"Moher" is both a surname originating in Ireland and an Irish place name. The surname is an anglicisation of an Irish-Gaelic name. The original may have been O Mochair (feminine Ni Mochair, plural Ui Mochair ) or O Mothair. The late Edward MacLysaght, a leading authority on Irish surnames, prefers the former. Irish-Gaelic surnames are patronyms, that is based on the personal name of a male ancestor. The family name O Mochair means the "grandson or descendant of Mochar." Similarly, O'Mothair would be "the grandson or descendant of Mothar". The O prefix is the Modern Irish form of the ancient Ua which means "grandson" but can by extension mean descendant. Mochar is likely a west Waterford-east Cork dialectic variation of the word mothar (cf. mothas and mochas). In Modern Irish (c. A.D. 1600 on), mothar is pronounced MO-hur. The 'th' was pronounced much as the modern English 'th' in Old Irish (A.D. 650 - A.D. 900) but was later softened to an 'h' sound. The spelling of the word, however, retains the Old Irish form. Mochar is pronounced 'MO-chur' with the 'ch' pronounced like the 'ch' of 'loch'. The west Waterford-east Cork Mohers were likely using O'Mochair based on evidence in Sir William Petty's "Census" of 1659. In that survey, the name appears as O'Mohir in County Cork and Mogher in County Waterford. Since there was not yet a set spelling, the English-speaking enumerators simply wrote phonetically what they heard the Irish say. In Waterford, these enumerators seemed to have rendered the Modern Irish 'ch' as 'gh'. This was a standard practice as can be seen in the Irish word loch being transliterated as lough in English. In Cork, the enumerators recorded something closer to O'Mothair (MO-hur) showing that they were either less sensitive to the nuances of the name than were their Waterford counterparts or that the surname in the western part of its traditional range had softened by 1659. There is evidence, however, that the families in east Cork also used O'Mochair for as late as the early 1840's an enumerator in Upper Canada in British North America spelt the name as Maugher in an attempt to capture the 'ch' sound. A tombstone cutter in Upper Canada in 1860 wrote the name as Mawher which may also be an attempt to capture something of the sound of Mochair. This family immigrated to Upper Canada from the area of Kilworth in County Cork.

We have no idea who Mochar was but he was considered sufficiently distinguished to be honoured by his descendants in a particularly noble way. We continue to honour our unknown ancestor with our surname. The name Mochar is based on the Irish masculine noun of the first declension mothar (and its apparent Cork/Waterford variant mochar). The modern Irish word means a place overgrown with a brushwood, a thicket or even a large mass. In Middle Irish, it also meant an enclosure. Some Irish personal names arose as toponyms (names based on places or physical features of the land) or from physical features of the bearer of the name. Therefore, Mochar could have been a man from the 'enclosure' or 'place overgrown with brushwood' or perhaps its meaning is linked to the noun's cognate adjective which can mean 'massive'. The Ui Mochair, then, would be 'the descendants of the man from the place overgrown with brushwood' or 'the massive man'. Yet again, the personal name Mochar may have simply been our Mochar's name and he may have had no more to do with his name's origins than a bearer of the name John has to do with the original Hebrew word meaning 'a gift of God'.

The surname Moher is especially linked to the barony of Condons and Clangibbon in northeast County Cork. In the last three and a half centuries, the Mohers have been closely associated with the territories embraced by the civil parishes of Brigown, Kilworth and Macroney. MacLysaght claims that the actual territory containing Mohers in historic times stretched from Mitchelstown in the north of the barony of Condons and Clangibbon in County Cork to Lismore in the middle of the barony of Coshmore and Coshbride in County Waterford. This may be based on the totals given in Sir William Petty's "Census" of 1659. This survey also shows O'Mohir and Mogher as a "principal surname in every barony of Waterford and Cork". The name is also recorded as a principal surname in at least one barony of County Kilkenny. The Return of Householders produced in 1766 shows five Mohir households in the civil parishes of Kilworth and Macroney. Unfortunately the returns for the adjoining parish of Brigown to the north of Kilworth have not survived. This area contains Mitchelstown and some townlands in which Mohers were later known to be resident. By the time of Griffith's Valuation of 1852, there were only three dozen or so households in all of Ireland. They are found in Mitchelstown and the Cork townlands of Ballard, Ballinvoher, Billeragh West, Boolabwee, Castlecooke, Coolaneague, Coolmoohan, Curraghmore, Furrow, Garrane, Gurteenboul, Macroney Lower, Macroney Upper and Pollardstown all in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon. There are also three entries in the civil parish of Templetenny in County Tipperary and in the Limerick civil parishes of Kilbeheny, Knocklong, and Galbally. Most Mohers of Limerick and Tipperary lived close to the Cork border. Census returns for 1851 survive for most of the civil parish of Kilworth and parts of the civil parish of Macroney. These returns cover a large part of the area known to contain Mohers from Griffith's Valuation, yet they list a mere seven Moher households. This drastic decline in the number of Moher households in the two hundred year period from 1659 is likely the result of war, famine, disease and immigration.

The east Cork Mohers likely lived in this area for many centuries before the surname ever made its way into a surviving historical record. MacLysaght sees them as possibly a family in the O Faolain sept. This would mean that the Mohers have a kin relationship with the Ui Faolain whose surname has been anglicised as Phelan and Whelan. At some point in the past, generations before the first records of the Moher name, a family of the O Faolain sept took on the name O Mochair as a new family name to distinguish it from other O Faolain families. The reason for this was likely the growth in population of the O Faolain sept. When a sept became very large, additional designations were required especially for families which had distant kinship with the ruling family of the sept.

If the Ui Mochair of Condons and Clangibbon are of the O Faolain sept, they can claim the following ancestry. They are perhaps descendants of the Erainn, a Celtic tribal-grouping which invaded Ireland around 500 B.C. Ptolemy, the second century A.D. Greek geographer, calls them the Iverni in his work entitled Geographike Huphegesis.He places them in the south of Ireland. The Erainn gave the island the name Eueriio which became Eriu in Old Irish and Eire in modern Irish. The Erainn pushed deep into the island and displaced or conquered the older inhabitants and also some of the Celtic Pretani tribes. Professor T.F. O'Rahilly has identified several Erainn tribes including one called the Deisi (in Latin Desii or Decii). The Deisi may have lived for a time in the area of Meath but they later moved back into the south of Ireland. This group produced the historic Kingdom of the Decies in west Waterford. By the tenth century, this group contained a number of septs, or kinship subgroups, including the dominant Ui Faolain . The Ui Faolain claimed descent from Faolan of Faelan, a king of the Decies, who appears in the Book of Lismore . His name comes from the Irish faol, "wild animal or wolf". In the same way that the O Mochair surname was produced from Mochar , so the O Faolain name was adopted in a similar fashion anywhere from the 800's to 1100's. The kings of Decies were usually subject to the Eoghnacht kings of Munster who ruled from Cashel in County Tipperary. The O Mochair surname would have then been produced sometime after O Faolain. From the distribution of families in 1659, an early date can be supposed. MacLysaght also leaves the door open to the possibility that the Ui Mochair developed from an extended family of the O Faolain sept into an independent sept.

The Ui Mochair once stretched across the southern foothills of the western spur of the Knockmealdown Mountains along the north bank of the River Blackwater. By the early 1800's, some Mohers had migrated down into the Mitchelstown area on the north side of the Kilworth Mountains. Jeremiah Moher, for instance, was a baker in Mitchelstown in the 1850's. Mohers were farming in the area east of Mitchelstown about the same time. Some also spilled over into the border area of Tipperary and Limerick and even over the Galtee Mountains into the heart of Limerick. At the same time, however, the family seems to disappear from Counties Waterford and Kilkenny. In 1831, William Moher emigrated to Douro Township in the colony of Upper Canada in British North America with his large family. Emigration from this family's centre near Peterborough, Ontario has produced a far flung family with members across the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America. Scattered immigration also took place to Australia and the United States during and immediately following the Great Famine of the 1840's. Many of these emigrants were women and their descendants do not bear the Moher name.

MacLysaght also found some families using the surname Moher in County Clare. It is unknown whether these Mohers are related to the east Cork Mohers. They may have developed the name independently by a process similar to the one outlined above or they may represent a branch of the east Cork family which moved to County Clare, settled and prospered.

The numerous Moher place names in Ireland are derived from mothar (a place overgrown with brushwood, a place studded with bushes, a deserted place, a thicket, an enclosure) and its variant mochar or from one of the Moher families. There are eight townlands in County Cavan and another eight in County Clare called Moher or have Moher as part of their name. There are a further six both in County Leitrim and in County Tipperary, four in Limerick, three in both County Roscommon and County Fermanagh, two in both County Laois and County Galway and one in County Kerry. The most famous placename is Ailltreacha Mothair or Cliffs of Moher on the west coast of County Clare. These impressive cliffs rise 200 metres above the Atlantic Ocean. According to Ronan Coghlan's Book of Irish Names, in the south of Ireland, mothar is also used to designate the ruins of a caher, rath or similar fort. He identifies the old stone ruins atop the cliffs as 'Moher O'Ruan' or "O'Ruan's ruined fort'. The cliffs take their name from this mochar. In the Barony of Offa and Iffa in Tipperary there is a townland of Moher which lies within or close to the traditional homelands of the Mohers. It could derive its name from the Moher family. There is a township in Sudbury District in northern Ontario, Canada named Moher. This township was almost certainly named after a member of the Moher Family whose ancestors immigrated to Upper Canada in 1831. Additionally, there is in County Cork the townland of Ballinvoher located in the parish of Kilworth in the barony of Condons and Clangibbon. Ballinvoher is usually taken to mean baile-an-bhothair (translated "town of the road") but could also be baile-an-mhochair (translated "town(land) of the place overgrown with brush wood") or even baile-an-Mhochair (translated "town(land) of the Moher (family)"). In Munster, the mh combination is often pronounced in the local Irish as an English "v". Ballinvoher, situated in the southern foothills of the Kilworth Mountains (part of the Knockmealdown system) is covered with a large forest known today as Jeffrey's Woods. This forest could well be "a place overgrown with brushwood".

This site is dedicated to those searching for their Moher Family roots in Ireland and throughout the world. Please feel free to peruse the pages here to discover more about the history of this Irish family and if you are into genealogical or family history research, please contact the site manager to include your information.













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Last Updated September 23, 2002
Feast of St. Pio de Petrelcina





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