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Archiver > RHEA > 1998-08 > 0903346254


From: Andrew Rae <>
Subject: [RHEA-L] Origins of Name
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 1998 09:30:54 +0000


>From Bell, R (1988) The Book of Ulster Surnames,
The Blackstaff Press Ltd., Belfast

Rae (also Wray)

There are several origins for these names, each of which in Ireland
is almost exclusive to Ulster. Three-quarters of all the Ulster Reas
are in Co. Antrim and most of the rest in Co. Down. Most of the Wrays
are equally distributed between counties Derry and Donegal.

The most obvious and probably the most usual origin for Rea is as a
shortening of the Scottish MacCrae, Gaelic Mac-raith. As Rae, Rea and
Ree the name is also an old surname in Dumfriesshire, where from the
thirteenth to the fifteenth century the name was always spelt Ra or
Raa. The name there is thought to be of local origin after some
unknown place of the name. A large family of Raes in Dornock in
Annandale, Dumfriesshire, was noted as very troublesome in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Rae's Close in Edinburgh was named
after a prominent seventeenth-century family of that city.

In England the name Rea has two origins: from Middle English atte
ree, meaning 'by the stream'; or from Middle English atte reye,
meaning 'at the island'. Wray can derive from le Wrey, Middle English
wrye, meaning 'twisted, crooked' or in the north of England from Old
Norse vra, meaning 'nook, corner, isolated or remote place'. The name
here was first rendered de Wra or in ye Wro and became both Wray and
Wroe, later Wrowe and Rowe.

In Ulster the name Reagh, Gaelic Riabhach, meaning 'grey' or
'brindled', was made Rea, as was the Co. Down name of the same
derivation, O Riabhaigh, more usually anglicised as Reavey. The Co.
Antrim name O'Rawe was anglicised Rea and Raw. Its Gaelic origin is
unknown. The Wrays of Derry and Donegal descend from a Yorkshire
family of the name which settled there in Elizabethan times before
the Plantation. However, Wray has been made Raw, Ray and Rea and
each of these names has been used interchangeably, as well as for the
other names mentioned above.

Rheatown and Rhea County in Tennessee, USA, were named after the Rhea
family which stemmed originally from Donegal.

John Rea, c1822-81 was a lawyer and prominent Young Irelander who
acted for the Catholics in the Dolly's Brae inquiry of 1859 and
defended Michael Davitt.

Andrew Rae

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