The most frequent family names with roots in County Wexford:
County Wexford occupies the south-eastern corner of Ireland — the first part of the country to be settled by the Anglo-Normans in 1169. This gave Wexford a distinctive character: a county of strong Norman-Irish families (Roches, Kavanaghs, Butlers) who integrated with Gaelic clans over centuries. The Wexford surnames often reflect this mix: Norman names like Roche and Stafford sit alongside Gaelic names like Kavanagh (Caomhánach) and Murphy.
The 1798 Rebellion defined Wexford's identity. When the United Irishmen rose against British rule, Wexford's pikemen — many of them Catholic farmers and priests — held the county for months before being crushed at the battles of New Ross and Vinegar Hill. The rebellion's memory is preserved in ballads, monuments, and an intense local pride in the county's rebel history.
President John F. Kennedy's great-great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy emigrated from Dunganstown, County Wexford in 1849. The Kennedy Homestead near New Ross is now a heritage site, and every four years during American election coverage, Wexford's connection to the presidency is invoked.
Wexford emigrants were among the earliest Irish settlers in Newfoundland — the 'Wexford accent' can still be heard in parts of Newfoundland today, a linguistic survival from the eighteenth century. In the United States, Wexford families settled in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The Kennedy family's presence in Massachusetts politics traced directly back to this county.
Love Ireland has covered the Kennedy Homestead near New Ross, the Wexford Opera Festival, the Hook Peninsula (one of Ireland's oldest lighthouses), and the county's extraordinary Medieval heritage. If Wexford is your ancestral county, our weekly newsletter connects you to its present.
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