My last name is Mcneely. Is that irish? How can i find out the orgin of the Mcneelys?

It is sad to see mind bender get a thumbs down on his reply, when his is the ONLY reply that is based on common sense, and reality.


Where your surname comes from is NOT ANY indicator of where your ANCESTORS came from, or didn't come from. I will mention immediately... your great grandmother is not the person from who you get your surname. Your surname comes through your father, his father, his father, his father. ANY of your great grandmothers (never mind their actual ethnicity or ancestry) will not be the source for your surname. The only time you might have taken the surname from a maternal line, is if perhaps you were born out of wedlock, and mom gave you her name.


There is absolutely no disrespect intended here. Your goal is your own ancestry, and their origin. For the majority of African Americans, it is a simple fact that they will not have had any surname at all, prior to the civil war, unless they were among the small minority of freemen. Following emancipation, former slaves adopted surnames, often from the families that were the prior owner, sometimes not.


Thus.. if your great great GRANDFATHER, happened to be Black, and took the McNeely name, it would not mean his ancestors came from Ireland at all. The SURNAME could have originated in Ireland (probably well before there even was any settlement in America). If one of your gr grandmothers has Irish heritage.. that would be through her family, and may be from EITHER her father or perhaps her mother.


Anyone who sits here and goes on about if McNeely is Irish or Scottish, etc, completely failed to think through how names get passed down. You have not identified your FATHER'S lineage, which is where the name comes to you. The question is whether he is African American, or also happens to have Caucasian heritage, via the McNeely name. If your father's ancestry through his paternal line works back to Ireland, then your McNeely ancestry is Irish. You would want to identify the specific person named McNeely who was the immigrant. The same would be true for the gr grandmother who you believe is Irish.. but her surname will be something different.

My last name is Mcneely. Is that irish? How can i find out the orgin of the Mcneelys?
I'm a McNeely and my family came from Northern Ireland. Report Abuse

Reply:Mc is always Irish!


Mac is always Scottish!





how do you have that last name if that was your greatgrandMA? Last names are passed paternally.





Anyways that last name is northern irish but it could be related to scottish people because they are both Celtic.
Reply:From ancestry.com





McNeely:





Scottish (Galloway) and northern Irish: Anglicized form of Gaelic Mac an Fhilidh 鈥榮on of the poet鈥?


Irish: Anglicized form of the Connacht name Mac Conghaile 鈥榮on of Conghal鈥?(see Connolly).





As far as being "mostly african american", that really has no necessary bearing on surname. Go back just 8 generations and you likely have 256 DIFFERENT surnames in your family. The one you carry is likely because it was your father's surname. Even if this particular line that drives the surname were African American, and traces back to slavery, it is more likely than not that the surname was adopted around 1870 just after the civil war. In the United States by a former slave. If it were from another line, it could have strong historical consistency, could have been "made up" upon immigration, or could have been changed for any number of reasons over the generations.





You really can't tell anything from a surname, except that even if only considering 8 generations, the surname you have is just one of 256 associated with your ancestry.
Reply:its irish
Reply:Mcneely


Origin: Irish





Coat of Arms: Red with an arm holding a battleaxe and a crown surrounded by six birds.
Reply:The meaning of the surname MCNEELY is - son of Conghal (high valor).
Reply:You may be Scottish. Don't count that one out.
Reply:Sounds more Scottish than Irish. Of course it could be Scots-Irish
Reply:Yeah Mc means Son of. Your probably Scottish. Sorry to burst yer' bubble lass or lad!