Origin of the Name Toomey
The
Toomey 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 Toomey
include O'Twomey, Twomey and Tomey. This name is derived from the O'Tuama Gaelic sept that was most associated with Counties Cork and Kerry.
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.
In County Limerick the usual spelling is Toomey. In the census of 1659 the name O'Twomy appears as the second most numerous surname in the barony of Barretts, County Cork, Murphy being the most common there. A notable bearer of the name was Sean O'Tuama, 1706-1775, who was born and lived all his life in Croom, County Limerick. There he and his wife kept a public house which was the meeting place of the Maigue Gaelic poets, he being the most distinguished of them.
The Toomey 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 Toomey descendants.