King Irish Surname: History, Origins & Heritage of a Galway Family

August 24, 2026

King Irish family crest woven throw blanket in the Irish national tartan

On the first of May, 1650, in the town of Antrim, a son was born to James King, a Scottish immigrant from Aberdeen, and his wife. They had crossed to Ulster only shortly before. The boy, William King, would grow up to become Archbishop of Dublin, one of the most powerful churchmen in Ireland, a friend and correspondent of Jonathan Swift, and the author of a defense of the 1688 revolution still read by historians of the period. His father's surname was King in the plainest English sense: a family name carried across the North Channel from Scotland, no translation involved, no Gaelic ancestor hiding behind it.

Two hundred miles southwest, in the same century, families in the barony of Moycullen, County Galway, were also becoming Kings — but by an entirely different and much stranger road. They had been Mac Conraoi. A clerk, a schoolmaster, or a census-taker mistook the middle syllable for rí, the Irish word for king, and wrote down the English translation instead. The family had never claimed royal blood. They got a royal surname anyway, by accident.

Quick answer: King in Ireland has two separate and unconnected origins that happen to share one spelling. Some Irish Kings descend from English or Scottish settlers who genuinely carried the surname King, a status or occupational name for someone who behaved like or served a king. Many more Irish Kings, particularly in County Galway and County Roscommon, descend from Gaelic families — chiefly Mac Conraoi — whose name was mistranslated as King because a scribe misheard part of it as the Irish word for "king." The two lines are not related, and only local records and family tradition can usually tell you which one a given King family belongs to.

Is King an English name or an Irish one?

Both, and that is the whole difficulty with it. As an English surname, King is old and straightforward: it belongs to the broad class of names taken from rank or occupation, given to a man who played the part of a king in a pageant, who had a lordly manner, or who worked in a king's household. Archbishop William King's family carried exactly this kind of surname across from Scotland in the seventeenth century, and there was nothing Irish about it until the family settled in Ulster.

Set that alongside the Gaelic story and the picture gets more complicated. In parts of the west of Ireland, "King" is not a surname that arrived from England or Scotland at all. It is what happened to a native Irish surname when it was written down in English by someone unfamiliar with its real meaning. That is a different kind of name entirely — not a settlement, but a translation error that became permanent.

Which Gaelic surnames became King, and why?

The most important source on this is Patrick Woulfe's Sloinnte Gaedheal is Gall ("Irish Names and Surnames"), still the standard reference on how Gaelic names were anglicized. Woulfe's entry on Mac Conraoi is direct about what happened: the name is properly "son of Cúraoi," an old personal name meaning something like "hound of the plain" or "hound of battle" — nothing to do with kingship at all. But because the second syllable, raoi, sounded to English ears something like rí, the word for king, the surname came to be read as if it meant "son of the king," Mac an Ríogh. Once that misreading took hold, King became the standard English form, alongside the more accurate Conroy and Conry.

The Mac Conraoi were, according to Woulfe, "anciently lords of Dealbhna Thíre-dá-locha," a territory in the barony of Moycullen between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay, and the family remained numerous there for centuries. A local heritage project covering Moycullen parish confirms the pattern in the historical record itself: Blake's Census lists both Conroy and King households across the same townlands in earlier centuries, and by the time of the 1911 Census, King families were recorded in the townland of Knockalough while Conroy families held on in Gortnamona and Coolaghy — two English spellings for descendants of the same Gaelic ancestor, sorted out by which household's name got mistranslated.

Mac Conraoi was not the only Gaelic name folded into King this way. Ó Conraoi and Ó Maolconaire in County Roscommon, Mac Fhearadhaigh in County Monaghan, and Ó Conaire in Munster were also converted to King in various records once a clerk heard "rí" in the name. In parts of Antrim, Tyrone, and Down, Mac Fhinn was sometimes rendered King on similarly loose grounds. None of these families are related to each other, and none are related to the Scottish-descended Kings of east Ulster. They only look like one family because record-keeping flattened several surnames into a single English spelling.

What makes County Galway the center of the Irish King story?

Galway is where the mistranslation happened most consistently and where it is best documented, which is why family history researchers usually point Galway Kings toward Mac Conraoi before they look anywhere else. A family marking that specific lineage might reach for something the Mac Conraoi themselves would recognize, like the King Irish Woven Blanket, alongside smaller everyday pieces such as the King Surname Irish Heritage Mug or the King Irish Family Crest Garden Flag, each carrying the King name rather than making any claim about which of its two separate roots a given family descends from.

For a single page showing everything we make for this surname, the King Irish Family Gifts & Heritage collects every current King design in one place and updates as new ones are added.

That caution matters because Galway is not the only county where the name shows up, and not every Galway King is a Mac Conraoi either. English and Scottish settler families named King also took up land across Connacht during the seventeenth-century plantations and confiscations, and their descendants are indistinguishable on paper from the mistranslated Gaelic Kings unless a family has its own oral history or parish records to sort it out. The surname itself gives no reliable clue. Only the county and the townland can begin to separate one line from the other, and even then the answer is sometimes a guess.

Why is King one of the least reliable surnames for tracing Irish ancestry?

Most Irish surnames point in one direction. O'Brien descends from the dynasty of Brian Boru. Kelly descends overwhelmingly from Ó Ceallaigh. King does not work that way. It is really several unrelated family histories wearing the same English word, and the word itself was chosen for the wrong reason in at least one of those histories. A genealogist tracing a King ancestor in Connacht has to work backward through parish records, Griffith's Valuation, and townland-level census returns before even attempting to say which root the family belongs to.

This is worth stating plainly rather than glossing over, because it is the single most distinctive fact about the King surname in Ireland. Names like Fitzgerald or Butler carry a clear Norman story. Names like Sullivan or Murphy carry a clear Gaelic story. King carries two stories that never touch each other, joined only by a coincidence of translation and a shared word in two languages that happen to mean different things.

Where do King families live today, in Ireland and abroad?

King remains a common surname in the Republic of Ireland, with a real concentration in Galway and neighboring parts of Connacht that traces to the Mac Conraoi pattern, alongside a separate, more scattered presence in Ulster tied to Scottish and English settlement. Emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries carried both lines to Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia, which is part of why King ranks among the more familiar Irish surnames in the diaspora today, even though few who carry it abroad know whether their family traces to Moycullen or to Aberdeen.

For families who have done the research and can point to a specific county or parish, that detail is worth holding onto. It is the only thing that actually distinguishes one King family's history from another's.

Frequently Asked Questions About the King Name

Is King originally an Irish surname or an English one?

It is genuinely both, depending on the family. Some Irish Kings descend from English or Scottish settlers who already carried the surname King before they arrived in Ireland. Others descend from Gaelic families, chiefly Mac Conraoi in County Galway, whose name was mistranslated into King by English-language record-keepers. The two origins are unrelated.

What Irish surname does King usually translate from?

Most often Mac Conraoi, a County Galway family whose name actually means "son of Cúraoi" and has nothing to do with kingship. It was mistranslated because part of the name sounded like rí, the Irish word for king. Ó Conraoi, Ó Maolconaire, Mac Fhearadhaigh, and Mac Fhinn were also anglicized as King in various records for similar reasons.

Does the King family crest mean my ancestors were royalty?

No. Whether a King family descends from the English occupational surname or from the mistranslated Mac Conraoi, neither origin has anything to do with actual royal descent. A family crest associated with the King name reflects heraldic tradition tied to the surname, not a claim of royal ancestry.

How can I find out which King line my family belongs to?

Start with the county and townland your family came from. A concentration in County Galway, particularly the Moycullen area, points toward the Mac Conraoi line. A history in Ulster, especially Antrim or Down, more often points toward Scottish or English settlement. Parish registers, Griffith's Valuation, and the 1901 and 1911 Census returns are the usual next steps, and sometimes the honest answer is that the records do not settle it.

Are Kingston and Kingdon related to King?

Not as Irish surnames. Kingston and Kingdon are separate names with their own histories in Ireland and should not be assumed to share an origin with King just because they begin with the same syllable.