The Clan and the Name of Cairney or Cairnie

Different but related origins can be traced for the name Cairney or Cairnie which from the
15th century onwards was established in several parts of Scotland and also Ireland.

There are the Cairneys or Carnies of Perthshire who held lands around Cairnie in
Perthshire in the latter Middle Ages and after. These Cairneys are descendants of Sir
John de Ross, a son of the Earl of Ross (Gaelic surname: O Beollain),who received a
charter for lands in Perthshire, and took the name of Cairney from his lands, spread
between Cairdeney (pronounce as 'Cairney') near Dunkeld and Cairnie in Glenalmond.
His son, Robert Cairney, was bishop of Dunkeld and Iona during the late 14th and early
15th centuries. Besides this, they were further linked with the Celtic Church in Scotland by
a 14th century marriage with the heiress of the hereditary abbots of Dull, an ancient Celtic
abbey in the Dunkeld area. These abbots were heads of the sept of MacNair (Gaelic Mac
an oirgh: the son of the heir of the abbot). Some of this family of Cairneys settled in
Aberdeen and Edinburgh, so the Cairnys or Carneys there in the 17th century may be
related. More anciently, these O'Beollains of Ross were co-arbs of Applecross Abbey in
Ross. Another family of O'Beollains were in the same period erenachs of the Columban
Church at Drumcliffe in Sligo.

The other origin of the name in Scotland is also Celtic, these Cairneys take their name from the Gaelic
patronymic O Cearnaigh or Mac Cearnaigh. Early Scots versions of this name are MacCairney and
O'Kairney. The name begins to appear in Scotland in the early sixteenth century and is already well-
represented in Scotland by the end of the eighteenth century.

Most of these O Cearnaigh Cairneys were of a family originally linked with the Celtic Church as coarbs
(hereditary abbots) and errenachs (hereditary priests or stewards of churches and church properties) in
Derry. Derry was the chief Columban foundation at the time, in the 12th and 13th centuries. Gilchrist
O'Kearney or O'Cairney was made Co-arb of Columba and Abbot of Derry 'by the chiefs and clergy of
the north of Ireland' in 1198, and exercised influence over Iona. He was later made Bishop of Connor
(Antrim) and died in 1209; his death was recorded in the Annals of Ulster and the Annals of the Four
Masters. Cairneys, Carneys and Kearneys in Donegal (particularly Inishowen) and Derry for many
generations belong to this sept, associated with both the Kindred of St. Columba and with the O'Neills
and MacNeills. At times they enjoyed the special protection of The O'Donnell, as chief of the Kindred of
St. Columba (Colm Cille). In Scotland the name has universally become 'Cairney' or 'Cairnie'.

Some Cairneys in Scotland originate in the Mac Cearnaigh sept of Monaghan, possibly a branch
of the O'Hanlons, who were chiefs of Armagh (genealogical DNA tests may place them rather
among the Ui Neill). They also give us 'MacCairney.'

There are also a few Cairneys who originate in Mayo/Sligo in the greater barony of Leyney (South
Sligo/North Mayo in Connacht) some of whom later came to Glasgow and took the Scottish form
of the name. They may perhaps be found in south Donegal, around Donegal Town, where a
family of Cairneys lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and up to 1921, but these
may also be a branch of the Inishowen/Derry sept, where the Scots spelling 'Cairney' is also extant
during the eighteenth century. Of the Sligo-connected Cairneys: accocording to the Annals of the
Four Masters, Murtough O’Kearney (Muircheartach O Cearnaigh) of Sligo, Chief Lector of the
Irish, died at the monastery of Clonmacnoise (Clúain mic Nois) in 1106. Carbery and David
O'Kearney (Cairbre and Daibhí O Cearnaigh), professional scribes, copied medical books for
the MacDonalds of the Isles (1563), while Sean O Cearnaigh, also from Sligo, and eventually
Treasurer of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, produced the first printed book in Irish (1571) and
translated the New Testament from Greek (1602), which eventually became part of the first Gaelic
Bible in the Highlands (1685). These Sligo Cairneys (O Cearnaigh) were originally from the Fir
Ceara tribe, a branch of the Ui Fiachrach of Sligo and North Mayo, descended from a brother of
Niall, ancestor of the Ui Neill.

Roscommon produced a family of O Ceithearnaigh (barons of Ciarraighe), and some of their
descendants came to Scotland and had their name changed from the English version of, in this
case, 'Keherny' or 'Kerney' to the Scots 'Cairney.'

There is also an O Cearnaigh sept that achieved fame at Cashel in Tipparary, but there is no evidence
I've found yet that any of them came to Scotland before about the 1860's (when several education acts
helped stabilized the spellings of names and improved literacy), when and where O Cearnaigh had
universally become 'Cairney', because 'Cairney', a Scots word pronounced with a Scots accent
(pronounced tightly, palletized, with a rolled 'r' to rhyme with 'fear'), was the preferred local form of the
Gaelic Cearnaigh and Catharnaigh, both of which became 'Kearney' or 'Carney' in Ireland (however, I
have not found any O Catharnaigh in the pre-1860 immigration to Scotland. They were from the
Midlands west of Dublin: their head was long Baron of Kilcourcey in Co. Offaly).

The Cairneys are claimed as a sept by the Clan Leslie, because of an important 14th-century marriage
with the heiress of the Columban Co-arbs and Thanes of Abernethy in Fife, who also, ironically, held the
barony of Cairney.

But it is the Carnies or Cairnys of Aberdeen who are traditionally connected with the Leslies, and have
long been listed as a sept. Interestingly, Bishop Robert Cairney of Dunkeld was a cousin of the Leslie
Earl of Ross.

'Cairney' is a Scots noun meaning 'hillock', an adjective meaning 'rocky', and a verb meaning 'to pile up
stones' in the Scots phrase 'to cairney up stones'.

At the same time, 'Cairney' is fairly common as a place-name is Scotland, though its etymology has
nothing to do with rocks: the basic etymology is Pictish (akin to Welsh) 'carden' (thicket) with a Gaelic '-
aigh' on the end, yeilding 'Cairdeney', pronounced and eventually written in Scots as 'Cairney.'

Thus the surname is either from '(de) Cairney' as a name from a place name, or, in the case of the
patronymic, it is from the Northern (Scots and Ulster Scots) equivalent pronunciation of the Gaelic '(O)
Cearnaigh'.