of Wexford, once the country of a great and powerful sept of the Mac Murroghs, the greater number of the inhabitants, who are perhaps the finest race of men in Ireland, are now called Murphy. He has therefore come to the conclusion, and he hopes not too hastily, that the Murphys of this territory are all Mac Murroghs. At the same time, however, he is well aware that the name generally anglicised Murphy is not Mac Murrogh, but O’Murchoo, which was that of a branch or offshoot of the regal family of Leinster, who became chiefs of the country of Hy-Felimy, and whose chief seat was at Tullow, in the now county of Carlow. The writer is well aware that the Murphys of the county of Carlow and Kilkenny are of this latter family, but he cannot get rid of the conviction that the Murphys of the Murrowes, in the east of the county of Wexford, are Mac Murroghs. On the subject of the difference between these two families, we find the learned Roderic O’Flaherty thus criticising Peter Walsh towards the close of the seventeenth century:-- “An O’ or a Mac is prefixed in Irish surnames to the proper names of some of their ancestors, intimating that they were the sons, grandsons, or posterity of the person whose name they adopted; but it was not proper to use one name promiscuously in the place of another, as he writes O’Murphy, king of Leinster, instead of Mac Murphy, or rather Mac Murchadh; but the family of O’Murchadha, which in English is Murphy, is very different from and inferior to this family.”--Ogygia, Part III, cap. xxvii. There are also some few instances to be met with, in which the O’ has been changed to Mac, and _vice versa_, as in the remarkable instance of O’Melaghlin, chief of the Southern Hy-Niall race, to Mac Loughlin; also in those instances in which O’Duvyerma has been changed to Mac Dermot, O’Donoghy to Mac Donogh, O’Knavin to Mac Nevin, O’Heraghty to Mac Geraghty, and a few others. These latter changes are not calculated to disguise the _Irish origin_ of the families who have made them, but they are still to be regretted, as they tend to disguise the origin, race, and locality of the respective families, and we should therefore like to see the original names restored. Similar changes have been made in the family names among the Welsh, as Ap-John into Jones, Ap-Richard into Prichard and Richards, Ap-Owen into Owens, Ap-Robert into Probert and Roberts, Ap-Gwillim into Williams, &c. &c.