The Reid surname is of Scottish origin, derived from the Scottish Gaelic ruadh — meaning red or red-haired — a colour descriptor that became a hereditary surname for families whose founding ancestor was distinguished by notably red or auburn hair. The name was carried to Ulster during the plantation era of the early seventeenth century as part of the Scottish migration across the North Channel, and Reid families settled primarily in County Antrim, County Down, and County Derry within the Scots-Irish Protestant community of the province. The spelling Reid has been standard since the plantation era.
The Reid name in Irish artistic history belongs to one of the most individual and most admired painters of the twentieth century — a Drogheda-born expressionist whose landscapes of the Irish midlands gave that understated terrain a visual intensity it had rarely received before.
Where Did the Reid Family Come From?
The Ulster Reids established themselves across Antrim, Down, and Derry as members of the Scots-Irish Presbyterian settler community whose culture and commercial energy shaped the character of those counties. The name appears in Ulster church and land records from the seventeenth century onward, and Reid families participated in the linen trade, the commercial life of the Ulster market towns, and the civic institutions of the Protestant Ulster community across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A separate Reid tradition in County Louth — the Leinster coast of the province of Meath — produced the family's most celebrated artistic figure.
Who Was Nano Reid and Why Does She Matter?
Nano Reid was born in Drogheda, County Louth, in 1905, the daughter of a publican, and trained at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art before studying in Paris and London in the late 1920s and early 1930s. She returned to Drogheda and spent most of her working life in that town, painting the landscapes of County Louth and the surrounding midland counties with an expressionist freedom and a richness of colour that distinguished her work completely from the more cautious literal tradition of Irish landscape painting.
Her palette — rich ochres, deep greens, heavy blues, the sombre light of the Irish midlands — and her gestural, loose brushwork gave her paintings a physical immediacy that struck audiences as both distinctively Irish and internationally aware. She was elected a full member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1949, and in 1950 she and Norah McGuinness represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale — the most prestigious international exhibition of contemporary art — in one of the defining moments of Irish visual art's postwar engagement with the international scene. Her subsequent reputation has grown steadily, and she is now recognised as one of the most significant Irish painters of the mid-twentieth century, her Drogheda studio preserved as a memorial to her work and her legacy.
Where Are Reid Families Found Today?
In Ireland, the Reid name is found primarily across County Antrim, County Down, County Derry, and County Louth, reflecting both the Ulster plantation tradition and the Louth connection. The diaspora is large in North America and Australia, following the Scots-Irish emigrant routes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The name appears in North American records from the colonial period onward.
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