From Barry Island in Wales — Anglo-Norman knights who arrived with the invasion and became Barrymore, one of Cork's great Hiberno-Norman families.
Norman Origin · Root meaning ‘from Barry Island, Wales’
Barry is a toponymic, taken from Barry Island off the Welsh coast, and arrived with the Anglo-Norman invasion of the 1180s. The family settled extensively in County Cork, where their lordship, Barrymore, gave its name to the barony still used today.
A Welsh island's name, carried across the sea and planted so firmly in Cork that, eight centuries later, the place remembers the family more than the family remembers the island.
Irish form: de Barra
