Origin of the Name MacTigue
The
MacTigue family history 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 McTigue
include Tigue, Tighe, O'Tighe, McTague, Teage and McTeague. This name in Irish is MacTaidhg and the latter variants are the anglicized forms of this. This sept came from Mayo.
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.
The name was first formed from a Christian forename and occurs chiefly in the Western counties. They belonged to four distinct septs, one of these being in Ulster where they were erenaghs of Termonkenny in County Down. Another sept was located in County Wicklow but was later taken over by the O'Tooles. The third sept was located in Connacht, their Chief in 1228 was Chief of the household of the King of Connacht. The last sept was of Thomond and from this came Tadhg O'Taidhg, Bishop of Killaloe, 1083.
The MacTigue 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 MacTigue descendants.