Seán Ó Murchadha replies to enquiries from readers regarding their family names
This week we look at the Corr surname as requested by the related families of McNabb, Rocks and Corr in County Tyrone.
The surname Corr is viewed as a County Tyrone sept which is also found in County Fermanagh and other neighbouring counties. While Patrick Woulfe, the surname expert from the early twentieth century, was reluctant to make a definite statement as to the etymology of the surname, the recently published Oxford Dictionary of the Family Names of Ireland states that the name started out as a personal name, based on the Irish
Language adjective corr meaning ‘pointed’, most likely being a metaphor for a spear.
When adapted into a surname the name became Ó Corra. When anglicised, the final vowel is usually dropped to give the surname Corr. Occasionally the vowel is retained and has led to the variant Corry. Corry was also the name of two separate families, one in County Clare, the other in Westmeath. In Ulster, Corry was sometimes changed to Curry, the name of a Scottish family that were connected to the MacDonalds and who came here as part of the Ulster Plantation. Ó Corra has sometimes been translated to Weir in a mistranslation as the Irish word for a weir is ‘cora’. Mac Corra has sometimes been noted in Ulster but is believed to be a separate surname that has evolved from MacGothraidh or MacGorry.
Early bearers of the name include Ua Corra who is listed in the Annals of Ulster as being from Tobran, Co. Tyrone in 1470; Cormock O’Corr and Rowrie O’Corre are both listed as yeomen in Tyrone in 1602; while David
Corie is listed in 1666 in the Hearth Money Rolls in Killigormley, Ardstraw, Tyrone. In the upheaval surrounding the foundation of the northern state, both Francis Corr and Samuel Corr were killed in 1921 and 1922 respectively. Peter Corr of Dundalk was part of the Irish soccer team that beat England in Goodison Park in Liverpool in 1949- the first foreign team to beat England on English soil. Dundalk is also the native home of the pop-band the Corrs (below) who have sold millions of albums worldwide.
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