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MacNAMEE
MacNamee is Mac Con Midhe in Irish, (son of the hound of Meath). The principal MacNamee sept is of Ulster, where they were hereditary poets and ollavs to the O'Neills. The best known of them are Giolla Briglide Mac Con Midhe (c. 1260) and Brian Mac Angus MacNamee, chief poet to Turlough Luineach O'Neill who died in 1595: he was one of the last of the "classic poets". There was a branch of this Ulster sept who were erenaghs of Comber on the river Foyle in the deanery of Derry, and they are recorded as such as late as 1606 when Bishop Montgomery's survey of the diocese was made. Just about that time the Ulster Plantation records show MacNamees among the natives of Co. Tyrone and later in the century the name appeared in Charles O'Nefll's regiment in James 11's Irish army. Tyrone and Derry is where the name is mainly found today. That was not the case in the seventeenth century. Petty's "census" found them most numerous in Co. Leitrim and in the previous century the Fiants show that they were in Leitrim and other parts of Connacht bordering on Ulster, as well as in Derry and Donegal. The Annals of Loch Cé tell us that in the thirteenth century the chief of Muintir Laoideacháin on the border of Connacht and north-west Leinster was Mac Con Meadha. In Carew's list (1602) of Clare gentry and their castles Teige oge MacConmea of Neadenurry is found, this could be an error for MacConway It is stated that the sept of MacNamee was seated beside the Shannon in the barony of Kilkenny west (Westmeath); and, coming to quite modern times, in 1875 the Conmees of Kingsland were among the leading gentry of Co. Roscommon. As the name MacNamee is now rare in Connacht it may be assumed that survivors of the sept in that province have become Conmee, which has been widely absorbed in the wellknown surname Conway.