre of Roscommon.
In today's counties: Galway (Gaillimh), Roscommon (Ros Comáin).
When it mattered
Under the Ó Ceallaigh, from about 1100 until the end of the Gaelic order around 1600.
Uí Maine was the largest of the lesser Connacht kingdoms, big enough that its ruler was a king in his own right rather than anybody's vassal in practice. The Ó Ceallaigh, the O'Kellys, were the senior family from around 1100.
They were also famous patrons. The Ó Ceallaigh kept poets and historians, and the Book of Uí Maine, written in the fourteenth century, is one of the great surviving Irish manuscripts because a family of this size thought it worth paying for.
What is left of the name
Hy Many is still used for the district, and the Book of Uí Maine is in the Royal Irish Academy.
Names out of it
Families on this site that belong to Hy Many. A surname is not a pedigree, and plenty of people carry these names for reasons that have nothing to do with the old kingdom.