All of the many thousands of Irishmen and women who follow the ancient national game of hurling to the ends of the earth country will be familiar with the name Burke and its many variations.
In the 2024 All-Ireland hurling championship, one-fifth of the Galway hurling team — one of the top sides in Ireland — is made up of Burkes: Daithi, David and Fintan all pulling on the famous maroon jersey and taking to the field.
One interesting thing about this little factoid — before we get onto the rest of this article on the history of the name Burke, one of the most famous family names in all of Ireland — is that Daithi Burke and David Burke are not related (at least in the generally accepted sense of family relations!) but they actually share the same name, Daithi being the Gaelic/Irish language version of David.
Across the other side of the country, in Waterford in the south-east, one of the greatest hurlers of his generation is Tadhg De Búrca, who sports the full Gaelic language version of the Burke name.
From Galway’s Burkes, to De Búrca of Waterford, to Chris De Burgh, one of Ireland’s best known singer-songwriters, the Burke name and its many variations can be found throughout Ireland — and as we are about to see, much further afield too.
But what is the history of the Burke name? What does it mean? And who are the Burkes who have gained fame, influence or notoriety around the world?
Let’s dig in!
The History of the Burke Name in Ireland
For almost a thousand years the Burke surname has been deeply woven into Irish history — but the reality is that it only became Irish after the arrival of the Norman invaders from continental Europe in the 12th century.
The Burke surname is a derivation of the original Norman name “de Burgh”, translating to “from the fortress” or "of the borough”. As we shall see, this connection with fortification and strongholds was well deserved in the name of the Burkes.
William de Burgh was a Norman knight who arrived in Ireland in or around the 1180s, and from there established both his own immediate presence in Ireland, and laid the foundations for a millennium of the Burke family name throughout the old sod.
William came from powerful stock across the water: his brothers included Hubert de Burgh, who became the first Earl of Kent, and Geoffrey de Burgh, who was the Bishop of Ely in the province of Canterbury.
Indeed, William’s forays overseas later gave him the nickname, “The Conqueror”, although that appears to have been mainly in tribute to the original — the original and best? original and worst??? — and unrelated William The Conqueror, who was the first Norman king of England and reigned for more than 20 years after the Battle of Hastings.
But back to the de Burghs, who would later become the Burkes.
The Norman family settled primarily in the western and southern provinces of Connacht (where Galway sits, with its array of hurling Burkes) and Munster (the province of Waterford and Tadgh De Búrca).
Click to read more about 13 of County Galway’s Most Breathtaking Wonders
It was far from an uneventful eight hundred years, however.
Many an Irish family have had the odd falling out over land or other inheritances. But few families have gone as far as the Burkes of the 1300s!
Crisis in the Clan: The Burke Civil War
It’s now 1330 and a century and a half or so after the arrival of William de Burgh in Ireland, and the de Burghs are settling in very nicely, thank you very much.
So nicely, in fact, that one line of Burkes are now the Earls of Ulster, another strand of the family has married into the family that rule the Thomond territory of modern day Munster, and another Burke has filled the role of Justiciar of Ireland (effectively, the Dublin Castle-based governor of the Irish territory under British rule).
In short, it seems, wherever there was power to be had, there was often a Burke there to stake a claim to it.
And this thirst for authority caused a little friction, let’s say.
Sir Walter Liath de Burgh — one of the family that had become connected with Thomond in the south — took it upon himself to stake a claim to Connacht, where he had been appointed as guardian to oversee lands owned by his relative, the previous Earl of Ulster.
Well, the current Earl of Ulster, William Donn de Burgh, didn’t like this move one bit and launched a foray against his cousin Walter, capturing and imprisoning him in Northburgh Castle in Donegal.
This was a good few centuries before the Geneva Convention, so captured prisoners did not receive the best of care and attention — even if they were your cousin, or more to the point, especially if they were your cousin.
Hence, Walter starved to death in the castle, and when news of this emerged, all hell broke loose. William Donn was murdered by his own knights, and his daughter Elizabeth became Countess and inherited the territories.
Maintaining order in a situation like this would be hard for even battle-hardened medieval men, but given that Elizabeth was at this time a three-month-old baby girl, who was quickly brought to England by her mother for protection, it is perhaps understandable that a bitter power struggle over control of the Countess’s territories would play out.
Over the next five years, from 1333 to 1338, the Burke Civil War was fought, and when the dust settled, the Ulster lands were reclaimed by local Irish clans and families who had spotted their opportunity, and the remaining Burke territories in Connacht and Munster were split three ways: the Clan of William Bourke of County Limerick; the Mac William Íochtar, or “Lower Mac Williams” of County Mayo (which would become known as the Mayo Bourkes); and the Mac William Uachtar or Upper Mac Williams” of County Galway, which would later emerge as arguably the most powerful of the three under the title of “Clanricarde”.
Clanricarde — literally translated as “clan or family of Richard”, under the patriarch Richard Mór de Burgh, or “Big Richard Burke” — became firmly established in the decades after the Burke Civil War, strengthening their hold on a significant portion of the land in east Connacht, north of Clare, south of Mayo and west of the river Shannon.
The Clanricarde territory was not exactly a land of peace and goodwill: conflicts and wars with the local tribes and clans who were forced out of their territories were frequent, but the Burkes were able to maintain control over their dominion and the many local clans eventually accepted Clanricarde's claims, leading to integration of Burkes and local families through marriage and other mutually beneficial agreements.
To understand the reach and prominence of the Galway Burkes and the Burkes (or Bourkes) of Mayo, one only has to consider a map of Ireland in the 1400s, which shows the land which was controlled by these strands of this one old invading — and recently warring — family.
Later, in the mid 1500s during the reign of Henry VIII, the Clanricarde was elevated to the status of Earl of Clanricarde. By this time the Burke family was almost 400 years in Ireland and firmly “Gaelicized”, and more than two centuries had passed since the bloody family squabble, so to all intents and purposes, the Burkes were as Irish as anyone else. The decision to give the status of Earl to the Clanricarde — a momentous time in the history of the Burkes, establishing them even deeper into Anglo-Irish aristocracy — was a strategic one by King Henry VIII, who wanted to placate the most influential Irish families by creating new titles and status symbols to satisfy their hunger for power.
The Burke Name in America
Like many Irish families — as we have seen before with the Kellys and the Ryans — the Burkes experienced significant emigration, especially during the Great Famine of the 19th century, and many years of mass migration saw many Burkes settling in North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
There is evidence, indeed, of some Burkes being among early settlers in the United States, with a H. Burke registered as having arrived in Virginia and Robert Burke marked as present in Maryland, both in the 1640s.
Aedanus Burke, born near Athenry in the 1740s, emigrated to the United States — via a stint in university in Belgium and a spell in the West Indies — eventually settling in South Carolina, where he fought in the American Revolutionary War. Clearly he acquitted himself well there, for when the war ended he served as both politician and judge.
In the 1890s, Andrew H. Burke was governor of North Dakota, while in the 20th century Charles Burke was a member of the US House of Representatives and Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs for eight years in the 1920s — history does not shine on him that kindly, however, as he opposed citizenship for Native Americans and advocated for business interests at the expense of the natives. Another successful politician was Edward Burke, a barrister who became a prominent Democrat and served six years as a US Senator until 1941.
A second American Edward Burke later laid a claim on a great little piece of history for the family name. Known to sports followers as Ed, he was an esteemed hammer thrower, and carried the American flag during the opening ceremony of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.
Eight centuries after arriving in Ireland to lay claim to massive tracts of Irish land, and more than 600 years after the old family engaged in a bitter civil war in Ireland’s west, one of the Burkes was the man chosen to carry the American flag in an Olympic Games on American soil.
Nothing, it seems, is beyond a Burke when they set their mind to it.
The Burke Coat of Arms
image source: RedBubble
The Burke family crest is a vibrant and symbolic representation of the family's history and values.
Dominating the design is a large red cross, said to be an emblem of sacrifice and faith, before a background of gold, a color traditionally associated with wisdom and generosity.
In the top left corner of the cross is a black lion, representing bravery, nobility and power.
Edmund Burke the Influential Philosopher
With the greatest of respect to warring earls and Olympic hammer-throwers, the most renowned holder of the Burke name is probably Edmund Burke, an Irish statesman and philosopher of the 18th century.
More than 200 years after his death, Burke is still lauded as one of the founding fathers of conservative thought and ideas.
Born and educated in Dublin, he rose to prominence in England, where he became a persuasive intellectual and speaker and was elected to the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for Wendover in 1765. His political career was notable for ideas and debate more than position and power, and his seminal work was “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, published in 1790, just a year after the French Revolution.
In that pamphlet, Burke argued against such radical changes, putting forward his belief that the revolution's emphasis on abstract principles like liberty, equality, and fraternity overlooked the nuance and complexity of human society and the importance of established traditions and institutions. He believed instead that social institutions and customs had evolved over time to meet human needs, and that nothing should be discarded lightly. He wasn’t completely anti-reform, instead arguing that change should be gradual and respect the accumulated wisdom of past generations.
An inspiration of conservative ideas such as “Chesterton’s Fence” — a parable first told by the British intellectual GK Chesterton, about a seemingly useless fence which stands in the road, but which should only be removed when one knows for sure why it was erected in the first place — Burke warned against an overly secular and rational society and considered religion and its mysteries to be an essential component of social order and moral compass.
In a position that might look quaint to modern campaigners for equality and diversity, Burke also put forward the view that social hierarchies — and the inequality such hierarchies lead to — were natural and inevitable consequences of a functioning society.
Formed and written in the 18th century, Burke’s philosophy forged a strong legacy centuries later, with political leaders such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel and intellectuals and philosophers including Roger Scruton and Jordan Peterson all subscribing to variations of Burke’s ethos of cautious change and conservatism amidst the complexity of the evolved world and society.
Conclusion
From the beginnings of Norman Ireland almost a millennium ago, through one of history’s bloodiest family feuds, to one of the most influential of all political philosophers, US senators, Olympic athletes and hurling stars, the Burkes have come a long, long way.
And who knows?
Maybe they’re just getting started!
