Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: Ireland
Surname/tag: Blood

>>>>>Click here to return to the Blood Name Study Main Page<<<<<

The Irish Bloods: An Overview

Author: Garry Michael Blood, 20 Feb 2023

The Irish Bloods are even more of a mystery than the English Bloods. While all branches of the Bloods in Ireland are assumed to have originated in England, this is by no means certain. If they did all originate in England, it is also uncertain if they originated from the same Blood family in England or perhaps from more than one migration of Bloods from different parts of the country, perhaps at very different times.

The Counties of Ireland

There are definitely hints in the Irish records that there were unrelated pockets of Bloods in at least three counties of Ireland from the early 17th century, namely in County Clare, in County Dublin, and in County Cork. See the database of Irish Bloods to 1750 for more on this. It's possible we could be looking at as many as three distinct origins for the various lines of Bloods of Ireland:

• The Anglo-Norman invasion of 1169 could have brought early English Bloods (Blods) to Ireland, where they would later become known as the "Old English." There is a hint of this in the records of Cork, the site of a large Old English community.
• An otherwise unrelated indigenous development of the surname from the clan name of the Ui Bloid (also rendered as Ui Blod and Ui Blood) in the Early Modern Period. The Ui Bloid were the senior Dalcassian clan and the regional power in eastern Clare.
• The Nine Years' War, part of the Tudor conquest of Ireland, appears to have been the mechanism by which English Bloods from Derbyshire arrived in Ireland and settled in County Clare; other lines of unrelated English Bloods could have also come to Ireland during the course of the Tudor conquest as well.

While we know the last one definitely resulted in a line of Irish Bloods, the Bloods of County Clare, we're not sure if either of the first two did. And even if they did, there's no way to tell at this point if those previous lines went extinct or if descendants bearing the name Blood survive to the present. More research will be needed to untangle the story of the Irish Bloods, and hopefully the Blood Name Study will be part of that effort.

• The Bloods of County Clare (1613)
• The Bloods of County Dublin (1639)
• The Bloods of County Cork (1646)