From de Búrca — Anglo-Norman ‘de Burgh’, who became, within generations, more Irish than the Irish themselves.
Norman Origin · From ‘de Burgh’
Burke descends from the Anglo-Norman de Burgh family, who arrived with the twelfth-century invasion and carved out vast territory across Connacht. Within a few generations they had adopted Gaelic law, language and custom so completely that the phrase ‘more Irish than the Irish themselves’ was coined largely to describe them.
A Norman name that Ireland didn't just accept but absorbed entirely — by the time the English crown came looking for loyal settlers, the Burkes had long since stopped being any such thing.
Irish form: de Búrca
