Origins & History of the Kelly Clan
Kelly (from Ó Ceallaigh) is the second most numerous surname in Ireland. Its root word ceallach has been translated as “bright-headed”, “strife”, or “church-goer”.
The most celebrated sept of the Kellys was the princes of Uí Maine (Hy-Many), who held dominion over vast lands in east County Galway and southern County Roscommon. Renowned for boundless Celtic hospitality, their fourteenth-century chieftain William Boy O’Kelly famously hosted a month-long Christmas banquet for all the poets, bards, and musicians of Ireland in 1351, giving rise to the Irish proverb “as welcome as a Kelly.”
In the nineteenth-century diaspora, Kellys crossed the Atlantic to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, excelling across politics, labor, and cinema.