Kealy name and a Dead End

I hear from Kealys around the world and the questions are all about the name itself or about someone’s particular family tree. I recently had a nice exchange with Philip Kealy, a Kealy from the old country. Philip signed the guestbook on Kealy.com to confirm the Gaelic spelling of Kealy as ‘O’Cadhla’ saying, “I was know as Pilib O’Cadhla in Irish class.” I followed up with Philip to clarify a couple of things for those Kealys like myself, that are not from Ireland, about the pronunciation of O’Cadhla and Kealy. In particular, I had heard that the Irish language pronunciation for Kealy is KAY-lee. Philip clarified that “The Irish pronunciation of O’Cadhla is O-Kai-la (there may be local dialect differences, but I haven’t heard them) and Kealy has always been Kee-lee” Alex Kealey added another contribution about the Kealy name in the guestbook saying he had heard O’Cadhla was “derived from a Viking name.” According to Irish Baby Name, it means ‘handsome.’

So that’s a little more about the Kealy name. If you have anything to add to the record, please sign the guestbook or email.

Philip also has his own genealogical dead end. He knows his father, Dermot Logue Kealy, was born in Donegal in 1900 and according to the 1911 census he had 2 sisters Bernadette and Oonagh (Sam.) And he also had “some relations at Hacketstown, just outside Dublin, but lost contact in my early years.” But that’s where it ends for him, he doesn’t know which parish to look for the birth records in. I feel his pain, we found the parish for my great-grandfather’s birth records but because of a fire over 120 years ago, there were no records.

Are you a grandchild of a Bernadette or Ooonagh (Sam) Kealy? Then Philip is your 2nd cousin.

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Thanks to ‘Pilib’ for contributing his homeland knowledge of the Kealy name.