Ulster AncestryUlster Ancestry
   

Blair

In Ireland very few of Blairs live outside Ulster where over half are from Co. Antrim and most of the remainder from counties Derry and Tyrone.  It is a Scottish name, common here since the Plantation.  It is territorial in origin taken from any one of a number of places in Scotland so named.  The placename itself derives from the Gaelic blar, meaning 'plain', 'field' or 'battlefield'.

 

GLOSSARY

Clan From the Gaelic clann which means literally 'children'.
Mac- From the Gaelic mac, meaning 'son'
O' From the Gaelic Ó, meaning 'grandson', 'grandchild' or 'descendant'; Ní is the femine form of Ó, meaning 'daughter' or 'descendant'
Plantation (Ulster) The redistribution of escheated lands after the defeat of the Ulster Gaelic lords and the 'Flight of the Earls' in 1607.  Only counties Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh, Fermanagh and Cavan were actually 'planted', portions of land there being distributed to English and Scottish families on their lands and for the building of bawns.
Sept A family group of shared ancestry living in the same locality
Undertakers Powerful English or Scottish landowners who undertook the plantation of British settlers on the lands they were granted.
Gaelic This word in Ireland has no relation to Scotland.  As a noun it is used to denote the Irish language, as an adjective to denote native Irish as opposed to Norman or English origin.
Erenagh From the Irish Gaelic airchinneach, meaning 'hereditary steward of church lands'.  A family would hold the ecclesiastical office and the right to the church or monastery lands, the incumbent at any one time being the erenagh.