From Ó Cléirigh, ‘clerk’ or ‘cleric’ — the Donegal family behind Ireland's most important work of history, the Annals of the Four Masters.
The Cleary certificate.
Digital €19.99 · Printed €39.99 · Framed €89.99. 20% off at checkout.
Gaelic Origin · Root meaning ‘clerk, cleric’
Cleary comes from Ó Cléirigh, built on cléireach, ‘clerk’ or ‘cleric’ — a family associated with learning long before the name's most famous bearer. In the 1630s, Brother Mícheál Ó Cléirigh led a team of scholars working at a Franciscan friary in Donegal to compile the Annals of the Four Masters, the single most important chronicle of pre-conquest Irish history.
A name that means ‘scholar’, and was still living up to it four centuries after it was first given.
Irish form: Ó Cléirigh
