O’Malley — By Land and Sea

O’Malley anglicises Ó Máille, ‘descendant of Máille’ — a name whose meaning is honestly uncertain: some read an old Celtic word for ‘prince’ or ‘champion’, others the Gaelic for ‘stately’. By the 12th century the family ruled Umhall, the country around Clew Bay in County Mayo, and they were unusual among Irish clans in living chiefly from the sea.

Their most famous chief was Gráinne Ní Mháille — Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen of Elizabethan Ireland — and the family motto still says it plainly: Terra Marique Potens, powerful by land and sea.

Irish form: Ó Máille