Origin of the Name Muir
The origin of the name
Muir was found in the allfamilycrests.com archives. The name Muir has a number of variants including Mure and Muire. This name is often of Scottish origin where it is found in many ancient records. An example of such refers to a Thomas de la More was recorded as the executor of the will of Dervorguilla de Balliol, in the year 1291. These families held land in Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Beltone in Berwickshire. Elizabeth Mure, daughter of Sir Adam Mure of Rowallan, married Robert II, in the year 1347, and later on through the centuries the family of Muir of Rowallan became extinct in the male line in 1700.
In Ireland this name and its variants were introduced into Ulster Province by settlers who arrived from England and Scotland , especially during the seventeenth century. It was the 'Plantations of Ireland ' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that marked the end of Gaelic supremacy in Ireland . While the influx of settlers in the wake of the earlier Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century resulted in a full integration into Irish society of the new arrivals, the same never occurred with the Ulster Planters who maintained their own distinct identity.
The Muir 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 Muir descendants.