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(O)Kenny

The name Kenny is numerous in Ireland: it has seventy-sixth place in the list of commonest surnames. The majority of the people so called belong to families located in counties Galway and Roscommon. This is the homeland in early times, as well as to-day; of the O'Kenny sept which is Irish is O Cionnaoith: it is of the Ui Maine (Hy Many) and the same stock as the O'Maddens. Another sept of the same name was in early times in Co. Tyrone, but there is little trace of it left there now. When Kennys are found of long standing connexion with Co. Down, they are probably of the minor Ulster sept of O Coinne. In Co. Leitrim Kenny has to some extent absorbed the local name Keeney. This, spelt also Keeny, Keany, Keaney, is fairly numerous in Co. Leitrim and south-west Donegal. Woulfe give the Irish form of Keany as O Cianaigh or perhaps more correctly O Caoinnigh; he lists elsewhere Mac Eanna, anglice MacKeany, as a Wexford-Carlow surname and regards it as now hardly distinguishable from MacKenna. MacKeany, however, is found in Co. Fermanagh as synonymous with Keany. I find MacEanny in a Co. Roscommon Fiant of 1593 and I am inclined to think that Keany (Keeney etc.) is a Mac not a O name, the K, as in Keegan, Keogh and many others, being the C of Mac carried over to a proper name beginning with a vowel or silent F. I put this forward, however, as a probability, not as an authenticated fact. Kenny is usually merely a variant spelling of Kenny, but it is also the name of some English immigrant families. One of these, by a coincidence, settled in the homeland of O'Kenny of Ui Maine. The situation with regard to the main body of the Kennys, I.e. of Galway and Roscommon, is unusual because by a coincidence it is also the name of a prominent English family from Somerset who, through intermarriage with Co. Galway families, became extensive landowners in that county and in Roscommon. These descend from Nicholas Kenny, Escheator General for Ireland under Elizabeth 1, whose family was then established in Co. Wexford. Thus the leading families of the name in the Hy Many country, to which the O'Kenny sept belongs, are in fact of English origin. Rev. Arthur Kenny (1776-1855), the anti-Catholic controversialist, was probably one of these. On the other hand Rev. Peter James Kenny, S.J. (1779-1841), founder of Clongoweswood College, was one of the most distinguished Catholic preachers and theologians of the nineteenth century. James Kenney (1780-1849) the dramatist, was born in Dublin and his, perhaps better known, son Charles Lamb Kenney (1821-1881), was born in Paris. James F. Kenney (b. 1884), was the author of the standard work Sources for the Early History of Ireland.