Origin of the Name McEnery
The
McEnery family history was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. The name McEnery has a number of variants including McEniry, McIniry, McInery, McEniery, McHenry, Henry, Kinnery, Kinniry and Kennery. These names are all derived from the Gaelic Mac Inneirghe sept that was located in County Limerick .
A sept or clan is a collective term describing a group of persons whose immediate ancestors bore a common surname and inhabited the same territory. Irish septs and clans that are related often belong to even larger groups, sometimes called tribes.
When Gaelic names were anglicized during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries they were often changed to Anglo equivalents that sounded most like their original Gaelic name. These families were of the of the Ui Cairbre Aedhbha, the chieftains of which were the O'Donovans. They were chiefs of Corcomohid and had a castle at Castletown MacEniry, today in ruins. The names Kinniry, Kennery and Kinnery are mostly found in County Clare in the West of Ireland .
The McEnery coat of arms came into existence centuries ago. The process of creating coats of arms (also often called family crests) began in the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this. The new art of Heraldry made it possible for families and even individual family members to have their very own coat of arms, including all McEnery descendants.