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Archiver > RHEA > 2001-05 > 0990224581


From: "Patricia Hall" <>
Subject: [RHEA] Rae (also Wray) and other spellings
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 17:23:01 -0500


I thought this might interest you. It was posted on this list back in 1998,
and although you could look it up in the Rhea-L archives at Rootsweb, I
thought it was important now, as we look into the Rhea's of Bath Co. Va.
>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 inireland 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 Wray's 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 thirteeth
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 anglicized 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.

This was submitted to the list by Andrew Rae


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