Neary

Name in Gaelic: O or Mac Naradaigh
[Descendant or son of Naradhach mean good or noble, modest]
.

Neary is a  surname borne by the modern day representative of two ancient families originating in the northern Connacht and County Louth respectively

During the middle Ages the O Naradaigh sept of Silmurray lineage was the more prominent and numerous. Kinsmen of the Mc Dermott’s and O’Flanagans, they descended from Muireadhaigh Muilleathan, King of Connacht who died in 701. Until the 12th century, when the Mc Dermott’s became predominant in Roscommon, the Neary’s where chiefs of a sizeable territory near Boyle.

Leinster Neary‘s usually belong to the O Naradaigh sept established in Louth. A branch of the Oirghialla clan, their ancestors, the Three Collas, conquered the Ultonians in the 4th century, wrestling from most of Ulster. Although the leading families where dispersed by the Anglo- Norman invasion in 1171, the majority of the sept remained in or near their ancestral homeland.

Many Chiefs and churchmen mere recorded in the Annals under the earliest anglicized for of the name, i.e. Fr Nicholas O’ Naraighe, O.F.M. Provincial from the 1505 to 1508. Edmond O’Nary of Clongreagh, County Roscommon is mentioned in the 16th century “Composition Book of Connacht” as a man of importance.

In the monastic extents and faints of that time, several Neary’s appear in Roscommon and Leitrim as well as Co Kildare and Meath. One of these was Donal Boy O’ Nare “Idleman” [in the fiants it is used as an equivalent of a gentleman, as opposed to a workman], who was pardoned for various offences. Rev. Cornelius Nary [1658-1738], a noted author was born in Kildare. Although he was head of the Irish college in Paris and held a high ecclesiastical position in Germany, declined the appointment of bishop of Kildare in 1703, becoming a parish priest of St. Michael’s Dublin.