McKenna is a Gaelic Irish surname, the anglicised form of Mac Cionaoith — "son of Cionaodh," a personal name traditionally understood to mean born of fire. The family belongs to the native Gaelic stock of the north midlands and south Ulster, a region shaped for centuries by shifting alliances among the ruling septs of the old kingdom of Oriel.
Within that territory, the McKennas held sway as lords of Truagh, a district in the north of County Monaghan that formed part of their ancestral power base for many generations. Oriel itself covered a broad swath of the north midlands and south Ulster borderlands, a landscape of drumlin hills and small lakes that produced several of Ireland's most enduring Gaelic ruling families. As lords of their own territory rather than a subordinate branch of a larger dynasty, the McKennas maintained a distinct identity within this crowded political world.
Like the rest of Gaelic Ulster, the Monaghan McKennas were affected by the broader currents of plantation, confiscation, and famine that reshaped Irish landholding from the seventeenth century onward, and the name spread from its Monaghan base into the wider diaspora of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Today McKenna is found throughout Ireland and among Irish communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Britain, though north Monaghan remains the name's most direct historical home.
This collection — a Lords of Truagh tartan throw, garden flag, coasters, mug, license plate, t-shirt, and ornament — is built around that Monaghan lordship. Read more about the McKennas of Truagh and the kingdom of Oriel in our McKenna surname history.
