The most frequent family names with roots in County Clare:
County Clare occupies the western edge of the Shannon estuary — a county of extraordinary geological drama. The Burren, in the north, is a karst limestone plateau that flowers in spring with Mediterranean plants nowhere else found in Ireland. The Cliffs of Moher, on the Atlantic coast, drop 214 metres into the sea. The landscape shaped the people who farmed it: tough, musical, with a talent for beauty in hard conditions.
The MacNamara (Mac Conmara) clan ruled the eastern part of Clare — an Irish sept of great military power who were only finally broken by the Cromwellian wars of the 1650s. The O'Briens (from the great high king Brian Boru, killed at Clontarf in 1014) dominated western and central Clare. Their seat was at Bunratty Castle — now restored and one of Ireland's most visited landmarks.
Clare was a county of intense nationalist political activity. Daniel O'Connell won the Clare by-election of 1828, forcing the British government to pass Catholic Emancipation. In the twentieth century, Éamon de Valera represented Clare in parliament for almost five decades.
The Clare diaspora spread particularly to the United States, Australia, and Argentina. In Argentina, the Irish-Argentine community — strongly Clare-connected — has maintained its Irish identity across multiple generations. In the United States, Clare families settled prominently in the Midwest and in New England.
Love Ireland covers Clare frequently — the Burren's spring flowers, the Doolin music sessions, the Aran Islands ferry from Doolin Pier, the Bunratty food producers. The county's traditional music scene is among Ireland's strongest. If Clare is your ancestral county, our newsletter is a living window to it.
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