One name, many forms: what Ó Baoighill means, how Irish grammar shapes it, and how English record-keepers wrote it down.
Irish grammatical forms
Ó Baoighill, Ní Bhaoighill, Uí Bhaoighill
One surname, changed by Irish grammar to suit a man, a woman or the family.
Anglicised forms
O’Boyle, Boyle
The name as English-speaking clerks and officials wrote it, with or without the O’.
Recorded spellings
Ua Baighill, Ó Buidhill, Myntro-iboill, Croeyboyle …
How particular writers actually spelt it in particular documents and periods.
In the traditional system a man is Ó Baoighill. A daughter is Ní Bhaoighill, short for iníon Uí Bhaoighill, “daughter of Ó Baoighill”. A married woman may be called Bean Uí Bhaoighill, “wife of Ó Baoighill”, often shortened to Uí Bhaoighill.
These are conventions, not rules everyone follows. Many married women keep their own surname, and many families use one form for everyone.
Select a form to see what it is, where it is recorded and how it relates to the others.
Personal name
Middle Irish
Classical forms
Modern spelling
English forms
Irish surname
The classical form given by the Annals of the Four Masters and by Woulfe. This is the form for a man.
← Ua Baighill
Lines show how the forms relate. Dates are when a source records a form, not when it began.
Ó means “grandson” or “descendant”, so Ó Baoighill is “descendant of Baoigheall”: a family named after an ancestor called Baoigheall.18
The personal name Baoigheall is itself uncertain. Woulfe suggests it may stand for baoithgheall, which he glosses as “vain pledge”. That is a proposal, not a settled conclusion.18Uncertain or disputed
In Irish the surname changes with the person. Ó Baoighill is the form for a man. A woman is Ní Bhaoighill, and a married woman Uí Bhaoighill. Uí Bhaoighill is also used for the whole family: muintir Uí Bhaoighill, “the O’Boyles”.23†Scholarly interpretation
Ní comes from iníon Uí Bhaoighill, “daughter of Ó Baoighill”, and Uí from Bean Uí Bhaoighill, “wife of Ó Baoighill”. The added h (B → Bh) marks the possessive form.23†Scholarly interpretation
The change can be watched in placenames. O’Donovan wrote Croich Uí Bhaoighill in 1835, and Donegal writers still printed Bhaoighill in the 1950s, but the official form today is Croich Uí Bhaoill.1
The official spelling standard of the 1940s drops gh in the middle of words (as in saol and baol), which would turn Baoighill into Baoill. No source found says the reform respelled this surname specifically, so this is an interpretation.40Scholarly interpretation
When Irish surnames were put into English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ó Baoighill became O’Boyle, and the O’ was often dropped, leaving Boyle.23†Scholarly interpretation
Boyle was far more common than O’Boyle in the census: in 1911, 10,569 people were recorded as Boyle and 1,036 as O’Boyle.57
English spelling was not fixed, and clerks wrote what they heard. Near Dungloe, for example, the same placename was written Myntro-iboill in 1641, Croweyboyle on a map of 1789 and Croeyboyle in 1835.1
No authoritative published guide to pronouncing the surname has been found, so no sound-spelling is given here rather than risk a wrong one.43
Donegal Gaeltacht placenames were recorded for logainm.ie by a native speaker, mostly between 2008 and 2014. Where a name such as Croich Uí Bhaoill or Mullán Tí Uí Bhaoill has a recording, it is the best guide to the local sound.43,1,9
The voices of two Donegal men of the name can still be heard in the Doegen recordings (1928–31): Domhnall Ó Baoighill of An Chlasaidh and Pádraig Ó Baoighill of Leitir Catha.6,7
No recording by a native speaker with clear reuse terms has been found yet, so there is no audio here.
Sharing a surname does not by itself show a shared family line.