History of DULANEY  /  DELANY  /  DULANY / DULANEY Name

Delaney is a Norman name, "Del'aunaie", meaning 'from the alder grove', and doubtless some of those bearing the name in Ireland are of Norman stock. However, in the vast majority if cases it was adopted as the anglicized form of the original Irish O Dubhshlaine, from dubh, meaning 'black', and slan, meaning 'defiance'. The original territory of the O Dubhshlaine was at the foot of the Slieve Bloom mountains in Co. Laois. From there they spread also in neighboring Co. Kilkenny, and the surname is still strongly associated with these two counties. The most famous historical bearer of the surname was Patrick Delaney (1685-6- 1768), Church of Ireland clergyman, renowned preacher and close friend of Jonathan Swift, of whom he wrote a celebrated 'Defence'. Delany is a surname never seen to-day with the prefix O which probably belongs to it. It is O Dubhshlainte in Irish, Delaney being a phonetic rendering of this - the A of Delaney was formerly pronounced broad. An earlier anglicized form was O'Dulany e.g. Felix O'Dulany, Bishop of Ossory from 1178 to 1202, who built St. Canice's Cathedral in Kilkenny. 

Dubh means black and slainte is topographical - Slaney in English. If it refers to the river Slaney it suggests that this sept originally possessed a wider territory than that usually assigned to it, namely Coilluachtarach (now Upperwoods) at the foot of Slieve Bloom near the source of the rivers Nore and Barrow in Co. Leix. At the present time the name is chiefly associated with Counties Leix and Kilkenny and in 1659, when Petty's census was made, it appears as a principal Irish name in four baronies of Queen's County (now Leix) and in five of Co. Kilkenny.  Dean Patrick Delany (1684-1768), the friend of Dean Swift, was a Leix man.

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