Origin of the Name Mackey
The origin of the name
Mackey was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives.
Over the centuries Surnames developed a wide number of variants. Different spellings of the same name can be traced back to an original root. Additionally when a bearer of a name emigrated it was not uncommon that their original name would be incorrectly transcribed in the record books at their new location. Surnames were also often altered over the years based on how they sounded phonetically and depending on the prevailing political conditions it may have been advantageous to change a name from one language to another.
Variants of the name Mackey
include Mackie, McKey and McKee. This name in Gaelic is O'Macdha and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from Ormond.
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.
Their territory lay around the parish of Ballymackey, near Nenagh. By the sixteenth century they had spread to Limerick , Waterford, Kilkenny and Offaly and by the year 1666 were found in substantial numbers in County Tipperary. Captain MacKey was one of the most prominent and active of the Fenian organization. A James Townsend MacKey, 1777-1862, was author of a standard work on Irish plants, he being the creator of the Trinity College, Dublin , botanical gardens.
The Mackey 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 Mackey descendants.